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The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Ninth Edition Volume C 1865–1914

The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Ninth Edition Volume D 1914–1945

The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Ninth Edition Volume E

Literature since 1945

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Description: Ninth edition. | New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identi"ers: LCCN 2016043347| ISBN 9780393935714 (pbk., v. a : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780393264470 (pbk., v. b : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780393264487 (pbk., v. c : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780393264494 (pbk., v. d : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780393264500 (pbk., v. e : alk. paper)

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THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF

AMERICAN LITERATURE

NINTH EDITION

V O L U M E C : 1 8 6 5 – 1 9 1 4

V O L U M E A American Lit er a ture, Beginnings to 1820 • GUSTAFSON

V O L U M E B American Lit er a ture 1820–1865 • LEVINE

V O L U M E C American Lit er a ture 1865–1914 • ELLIOTT

V O L U M E D American Lit er a ture 1914–1945

LOEFFELHOLZ

V O L U M E E American Lit er a ture since 1945

HUNGERFORD

Michael A. Elliott PROFESSOR OF EN GLISH AND AMERICAN STUDIES

EMORY UNIVERSITY

Sandra M. Gustafson PROFESSOR OF EN GLISH AND AMERICAN STUDIES

UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

Amy Hungerford PROFESSOR OF EN GLISH AND AMERICAN STUDIES

AND DIRECTOR OF THE DIVISION OF THE HUMANITIES

YALE UNIVERSITY

Mary Loeffelholz PROFESSOR OF EN GLISH

NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY

B W • W • N O R T O N & C O M P A N Y

N E W Y O R K • L O N D O N

THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF

AMERICAN LITERATURE

N I N T H E D I T I O N

Robert S. Levine, General Editor professor of en glish and

distinguished university professor and distinguished scholar- teacher

University of Mary land, College Park

V O L U M E C : 1 8 6 5 – 1 9 1 4

v i i

Contents

PREFACE xv AC KNOW LEDG MENTS xxvii

American Lit er a ture 1865–1914

introduction 1 Timeline 16

Wa lt Whitm a n (1819 –1892) 19 Song of Myself 23 Crossing Brooklyn Ferry 66 Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking 71 Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night 75 The Wound- Dresser 76 When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d 78 From Demo cratic Vistas 85

Emily Dick inson (1830 –1886) 88 39 [I never lost as much but twice - ] 92 112 [Success is counted sweetest] 93 124 [Safe in their Alabaster Chambers - ] 93 202 [“Faith” is a "ne invention] 94 207 [I taste a liquor never brewed - ] 94 225 [I’m “wife” - I’ve "nished that - ] 94 236 [Some keep the Sabbath going to Church - ] 95 269 [Wild Nights - Wild Nights!] 95 320 [ There’s a certain Slant of light] 97 There’s a certain slant of light (1890) 97 339 [I like a look of Agony] 98 340 [I felt a Funeral, in my Brain] 98 353 [I’m ceded - I’ve stopped being Their’s - ] 98 359 [A Bird, came down the Walk - ] 99 372 [ After great pain, a formal feeling comes - ] 100 409 [The Soul selects her own Society - ] 100 448 [I died for Beauty - but was scarce] 100

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477 [He fumbles at your Soul] 101 479 [ Because I could not stop for Death - ] 101 518 [When I was small, a Woman died - ] 102 519 [This is my letter to the World] 103 545 [They dropped like Flakes - ] 103 591 [I heard a Fly buzz - when I died - ] 103 598 [The Brain - is wider than the Sky - ] 104 620 [Much Madness is divinest Sense - ] 104 656 [I started Early - Took my Dog - ] 104 704 [My Portion is Defeat - today - ] 105 706 [I cannot live with You - ] 106 764 [My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun - ] 107 1096 [A narrow Fellow in the Grass] 108 1212 [My Triumph lasted till the Drums] 108 1263 [Tell all the Truth but tell it slant - ] 109 1668 [Apparently with no surprise] 109 1773 [My life closed twice before it’s close] 109 Letters to Thomas Went worth Higginson 110

April 15 and 25, 1862 110

Ma rk Twa in (Sa muel L. Clemens) (1835–1910) 111 The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County 115 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 119

CRITICAL CONTROVERSY: RACE AND THE ENDING OF ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN 303

Leo Marx: From Mr. Eliot, Mr. Trilling, and Huckleberry Finn 304 Julius lester: From Morality and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 307 David l. Smith: From Huck, Jim, and American Racial Discourse 308 Jane Smiley: From Say It Ain’t So, Huck: Second Thoughts on Mark

Twain’s “Masterpiece” 311 Toni Morrison: From Introduction to Adventures of

Huckleberry Finn 312 ALAN Gribben: From Introduction to the NewSouth Edition 314 Michiko Kakutani: Light Out, Huck, They Still Want

to Sivilize You 316 The Private History of a Campaign That Failed 318 Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences 331 The War Prayer 340

Bret Ha rte (1836 –1902) 342 The Luck of Roaring Camp 343

Willi a m Dea n How ells (1837–1920) 351 Editha 353

C O N T E N T S | i x

Henry A da ms (1838 –1918) 362 The Education of Henry Adams 364

Chapter XXV. The Dynamo and the Virgin 364

Consta nce Fenimore Woolson (1840 –1894) 373 Rodman the Keeper 374

A mbrose Bierce (1842– c. 1914) 394 An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge 395 Chickamauga 401

Henry Ja mes (1843–1916) 406 Daisy Miller: A Study 410 The Real Thing 450 The Beast in the Jungle 467

Sa r a h Winnemucca (c. 1844–1891) 497 Life Among the Piutes 498

From Chapter I. First Meeting of Piutes and Whites 498 From Chapter II. Domestic and Social Moralities 503 From Chapter VIII. The Yakima Affair 505

Joel Ch a ndler Ha rris (1848?–1908) 508 The Wonderful Tar- Baby Story 509 How Mr. Rabbit Was Too Sharp for Mr. Fox 510

Emm a L a z a rus (1849 –1887) 511 In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport 512 1492 514 The New Colossus 514

Sa r a h Orne Jew et t (1849 –1909) 515 A White Heron 516 From The Country of the Pointed Firs 523

Chapter I. The Return 523 Chapter II. Mrs. Todd 524 Chapter III. The School house 526 Chapter IV. At the School house Win dow 528 Chapter V. Captain Littlepage 529 Chapter VI. The Waiting Place 533

K ate Chopin (1850 –1904) 537 Désirée’s Baby 538 The Story of an Hour 542 The Storm 544 The Awakening 548

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Ma ry E. Wilk ins Freem a n (1852–1930) 639 A New Eng land Nun 640 The Revolt of “ Mother” 649

Voices from Nati v e A merica 660

Oratory Smohalla: Comments to Major MacMurray 661 Charlot: [He has "lled graves with our bones] 664 CHIEF joseph: From An Indian’s Views of Indian Affairs 667

Narrative Francis LaFlesche: From The Middle Five 670 ZITKALA-ŠA: Iktomi and the Fawn 675

The Ghost Dance Songs and the Wounded Knee Massacre 680 [Flat Pipe is telling me] 681 [ Father, have pity on me] 681 [The Crow Woman] 681

nicholas Black Elk and John G. Neihardt: From Black Elk Speaks 682

Charles Alexander Eastman: From From the Deep Woods to Civilization 687

JosÉ Ma rtÍ (1853–1895) 691 Our Amer i ca 692

Book er T. Washington (1856 –1915) 699 Up from Slavery 701

Chapter I. A Slave among Slaves 701 Chapter II. Boyhood Days 709 Chapter XIV. The Atlanta Exposition Address 716

Ch a rles W. Chesnu t t (1858 –1932) 724 The Goophered Grapevine 726 Po’ Sandy 733 The Wife of His Youth 740 The Passing of Grandison 749

Pauline Eliz a beth Hopk ins (1859 –1930) 761 Talma Gordon 762

Ha mlin Ga rl a nd (1860 –1940) 774 Under the Lion’s Paw 775

C O N T E N T S | x i

A br a h a m Ca h a n (1860 –1951) 785 Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto 787

Ch a rlot te Perk ins Gilm a n (1860 –1935) 842 The Yellow Wall- paper 844 Why I Wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper”? 856

Edith Wh a rton (1862–1937) 857 The Other Two 859 Roman Fever 872

Ida B. Wells- Ba rnet t (1862–1931) 881 From Mob Rule in New Orleans 883

Sui Sin Fa r (Edith Maud Eaton) (1865–1914) 908 Mrs. Spring Fragrance 909

W. E. B. Du Bois (1868 –1963) 918 The Souls of Black Folk 920

The Forethought 920 I. Of Our Spiritual Strivings 921 III. Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others 927 XIII. Of the Coming of John 937 XIV. Of the Sorrow Songs 947

rea lism a nd natur a lism 955

william dean howells: From Editor’s Study 956 henry james: From The Art of Fiction 961 HAMLIN GARLAND: From Local Color in Art 963 William Roscoe Thayer: From The New Story- Tellers

and the Doom of Realism 965

frank norris: A Plea for Romantic Fiction 968 jack london: From What Life Means to Me 971 Charlotte Perkins Gilman: From Masculine Lit er a ture 974

Fr a nk Norris (1870 –1902) 976 A Deal in Wheat 977

Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945) 985 Sister Carrie 987

Chapter I 987 Chapter III 994

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Stephen Cr a ne (1871–1900) 1002 Maggie: A Girl of the Streets 1004 The Open Boat 1048 From The Black Riders 1064 From War Is Kind 1065

Ja mes Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) 1067 Lift Every Voice and Sing 1069 Autobiography of an Ex- Colored Man 1070

Chapter I 1070 Chapter X 1076

Paul L aurence Dunba r (1872–1906) 1093 When Malindy Sings 1094 An Ante- Bellum Sermon 1096 We Wear the Mask 1098 Sympathy 1099 Harriet Beecher Stowe 1099 Frederick Douglass 1100

John M. Osk ison (1874–1947) 1101 The Prob lem of Old Harjo 1102

Jack London (1876 –1916) 1107 The Law of Life 1108 To Build a Fire 1113

ZITK A L A-ŠA (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin) (1876 –1938) 1124 Impressions of an Indian Childhood 1127

I. My Mother 1127 II. The Legends 1128 VII. The Big Red Apples 1130

The School Days of an Indian Girl 1133 I. The Land of Red Apples 1133 II. The Cutting of My Long Hair 1134 V. Iron Routine 1136 VI. Four Strange Summers 1137 VII. Incurring My Mother’s Dis plea sure 1139

The Soft- Hearted Sioux 1141 Why I Am a Pagan 1146

Up ton Sincl a ir (1878 –1968) 1148 The Jungle 1150

Chapter IX 1150

C O N T E N T S | x i i i

becoming a merica n in the gilded age 1157

HORATIO ALGER: From Ragged Dick 1158 ANDREW CAR NE GIE: From The Gospel of Wealth 1161 frederick jackson turner: From The Significance of the

Frontier in American History 1164

theodore roo se velt 1169 From American Ideals 1169 From The Strenuous Life 1172

CHARLES W. CHESNUTT: From The Future American 1175 jane addams: Twenty Years at Hull- House 1179

From Chapter V. First Days at Hull- House 1180 From Chapter XI. Immigrants and Their Children 1182

Horace Kallen: From Democracy versus the Melting Pot 1185

selected Bibliographies C1 Permissions Acknowledgments C21 Index C23

x v

Preface to the Ninth Edition

The Ninth Edition of The Norton Anthology of American Lit er a ture is the "rst for me as General Editor; for the Eighth Edition, I served as Associate General Editor under longstanding General Editor Nina Baym. On the occasion of a new general editorship, we have undertaken one of the most extensive revisions in our long publishing history. Three new section editors have joined the team: Sandra M. Gustafson, Professor of En glish and Con- current Professor of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame, who succeeds Wayne Franklin and Philip Gura as editor of “American Lit er a ture, Beginnings to 1820”; Michael A. Elliott, Professor of En glish at Emory University, who succeeds Nina Baym, Robert S. Levine, and Jeanne Campbell Reesman as editor of “American Lit er a ture, 1865–1914”; and Amy Hungerford, Professor of En glish and American Studies at Yale Uni- versity, who succeeds Jerome Klinkowitz and Patricia B. Wallace as editor of “American Lit er a ture since 1945.” These editors join Robert S. Levine, editor of “American Lit er a ture, 1820–1865,” and Mary Loeffelholz, editor of “American Lit er a ture, 1914–1945.” Each editor, new or continuing, is a well- known expert in the relevant "eld or period and has ultimate responsi- bility for his or her section of the anthology, but we have worked closely from "rst to last to rethink all aspects of this new edition. Volume introduc- tions, author headnotes, thematic clusters, annotations, illustrations, and biblio graphies have all been updated and revised. We have also added a number of new authors, se lections, and thematic clusters. We are excited about the outcome of our collaboration and anticipate that, like the previous eight editions, this edition of The Norton Anthology of American Lit er a ture will continue to lead the "eld.

From the anthology’s inception in 1979, the editors have had three main aims: "rst, to pres ent a rich and substantial enough variety of works to enable teachers to build courses according to their own vision of American literary history (thus, teachers are offered more authors and more se lections than they will prob ably use in any one course); second, to make the anthol- ogy self- suf"cient by featuring many works in their entirety along with extensive se lections for individual authors; third, to balance traditional interests with developing critical concerns in a way that allows for the com- plex, rigorous, and capacious study of American literary traditions. As early as 1979, we anthologized work by Anne Bradstreet, Mary Rowlandson, Sarah Kemble Knight, Phillis Wheatley, Margaret Fuller, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, Sarah Orne Jewett, Kate Chopin, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Booker  T. Washington, Charles  W. Chesnutt, Edith Wharton,

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W. E. B. Du Bois, and other writers who were not yet part of a standard canon. Yet we never shortchanged writers— such as Franklin, Emerson, Whitman, Hawthorne, Melville, Dickinson, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner— whose work many students expected to read in their American lit er a ture courses, and whom most teachers then and now would not think of doing without.

The so- called canon wars of the 1980s and  1990s usefully initiated a review of our understanding of American lit er a ture, a review that has enlarged the number and diversity of authors now recognized as contributors to the totality of American lit er a ture. The traditional writers look dif fer ent in this expanded context, and they also appear dif fer ent according to which of their works are selected. Teachers and students remain committed to the idea of the literary— that writers strive to produce artifacts that are both intellectually serious and formally skillful— but believe more than ever that writers should be understood in relation to their cultural and historical situations. We address the complex interrelationships between lit er a ture and history in the volume introductions, author headnotes, chronologies, and some of the footnotes. As in previous editions, we have worked with detailed suggestions from many teachers on how best to pres ent the authors and se lections. We have gained insights as well from the students who use the anthology. Thanks to questionnaires, face- to- face and phone discus- sions, letters, and email, we have been able to listen to those for whom this book is intended. For the Ninth Edition, we have drawn on the careful commentary of over 240 reviewers and reworked aspects of the anthology accordingly.

Our new materials continue the work of broadening the canon by repre- senting thirteen new writers in depth, without sacri"cing widely assigned writers, many of whose se lections have been reconsidered, reselected, and expanded. Our aim is always to provide extensive enough se lections to do the writers justice, including complete works wherever pos si ble. Our Ninth Edition offers complete longer works, including Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, and such new and recently added works as Margaret Fuller’s The Great Lawsuit, Abraham Cahan’s Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto, Nella Larsen’s Passing, Katherine Anne Por- ter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider, Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust, and August Wilson’s Fences. Two complete works— Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night and Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire— are exclusive to The Norton Anthology of American Lit er a ture. Charles Brockden Brown, Louisa May Alcott, Upton Sinclair, and Junot Díaz are among the writers added to the prior edition, and to this edition we have introduced John Rollin Ridge, Constance Fenimore Woolson, George Saunders, and Natasha Tretheway, among others. We have also expanded and in some cases recon"gured such central "gures as Franklin, Hawthorne, Dickin- son, Twain, and Hemingway, offering new approaches in the headnotes, along with some new se lections. In fact, the headnotes and, in many cases, se lections for such frequently assigned authors as William Bradford, Wash- ington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, William Cullen Bryant, Lydia Maria Child, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Har- riet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Henry James, Kate Chopin, W. E. B. Du Bois, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and William

P R E F A C E T O T H E N I N T H E D I T I O N | x v i i

Faulkner have been revised, updated, and in some cases entirely rewritten in light of recent scholarship. The Ninth Edition further expands its se lections of women writers and writers from diverse ethnic, racial, and regional backgrounds— always with attention to the critical acclaim that recognizes their contributions to the American literary rec ord. New and recently added writers such as Samson Occom, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, John Rollin Ridge, and Sarah Winnemucca, along with the "gures repre- sented in “Voices from Native Amer i ca,” enable teachers to bring early Native American writing and oratory into their syllabi, or should they pre- fer, to focus on these se lections as a freestanding unit leading toward the moment after 1945 when Native writers fully entered the mainstream of literary activity.

We are pleased to continue our popu lar innovation of topical gatherings of short texts that illuminate the cultural, historical, intellectual, and literary concerns of their respective periods. Designed to be taught in a class period or two, or used as background, each of the sixteen clusters consists of brief, carefully excerpted primary and (in one case) secondary texts, about six to ten per cluster, and an introduction. Diverse voices— many new to the anthology— highlight a range of views current when writers of a par tic u lar time period were active, and thus allow students better to understand some of the large issues that were being debated at par tic u lar historical moments. For example, in “Slavery, Race, and the Making of American Lit er a ture,” texts by David Walker, William Lloyd Garrison, Angelina Grimké, Sojourner Truth, James  M. Whit"eld, and Martin  R. Delany speak to the great paradox of pre– Civil War Amer i ca: the contradictory rupture between the realities of slavery and the nation’s ideals of freedom.

The Ninth Edition strengthens this feature with eight new and revised clusters attuned to the requests of teachers. To help students address the controversy over race and aesthetics in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, we have revised a cluster in Volume C that shows what some of the leading critics of the past few de cades thought was at stake in reading and interpret- ing slavery and race in Twain’s canonical novel. New to Volume A is “American Lit er a ture and the Va ri e ties of Religious Expression,” which includes se lections by Elizabeth Ashbridge, John Woolman, and John Marrant, while Volume B offers “Science and Technology in the Pre– Civil War Nation.” Volume C newly features “Becoming American in the Gilded Age,” and we continue to include the useful “Modernist Manifestos” in Volume D. We have added to the popu lar “Creative Non"ction” in Volume E new se lections by David Foster Wallace and Hunter S. Thompson, who join such writers as Jamaica Kincaid and Joan Didion.

The Ninth Edition features an expanded illustration program, both of the black-and-white images, 145 of which are placed throughout the vol- umes, and of the color plates so popu lar in the last two editions. In select- ing color plates— from Elizabeth Graham’s embroidered map of Washington, D.C., at the start of the nineteenth century to Jeff Wall’s “After ‘Invisible Man’ ” at the beginning of the twenty- "rst— the editors aim to provide images relevant to literary works in the anthology while depicting arts and artifacts representative of each era. In addition, graphic works— segments from the colonial children’s classic The New- Eng land Primer and from Art Spiegelman’s canonical graphic novel, Maus, and a facsimile page of Emily

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Dickinson manuscript, along with the many new illustrations— open possi- bilities for teaching visual texts.

Period- by- Period Revisions

Volume A, Beginnings to 1820. Sandra M. Gustafson, the new editor of Volume A, has substantially revised the volume. Prior editions of Volume A were broken into two historical sections, with two introductions and a dividing line at the year 1700; Gustafson has dropped that arti"cial divide to tell a more coherent and `uid story (in her new introduction) about the variety of American lit er a tures during this long period. The volume continues to feature narratives by early Eu ro pean explorers of the North American continent as they encountered and attempted to make sense of the diverse cultures they met, and as they sought to justify their aim of claiming the territory for Eu ro pe ans. These are precisely the issues foregrounded by the revised cluster “First Encounters: Early Eu ro pean Accounts of Native Amer i ca,” which gathers writings by Hernán Cortés, Samuel de Champlain, Robert Juet, and others, including the newly added Thomas Harriot. In addition to the standing material from The Bay Psalm Book, we include new material by Roger Williams; additional poems by Annis Boudinot Stockton; Abigail Adams’s famous letter urging her husband to “Remember the Ladies”; an additional se lection from Olaudah Equiano on his post- emancipation travels; and Charles Brockden Brown’s “Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist” (the complete “prequel” to his "rst novel, Wieland). We con- tinue to offer the complete texts of Rowlandson’s enormously in`uential A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, Ben- jamin Franklin’s Autobiography (which remains one of the most compelling works on the emergence of an “American” self), Royall Tyler’s popu lar play The Contrast, and Hannah Foster’s novel The Coquette, which uses a real- life tragedy to meditate on the proper role of well- bred women in the new republic and testi"es to the existence of a female audience for the popu lar novels of the period. New to this volume is Washington Irving, a writer who looks back to colonial history and forward to Jacksonian Amer i ca. The inclusion of Irving in both Volumes A and B, with one key overlapping se lection, points to continuities and changes between the two volumes.

Five new and revised thematic clusters of texts highlight themes central to Volume A. In addition to “First Encounters,” we have included “Native American Oral Lit er a ture,” “American Lit er a ture and the Va ri e ties of Reli- gious Expression,” “Ethnographic and Naturalist Writings,” and “Native American Eloquence: Negotiation and Re sis tance.” “Native American Oral Lit er a ture” features creation stories, trickster tales, oratory, and poetry from a spectrum of traditions, while “Native American Eloquence” collects speeches and accounts by Canassatego and Native American women (both new to the volume), Pontiac, Chief Logan (as cited by Thomas Jefferson), and Tecumseh, which, as a group, illustrate the centuries- long pattern of initial peaceful contact between Native Americans and whites mutating into bitter and violent con`ict. This cluster, which focuses on Native Americans’ points of view, complements “First Encounters,” which focuses on Eu ro pean colonizers’ points of view. The Native American presence in the volume is further expanded with increased repre sen ta tion of Samson Occom, which

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includes an excerpt from his sermon at the execution of Moses Paul, and the inclusion of Sagoyewatha in “American Lit er a ture and the Va ri e ties of Religious Expression.” Strategically located between the Congregationalist Protestant (or late- Puritan) Jonathan Edwards and the Enlightenment "g- ure Franklin, this cluster brings together works from the perspectives of the major religious groups of the early Amer i cas, including Quakerism (poems by Francis Daniel Pastorius, se lections from autographical narratives of Elizabeth Ashbridge and John Woolman), Roman Catholicism (poems by Sor Juana, two Jesuit Relations, with biographical accounts of Father Isaac Jogues and Kateri Tekakwitha), dissenting Protestantism (Marrant), Juda- ism (Rebecca Samuel), and indigenous beliefs (Sagoyewatha). The new cluster “Ethnographic and Naturalist Writings” includes writings by Sarah Kemble Knight and William Byrd, along with new se lections by Alexander Hamilton, William Bartram, and Hendrick Aupaumut. With this cluster, the new cluster on science and technology in Volume B, and a number of new se lections and revisions in Volumes C, D, and E, the Ninth Edition pays greater attention to the impact of science on American literary traditions.

Volume B, American Lit er a ture, 1820–1865. Under the editorship of Robert S. Levine, this volume over the past several editions has become more diverse. Included here are the complete texts of Emerson’s Nature, Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, Thoreau’s Walden, Douglass’s Narrative, Whit- man’s Song of Myself, Melville’s Benito Cereno and Billy Budd, Rebecca Harding Davis’s Life in the Iron Mills, and Margaret Fuller’s The Great Law- suit. At the same time, aware of the impor tant role of African American writers in the period, and the omnipresence of race and slavery as literary and po liti cal themes, we have recently added two major African American writers, William Wells Brown and Frances E. W. Harper, along with Doug- lass’s novella The Heroic Slave. Thoreau’s “Plea for Captain John Brown,” a generous se lection from Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and the cluster “Slavery, Race, and the Making of American Lit er a ture” also help remind students of how central slavery was to the literary and po liti cal life of the nation during this period. “Native Americans: Re sis tance and Removal” gathers oratory and writings—by Native Americans such as Black Hawk and whites such as Ralph Waldo Emerson— protesting Andrew Jackson’s ruthless national pol- icy of Indian removal. Newly added is a se lection from The Life and Adven- tures of Joaquín Murieta, by the Native American writer John Rollin Ridge. This potboiler of a novel, set in the new state of California, emerged from the debates that began during the Indian removal period. Through the "g- ure of the legendary Mexican bandit Murieta, who "ghts back against white expansionists, Ridge responds to the vio lence encouraged by Jackson and subsequent white leaders as they laid claim to the continent. Po liti cal themes, far from diluting the literary imagination of American authors, served to inspire some of the most memorable writing of the pre-Civil War period.

Women writers recently added to Volume B include Lydia Huntley Sigourney, the Native American writer Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, and Louisa May Alcott. Recently added prose "ction includes chapters from Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans, Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie, and Melville’s Moby- Dick, along with Poe’s “The Black Cat” and Hawthorne’s “Wake"eld.”

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For the "rst time in the print edition, we include Melville’s “Hawthorne and His Mosses” as it appeared in the 1850 Literary World. Poetry by Emily Dickinson is now presented in the texts established by R. W. Franklin and includes a facsimile page from Fascicle 10. For this edition we have added several poems by Dickinson that were inspired by the Civil War. Other se lections added to this edition include Fanny Fern’s amusing sketch “Writ- ing ‘Compositions,’ ” the chapter in Frederick Douglass’s My Bondage and My Freedom on his re sis tance to the slave- breaker Covey, three poems by Melville (“Dupont’s Round Fight,” “A Utilitarian View of the Monitor’s Fight,” and “Art”), and Whitman’s “The Sleepers.”

Perhaps the most signi"cant addition to Volume B is the cluster “Science and Technology in the Pre– Civil War Nation,” with se lections by the canoni- cal writers Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, and Frederick Douglass, by the scientists Jacob Bigelow and Alexander Humboldt, and by the editor- writer Harriet Farley. The cluster calls attention to the strong interest in science and technology throughout this period and should provide a rich context for reconsidering works such as Thoreau’s Walden and Melville’s “The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids.” In an effort to under- score the importance of science and technology to Poe and Hawthorne in par tic u lar, we have added two stories that directly address these topics: Poe’s “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” and Hawthorne’s “The Artist of the Beautiful” (which reads nicely in relation to his “The Birth- Mark” and “Rappaccini’s Daughter”). Emerson, Whitman, and Dickinson are among the many other authors in Volume B who had considerable interest in science.

Volume C, American Lit er a ture, 1865–1914. Newly edited by Michael A. Elliott, the volume includes expanded se lections of key works, as well as new ones that illustrate how many of the strug gles of this period pre"gure our own. In addition to complete longer works such as Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chopin’s The Awakening, James’s Daisy Miller, and Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, the Ninth Edition now includes the complete text of Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto, a highly in`uential novella of immigrant life that depicts the pressures facing newly arrived Jews in the nation’s largest metropolis. Also new is a substantial se lection from Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs, a mas- terpiece of literary regionalism that portrays a remote seaside community facing change.

Americans are still re`ecting on the legacy of the Civil War, and we have added two works approaching that subject from dif fer ent angles. Constance Fenimore Woolson’s “Rodman the Keeper” tells the story of a Union vet- eran who maintains a cemetery in the South. In “The Private History of a Campaign That Failed,” Mark Twain re`ects with wit and insight on his own brief experience in the war. In the Eighth Edition, we introduced a section on the critical controversy surrounding race and the conclusion of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. That section remains as impor tant as ever, and new additions incorporate a recent debate about the value of an expur- gated edition of the novel.

We have substantially revised clusters designed to give students a sense of the cultural context of the period. New selections in “Realism and Natu- ralism” demonstrate what was at stake in the debate over realism, among

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them a feminist response from Charlotte Perkins Gilman. “Becoming Ameri- can in the Gilded Age,” a new cluster, introduces students to writing about wealth and citizenship at a time when the nation was undergoing transfor- mation. Se lections from one of Horatio Alger’s popu lar novels of economic uplift, Andrew Car ne gie’s “Gospel of Wealth,” and Charles W. Chesnutt’s “The Future American” together reveal how questions about the composi- tion of the nation both in`uenced the lit er a ture of this period and pre"gured con temporary debates on immigration, cultural diversity, and the concentra- tion of wealth.

The turn of the twentieth century was a time of im mense literary diver- sity. “Voices from Native Amer i ca” brings together a variety of expressive forms— oratory, memoir, ethnography— through which Native Americans sought to represent themselves. It includes new se lections by Francis LaFlesche, Zitkala-Ša, and Chief Joseph. For the "rst time, we include the complete text of José Martí’s “Our Amer i ca,” in a new translation by Martí biographer Alfred J. López. By instructor request, we have added "ction and non"ction by African American authors: Charles  W. Chesnutt’s “Po’ Sandy,” Pauline Hopkins’s “Talma Gordon,” and expanded se lections from W. E. B. Du Bois’s Souls of Black Folk and James Weldon Johnson’s Autobiography of an Ex- Colored Man.

Volume D, American Lit er a ture 1914–1945. Edited by Mary Loeffelholz, Volume D offers a number of complete longer works— Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night (exclusive to the Norton Anthology), William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, and Willa Cather’s My Ántonia. To these we have added Nella Larsen’s Passing, which replaces Quicksand, and Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust. We added Passing in response to numerous requests from instructors and students who regard it as one of the most compelling treatments of racial passing in American lit er a ture. The novel also offers rich descriptions of the social and racial geographies of Chicago and New York City. West’s darkly comic The Day of the Locust similarly offers rich descriptions of the social and racial geography of Los Angeles. West’s novel can at times seem bleak and not “po liti cally correct,” but in many ways it is the "rst great American novel about the "lm industry, and it also has much to say about the growth of California in the early de cades of the twentieth century. New se lections by Zora Neale Hurston (“Sweat”) and John Steinbeck (“The Chrysanthemums”) further contribute to the vol- ume’s exploration of issues connected with racial and social geographies.

Se lections by Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, Hart Crane, and Langston Hughes encourage students and teachers to contemplate the inter- relation of modernist aesthetics with ethnic, regional, and popu lar writing. In “Modernist Manifestos,” F. T. Marinetti, Mina Loy, Ezra Pound, Willa Cather, William Carlos Williams, and Langston Hughes show how the man- ifesto as a form exerted a power ful in`uence on international modernism in all the arts. Another illuminating cluster addresses central events of the modern period. In “World War I and Its Aftermath,” writings by Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Jessie Redmon Fauset, and others explore sharply divided views on the U.S. role in World War I, as well as the radicalizing effect of modern warfare— with 365,000 American casualties—on con- temporary writing. We have added to this edition a chapter from Hemingway’s

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"rst novel, The Sun Also Rises, which speaks to the impact of the war on sexuality and gender. Other recent and new additions to Volume D include Faulkner’s popu lar “A Rose for Emily,” Katherine Anne Porter’s novella Pale Horse, Pale Rider, Gertrude Stein’s “Objects,” Marianne Moore’s ambitious longer poem “Marriage,” poems by Edgar Lee Masters and Edwin Arlington Robinson, and Jean Toomer’s “Blood Burning Moon.”

Volume E, American Lit er a ture, 1945 to the Pres ent. Amy Hungerford, the new editor of Volume E, has revised the volume to pres ent a wider range of writing in poetry, prose, drama, and non"ction. As before, the vol- ume offers the complete texts of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire (exclusive to this anthology), Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, Sam Shepard’s True West, August Wilson’s Fences, David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, and Louise Glück’s long poem October. A se lection from Art Spiegelman’s prize- winning Maus opens possibilities for teaching the graphic novel. We also include teachable stand- alone seg- ments from in`uential novels by Saul Bellow (The Adventures of Augie March) and Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse- Five), and, new to this edition, Jack Kerouac (On the Road) and Don DeLillo (White Noise). The se lection from one of DeLillo’s most celebrated novels tells what feels like a con- temporary story about a nontraditional family navigating an environmental disaster in a climate saturated by mass media. Three newly added stories— Patricia Highsmith’s “The Quest for Blank Claveringi,” Philip  K. Dick’s “Precious Artifact,” and George Saunders’s “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline”— reveal the impact of science "ction, fantasy, horror, and (especially in the case of Saunders) mass media on literary "ction. Also appearing for the "rst time are Edward  P. Jones and Lydia Davis, con temporary masters of the short story, who join such short "ction writers as Ann Beattie and Junot Díaz. Recognized literary "gures in all genres, ranging from Robert Penn Warren and Elizabeth Bishop to Leslie Marmon Silko and Toni Morrison, continue to be richly represented. In response to instructors’ requests, we now include Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” and James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues.”

One of the most distinctive features of twentieth- and twenty- "rst- century American lit er a ture is a rich vein of African American poetry. This edition adds two con temporary poets from this living tradition: Natasha Trethewey and Tracy K. Smith. Trethewey’s se lections include personal and historical elegies; Smith draws on cultural materials as diverse as David Bowie’s music and the history of the Hubble Space Telescope. These writers join African American poets whose work has long helped de"ne the anthology— Rita Dove, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Hayden, Audre Lorde, and others.

This edition gives even greater exposure to literary and social experimen- tation during the 1960s, 1970s, and beyond. The work of two avant- garde playwrights joins “Postmodern Manifestos” (which pairs nicely with “Mod- ernist Manifestos” in Volume D). Introduced to the anthology through their short, challenging pieces, Charles Ludlam and Richard Foreman cast the mechanics of per for mance in a new light. Reading their thought pieces in relation to the volume’s complete plays helps raise new questions about how the seemingly more traditional dramatic works engage structures of time, plot, feeling, and spectatorship. To our popu lar cluster “Creative Non"ction”

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we have added a new se lection by Joan Didion, from “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” which showcases her revolutionary style of journalism as she comments on experiments with public per for mance and communal living during the 1960s. A new se lection from David Foster Wallace in the same cluster pushes reportage on the Maine Lobster Festival into philosophical inquiry: how can we fairly assess the pain of other creatures? This edition also introduces poet Frank Bidart through his most famous work— Ellen West—in which the poet uses experimental forms of verse he pioneered during the 1970s to speak in the voice of a woman battling anorexia. Stand- ing authors in the anthology, notably John Ashbery and Amiri Baraka, "ll out the volume’s survey of radical change in the forms, and social uses, of literary art.

We are delighted to offer this revised Ninth Edition to teachers and stu- dents, and we welcome your comments.

Additional Resources from the Publisher

The Ninth Edition retains the paperback splits format, popu lar for its `ex- ibility and portability. This format accommodates the many instructors who use the anthology in a two- semester survey, but allows for mixing and matching the "ve volumes in a variety of courses or ga nized by period or topic, at levels from introductory to advanced. We are also pleased to offer the Ninth Edition in an ebook format. The Digital Anthologies include all the content of the print volumes, with print- corresponding page and line numbers for seamless integration into the print- digital mixed classroom. Annotations are accessible with a click or a tap, encouraging students to use them with minimal interruption to their reading of the text. The e- reading platform facilitates active reading with a power ful annotation tool and allows students to do a full- text search of the anthology and read online or off. The Digital Editions can be accessed from any computer or device with an Internet browser and are available to students at a frac- tion of the print price at digital . wwnorton . com / americanlit9pre1865 and digital . wwnorton . com / americanlit9post1865. For exam copy access to the Digital Editions and for information on making the Digital Editions avail- able through the campus bookstore or packaging the Digital Editions with the print anthology, instructors should contact their Norton representative.

To give instructors even more `exibility, Norton is making available the full list of 254 Norton Critical Editions. A Norton Critical Edition can be included for free with either package (Volumes A and B; Volumes C, D, E) or any indi- vidual split volume. Each Norton Critical Edition gives students an authorita- tive, carefully annotated text accompanied by rich contextual and critical materials prepared by an expert in the subject. The publisher also offers the much- praised guide Writing about American Lit er a ture, by Karen Gocsik (University of California– San Diego) and Coleman Hutchison (University of Texas– Austin), free with either package or any individual split volume.

In addition to the Digital Editions, for students using The Norton Anthol- ogy of American Lit er a ture, the publisher provides a wealth of free resources at digital . wwnorton . com / americanlit9pre1865 and digital . wwnorton . com / americanlit9post1865. There students will "nd more than seventy reading- comprehension quizzes on the period introductions and widely taught works

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with extensive feedback that points them back to the text. Ideal for self- study or homework assignments, Norton’s sophisticated quizzing engine allows instructors to track student results and improvement. For over thirty works in the anthology, the sites also offer Close Reading Workshops that walk students step- by- step through analy sis of a literary work. Each workshop prompts students to read, reread, consider contexts, and answer questions along the way, making these perfect assignments to build close- reading skills.

The publisher also provides extensive instructor- support materials. New to the Ninth Edition is an online Interactive Instructor’s Guide at iig.wwnor- ton .com/americanlit9/full. Invaluable for course preparation, this resource provides hundreds of teaching notes, discussion questions, and suggested resources from the much-praised Teaching with The Norton Anthology of American Literature: A Guide for Instructors by Edward Whitley (Lehigh University). Also at this searchable and sortable site are quizzes, images, and lecture PowerPoints for each introduction, topic cluster, and twenty-"ve widely taught works. A PDF of Teaching with NAAL is available for download at wwnorton.com/instructors.

Fi nally, Norton Coursepacks bring high- quality digital media into a new or existing online course. The coursepack includes all the reading compre- hension quizzes (customizable within the coursepack), the Writing about Lit er a ture video series, a bank of essay and exam questions, bulleted sum- maries of the period introductions, and “Making Connections” discussion or essay prompts to encourage students to draw connections across the anthology’s authors and works. Coursepacks are available in a variety of formats, including Blackboard, Canvas, Desire2Learn, and Moodle, at no cost to instructors or students.

Editorial Procedures

As in past editions, editorial features— period introductions, headnotes, annotations, and biblio graphies— are designed to be concise yet full and to give students necessary information without imposing a single interpreta- tion. The editors have updated all apparatus in response to new scholar- ship: period introductions have been entirely or substantially rewritten, as have many headnotes. All selected biblio graphies and each period’s general- resources biblio graphies, categorized by Reference Works, Histories, and Literary Criticism, have been thoroughly updated. The Ninth Edition retains three editorial features that help students place their reading in historical and cultural context— a Texts/Contexts timeline following each period introduction, a map on the front endpaper of each volume, and a chrono- logical chart, on the back endpaper, showing the lifespans of many of the writers anthologized.

Whenever pos si ble, our policy has been to reprint texts as they appeared in their historical moment. There is one exception: we have modernized most spellings and (very sparingly) the punctuation in Volume A on the princi ple that archaic spellings and typography pose unnecessary prob lems for beginning students. We have used square brackets to indicate titles sup- plied by the editors for the con ve nience of students. Whenever a portion of a text has been omitted, we have indicated that omission with three asterisks.

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If the omitted portion is impor tant for following the plot or argument, we give a brief summary within the text or in a footnote. After each work, we cite the date of "rst publication on the right; in some instances, the latter is followed by the date of a revised edition for which the author was respon- sible. When the date of composition is known and differs from the date of publication, we cite it on the left.

The editors have bene"ted from commentary offered by hundreds of teachers throughout the country. Those teachers who prepared detailed critiques, or who offered special help in preparing texts, are listed under Acknowl edgments, on a separate page. We also thank the many people at Norton who contributed to the Ninth Edition: Julia Reidhead, who super- vised the Ninth Edition; Marian Johnson, managing editor, college; Carly Fraser Doria, media editor; Kurt Wildermuth, Michael Fleming, Harry Haskell, Candace Levy, manuscript editors; Rachel Taylor and Ava Bramson, assistant editors; Sean Mintus, production man ag er; Cat Abelman, photo editor; Julie Tesser, photo researcher; Debra Morton Hoyt, art director; Tiani Kennedy, cover designer; Megan Jackson Schindel, permissions man- ag er; and Margaret Gorenstein, who cleared permissions. We also wish to acknowledge our debt to the late George P. Brockway, former president and chairman at Norton, who in ven ted this anthology, and to the late M. H. Abrams, Norton’s advisor on En glish texts. All have helped us create an anthology that, more than ever, testi"es to the continuing richness of American literary traditions.

Robert S. Levine, General Editor

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Acknowl edgments

Among our many critics, advisors, and friends, the following were of espe- cial help toward the preparation of the Ninth Edition, either with advice or by providing critiques of par tic u lar periods of the anthology: Melissa Adams- Campbell (Northern Illinois University); Rolena Adorno (Yale Uni- versity); Heidi Ajrami (Victoria College); Simone A. James Alexander (Seton Hall University); Brian Anderson (Central Piedmont Community College); Lena Andersson (Fulton- Montgomery Community College); Marilyn Judith Atlas (Ohio University); Sylvia Baer (Gloucester County College); George H. Bailey (Northern Essex Community College); Margarita T. Barceló (MSU Denver); Peter Bellis (University of Alabama– Birmingham); Randall Blan- kenship (Valencia College); Susanne Bloom"eld (University of Nebraska– Kearney); David Bordelon (Ocean County College); Patricia Bostian (Central Piedmont Community College); Maria Brandt (Monroe Commu- nity College); Tamara Ponzo Brattoli (Joliet Ju nior College); Joanna Brooks (San Diego State University); David Brottman (Iowa State University); Arthur Brown (University of Evansville); Martin Brückner (University of Delaware); Judith Budz (Fitchburg State University); Dan Butcher (Univer- sity of Alabama– Birmingham); Maria J. Cahill (Edison State College); Ann Cameron (Indiana University– Kokomo); Brad Campbell (Cal Poly); Mark Canada (University of North Carolina– Pembroke); Gerry Canavan (Mar- quette University); Ann Capel (Gadsden State Community College, Ayers Campus); Elisabeth Ceppi (Portland State University); Tom Cerasulo (Elms College); Mark Cirino (University of Evansville); Josh Cohen (Emory Uni- versity); Matt Cohen (University of Texas– Austin); William Corley (Cal Poly Pomona and U.S. Naval Acad emy); David Cowart (University of South Carolina); Paul Crumbley (Utah State University); Ryan Cull (New Mexico State University); Sue Currell (University of Sussex); Kathleen Danker (South Dakota State University); Clark Davis (University of Denver); Eve Davis ( Virginia Union University); Matthew  R. Davis (University of Wisconsin– Stevens Point); Laura Dawkins (Murray State University); Bruce  J. Degi (Metropolitan State University of Denver); Jerry DeNuccio (Graceland University); Lisa DeVries (Victoria College); Lorraine C. DiCicco (King’s University College); Joshua  A. Dickson (SUNY Jefferson); Rick Diguette (Georgia Perimeter College); Raymond  F. Dolle (Indiana State University); James Donelan (UC Santa Barbara); Clark Draney (College of Southern Idaho); John Dudley (University of South Dakota); Sara Eaton (North Central College); Julia Eichelberger (College of Charleston); Marilyn Elkins (California State University– Los Angeles); Sharyn Emery (Indiana

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University Southeast); Hilary Emmett (University of East Anglia); Terry Engebresten (Idaho State University); Patrick Erben (University of West Georgia); Timothy J. Evans (College of William & Mary); Duncan Faherty (CUNY); Laura Fine (Meredith College); Daniel Fineman (Occidental Col- lege); Pat Gantt (Utah State University); Xiongya Gao (Southern University at New Orleans); Becky Jo Gesteland (Weber State University); Paul Gilmore (Rutgers University); Len Gougeon (University of Scranton); Carey Goyette (Clinton Community College); Sarah Graham (University of Leicester); Alan Gravano (Marshall University); James N. Green (Library Com pany of Philadelphia); Laura Morgan Green (Northeastern University); John Gruesser (Kean University); Bernabe  G. Gutierrez (Laredo Community College); Julia Hans (Fitchburg State University); Stephanie Hawkins (Uni- versity of North Texas); Catherine F. Heath (Victoria College); Roger Hechy (SUNY Oneonta); Terry Heller (Coe College); Carl Herzig (St.  Ambrose University); Eric Heyne (University of Alaska– Fairbanks); Thomas Alan Holmes (East Tennessee State University); Greg Horn (Southwest Virginia Community College); Ruth  Y. Hsu (University of Hawaii– Manoa); Kate Huber ( Temple University); Zach Hutchins (Colorado State University); Thomas Irwin (University of Missouri– St. Louis); Elizabeth Janoski (Lack- awanna College); Andrew Jenkins (College of Central Florida); Luke Johnson (Mesabi Range College); Mark Johnson (San Jacinto College); Paul Jones (Ohio University); Roger Walton Jones (Ranger College); Jennifer Jordan- Henley (Roane State Community College); Mark Kamrath (University of Central Florida); Rachel Key (El Centro College); Julie H. Kim (Northeast- ern Illinois University); Vincent King (Black Hills State University); Denis Kohn (Baldwin Wallace University); Gary Konas (University of Wisconsin– La Crosse); Michael Kowalewski (Carleton College); Michael Lackey (University of Minnesota– Morris); Jennifer Ladino (University of Idaho); Thomas  W. LaFleur (Laredo Community College); Andrew Lanham (Yale University); Christopher Leise (Whitman College); Beth Leishman (Northwest MS Community College); Jennifer Levi (Cecil College); Alfred J. López (Purdue University); Paul Madachy (Prince George’s Community College); Etta Madden (Missouri State University); Marc Malandra (Biola University); David Malone (Union University); Matt Martin (Wesleyan College); Stephen Mathewson (Central New Mexico Community College); Liz Thompson Mayo (Jackson State Community College); David McCracken (Coker College); Kathleen McDonald (Norwich University); John McGreevy (Uni- versity of Notre Dame); Dana McMichael (Abilene Christian University); Sandra Measels (Holmes Community College); Eric Mein (Normandale Community College); Christine Mihelich (Marywood University); Deborah M. Mix (Ball State University); Aaron Moe (Washington State University); Joelle Moen (Brigham Young University– Idaho); Lisa Muir (Wilkes Com- munity College); Lori Muntz (Iowa Wesleyan College); Justine Murison (University of Illinois); Jillmarie Murphy (Union College); Harold Nelson (Minot State University); Howard Nelson (Cayuga Community College); Lance Newman (Westminster College); Taryn Okuma (The Catholic Univer- sity of Amer i ca); Stanley Orr (University of Hawai’i– West O’ahu); Samuel Otter (University of California–Berkeley); Susan Scott Parrish (University of Michigan); Martha H. Patterson (McKendree University); Michelle Paulsen (Victoria College); Daniel G. Payne (SUNY Oneonta); Ian Peddie (Georgia

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Gwinnett College); Aaron Matthew Percich (West Virginia University); Tom Perrin (Huntingdon College); Sandra Petrulionis (Penn State– Altoona); Christopher Phillips (Lafayette College); Kenneth M. Price (University of Nebraska); Maria Pollack (Hudson Valley Community College); Marty  G. Price (Mississippi State University); Kieran Quinlan (University of Alabama– Birmingham); Wesley Raabe (Kent State University); Maria Ramos (J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College); Palmer Rampell (Yale University); Rick Randolph (Kauai Community College); Kimberly Reed (Lipscomb University); Joan Reeves (Northeast Alabama Community College); Eliza- beth Renker (The Ohio State University); Joseph Rezek (Boston University); Anne Boyd Rioux (University of New Orleans); Marc Robinson (Yale Uni- versity); Jane Rosecrans (J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College); Phillip Round (University of Iowa); Jeffrey Rubinstein (Hillborough Community College); Maureen Ryan (University of Southern Mississippi); Jamie Sadler (Richmond Community College); Gordon Sayre (University of Oregon); Jennifer Schell (University of Alaska– Fairbanks); Jim Schrantz (Tarrant County College); Joshua Schuster (University of Western Ontario); Marc Seals (University of Wisconsin– Baraboo/Sauk County); Carl Sederholm (Brigham Young University); Larry Severeid (Utah State University– Eastern); Anna Shectman (Yale University); Deborah Sims (USC and UCR); Claudia Slate (Florida Southern College); Brenda R. Smith (Kent State University– Stark); Martha Nell Smith (University of Maryland); Eric Sterling (Auburn University Montgomery); Julia Stern (Northwestern University); Billy  J. Stratton (University of Denver); Steve Surryhne (California State University– San Francisco); Timothy Sweet (West Virginia University); David Taylor (University of North Texas); Jan Thompson (University of Nebraska– Kearney); Robin Thompson (Governors State University); Marjory Thrash (Pearl River Community College); Nicole Tonkovich (UC San Diego); Steve Tracy (University of Mas sa chu setts– Amherst); Alan Trusky (Forence- Darlington Tech College); April Van Camp (Indian River State College); Joanne van der Woude (University of Groningen); Abram van Engen (Wash- ington University); Laura Veltman (California Baptist University); Eliza Waggoner (Miami University– Middletown); Catherine Waitinas (Cal Poly State University); Laura Dassow Walls (University of Notre Dame); Raquel Wanzo (Laney College); Bryan Waterman (New York University); Stephanie Wells (Orange Coast College); Jeff Westover (Boise State University); Belinda Wheeler (Paine College); Chris Wheeler (Horry- Georgetown Tech- nical College); Steven J. Whitton (Jacksonville State University); Elizabeth Wiet (Yale University); Jason Williams (Brigham Young University– Idaho); Barbara Williamson (Spokane Falls Community College); Gaye Winter (Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College); Kelly Wisecup (University of North Texas); Aiping Zhang (California State University– Chico).

THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF

AMERICAN LITERATURE

NINTH EDITION

V O L U M E C : 1 8 6 5 – 1 9 1 4

1

American Lit er a ture 1865–1914

THE GILDED AGE

In 1873, Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner pub-lished The Gilded Age: A Tale of To- day. The novel, Twain’s "rst, portrays the United States as a nation con- sumed by greed and corruption, a land of get- rich- quick schemes, rampant speculation, and bribery. Twain and Warner "lled their pages with Americans— from country villa gers to big- city dwellers— who were caught up in the fantasy of making an easy fortune, willing to sacri"ce their scruples for the sake of material success. The book revealed an age that too easily mistook gilding for gold.

Commercially and critically, The Gilded Age enjoyed only modest success. Some readers were put off by the “pungent” satire; others thought the book was “confused and inartis- tic.” One reviewer compared the novel to “a salad dressing badly mixed.” But Twain and Warner’s contemporaries agreed that The Gilded Age had accurately captured some- thing impor tant, if unsettling, about the time in which they lived, and the book shaped the way that we think about this period of American life. Even today, many historians follow Twain and Warner in referring to the late nineteenth century in Amer i ca as “the Gilded Age.”

Just as impor tant, Twain and Warner’s novel reveals sig- ni"cant trends that were emerging in the lit er a ture of the United States in the de cades following the Civil War. Rather than being concerned with introspection or the perfection of literary forms, American lit er a ture in the late nineteenth century privileged the description and documentation of a rapidly changing society— a nation undergoing tremendous changes in terms of the composition of its population, the structure of its economy, and the customs of its people. American writers scrutinized the world around them, and their observations on the page were frequently accompa- nied by social commentary and sometimes, as in the case of Twain, comic wit. Instead of the romantic idealism of

Children Sleeping in Mulberry Street, 1890, Jacob Riis. For more information about this image, see the color insert in this volume.

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antebellum authors like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Gilded Age Amer i ca fostered a more mea sured and pragmatic way of looking at the world. The role of lit er a ture, in the words of Twain’s con temporary Ambrose Bierce, was to “cultivate a taste for the distasteful,” to “endeavor to see things as they are, not as they ought to be.”

Labels for literary and cultural periods offer a con ve nient shorthand for charac- terizing the complicated real ity of any cultural moment. We use them, usually with the bene"t of hindsight, to reduce the chaos of the past to some kind of narrative order. For most of the twentieth century, literary histories of the Gilded Age cele- brated American authors for their willingness to pres ent a series of increasingly dis- tasteful truths, particularly through novels depicting the excesses and foibles of the urban environments where new fortunes were being won and lost. Mark Twain, Henry James, Stephen Crane, Edith Wharton, and Theodore Dreiser— all authors included in this volume— were recognized as writers who advanced an aesthetic of “realism.” The editor and author William Dean Howells was identi"ed as the leading proponent of this movement, and literary historians carefully analyzed his advocacy in the pages of magazines like the Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s.

During the last three de cades, scholars of American lit er a ture have been con- cerned that this period in American lit er a ture has been too narrowly de"ned. They have noted that how one de"nes what is “real” depends on where one sits in society— and that the authors named above were largely located in the nation’s urban cen- ters, where they focused primarily on the lives of native- born whites. Scholars have also observed that editors like Howells were in fact interested in cultivating a wider variety of perspectives, including authors from regions across the United States, immigrant writers, and African American authors. If one of the roles of lit er a ture is to “see things as they are,” then our de"nition of lit er a ture could also expand beyond "ction and poetry to include other forms of writing— such as autobiography, sketches, and folk tales— that proliferated during this period. This volume— like every other volume of The Norton Anthology of American Lit er a ture— employs this broader def- inition of lit er a ture. In addition to "ction and poetry, the texts here include oratory, social commentary, and even a few works that were originally published in languages other than En glish.

Lit er a ture, though, does not merely show how things are. It amuses, provokes, cajoles, and inspires. Twain was one of the "ercest critics of his time, but he was also one of its "nest entertainers. His writing not only re`ected the world that sur- rounded him, but it also played a signi"cant role in shaping how his readers (including us) understand that world. The realism that `ourished between the Civil War and World War I raises as many questions about the purpose of lit er a ture as it answers. How should lit er a ture respond to the social prob lems of its time? How can language capture what is real? Who gets to decide what counts as realism and what counts as fantasy? How can lit er a ture help us to understand competing perspectives on real ity?

These questions remain as pertinent in our time as they were in Twain’s. Many of the changes sweeping through Twain’s world seem to foreshadow the strug gles of our own time. The period encompassing the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth witnessed an in`ux of immigrants to Amer i ca, questions about racial equality and racial vio lence, anxiety about shifting gender roles, and concerns about the accumulation and concentration of wealth. The distance between the late nineteenth century and the pres ent is substantial and the differences between that period and ours are signi"cant, but there are good reasons that some have called the early twenty- "rst century a “second Gilded Age.”

RECONSTRUCTING AMER I CA

The Civil War transformed the lives of the four million African Americans who obtained their freedom from slavery, but its costs were staggering. The combined death toll from the Union and Confederate armies equaled more than 620,000 soldiers—or about 2  percent of the total U.S. population. Historians have offered a conservative estimate of an additional 50,000 civilian casualties, mostly in areas that declared secession from the Union. Of those who survived battle, hundreds of thousands sustained injuries, and the "ghting obliterated "elds, factories, and homes in the war’s path. In the face of so much destruction and suffering, the rebuilding of the United States required more than simply repairing railroads and clearing away the debris of war. The reconstruction of Amer i ca also required a reimagination of what it meant to be an American.

In their quest to rebuild the United States, Americans in the post– Civil War era looked in a variety of directions for the resources needed for renewal: abroad, for immigrant populations that would provide the labor necessary for economic growth; to the west, where land, minerals, and other natu ral resources seemed to be abun- dant; and to the south, where the destruction left by the war created opportunities for entrepreneurial investors. Fi nally, by the turn of the twentieth century, Ameri- cans were looking to foreign lands in a new way, as the United States sought to claim its place on the world stage as an imperial power. What united these disparate ener- gies was a drive for material prosperity—an unquestioned belief in economic pro- gress. Signs of this creed were vis i ble in the New York mansions constructed on Fifth Ave nue; in the thrumming activity of the stockyards and market exchanges of Chi- cago; and in the new forms of leisure activities— amusement parks, dance halls, nickleodeons— that catered to working- class people who found they had some extra time and money to spend on plea sure.

But that prosperity came at a price. Though wages for blue- and white- collar work- ers rose during the late nineteenth century, the gains for laborers were far smaller than the fortunes being made and lost by the industrial cap i tal ists who seemed to control a larger and larger share of the American economy every year. The laissez- faire capitalism that generated such spectacular opportunities was also fraught with risk— and the nation endured the consequences of a series of "nancial panics and market crashes. Though the Homestead Act of 1862 promised free or cheap acre- age to every individual or family who would settle and “improve” land according to a set formula, much of the available land was donated to railroads to encourage their growth. The expansion of the railroad network was critical to the larger economic development of the United States, yet it meant that farmers found themselves at the mercy of the large corporations that transported their goods—an economic order that the writer Frank Norris characterized as a giant “octopus” that wielded its power across the land. In the end, large- scale farming took over from the family farm, increasing agricultural yields but forcing many farmers to join the swelling popula- tions of American cities.

The rapid urbanization of the United States in the late nineteenth century per- manently changed the cultural landscape of the nation. Between 1865 and the turn of the twentieth century, New York grew from a population of 500,000 to nearly 3.5 million. Chicago, with a population of only 29,000 in 1850, had more than 2 mil- lion inhabitants by 1910. Yet Upton Sinclair titled his great novel of Chicago life The Jungle (1906) for good reason. Urban workers often faced brutal, even danger- ous, conditions, and the late nineteenth century witnessed the rise of industrial labor movements. Americans were shocked when strikes turned violent in cities such as Pittsburgh and Chicago, though ultimately neither blue- collar laborers nor small farmers were fully successful in opposing the forces of capital. Until the regulations

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of the early twentieth century, legislators and other elected of"cials believed that the welfare of the nation required that the forces of capitalism remain unchecked. Kickbacks, bribes, and other forms of corruption further ensured that corporate and industrial interests were well- represented by politicians.

The growth of industry and the urbanization of the United States were fueled by unpre ce dented levels of immigration. In 1870, the U.S. population was 38.5 million; by 1910, 92 million; by 1920, 123 million. A large percentage of this increase came from the arrival of immigrants from southern and eastern Eu rope: Rus sia, Poland, Italy, and the Balkan nations. As much as these new Americans were crucial to the prosperity of the nation, they were also a source of anxiety, and the question of what it means to acquire an American identity is at the center of the "nal section of this volume, “Becoming American in the Gilded Age.” Throughout this period, native- born Americans, particularly whites, worried that the surge of immigrants would change the racial and religious character of the nation. From a very dif fer ent per- spective, immigrant writers like Abraham Cahan— a Jew `eeing the oppression of his native Belarus— told stories about newcomers to Amer i ca grappling with the demands of a new language and new customs, including in his novel Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto (1896), reprinted in full in this volume. After the turn of the twentieth century, Americans found a new meta phor to describe the experience of immigrants. The hero of Israel Zangwill’s play The Melting- Pot— "rst staged in the United States in 1909— proclaims: “Amer i ca is God’s Crucible, the great Melting- Pot where all the races of Eu rope are melting and reforming!”

Not every one, of course, wanted to melt or reform. For American Indians living in the western half of the continent, the expansion of the United States threatened their po liti cal and cultural autonomy. From the time of the earliest treaties with the United States, Native nations had agreed to cede large tracts of land with some ter- ritory speci"cally “reserved” for themselves. What we currently think of as Indian reservations came about as a result of President Ulysses S. Grant’s policies of the late 1860s, which sought— and mostly forced— the agreement of vari ous Native

Golden Spike Ceremony. Joining the tracks for the "rst transcontinental railroad, Promontory, Utah Territory, 1869.

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nations to limit themselves to lands designated by the federal government. In the 1880s, an organ ization of eastern philanthropists calling itself “Friends of the Indian” began to implement an agenda for assimilating Native Americans into the white mainstream. This organ ization meant well, but its methods inevitably devalued Native ways of life in favor of white schooling, white patterns of town settlement and agriculture, and above all white religion. Native writers such as Zitkala- Ša (Yankton Sioux), Francis LaFlesche (Omaha), and John Milton Oskison (Cherokee)— all in this volume— wrote about the effects of such efforts on their people. At the same time that government and missionary boarding schools were attempting to strip American Indians of their tribal cultures, the government was working to separate them from their land. In 1887, the U.S. Congress approved the Dawes Severalty Act, which set in motion a pro cess for dissolving the communal land holdings of tribal reservations and assigning smaller parcels of land to individual Indians. The Dawes Act fragmented the collectively held tribal lands and reduced the total Native land base by some ninety million acres before the policy was abandoned in 1934.

For most white Americans, the melting pot also excluded African Americans. Of all the social con`icts that animate the lit er a ture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, none matches the force or complexity of the continued subju- gation of black Americans during this period. After the surrender of the Confeder- acy, U.S. federal troops occupied its former states and attempted to make good on the promise of equality. Twelve years later, in 1877, that promise was abandoned as members of Congress worked out a deal that would break a deadlocked presidential election. In exchange for sending Rutherford B. Hayes, a Republican, to the White House, members of his party agreed that the federal government would withdraw soldiers from the South and appropriate funds for railroads and other infrastruc- ture needs there. In the years that followed, this po liti cal compromise would give way to a broader cultural consensus among white Americans. Reconciliation between North and South became of paramount importance, and white Americans would avoid reopening sectional wounds by ignoring the growing po liti cal and economic

Ellis Island. Staff interviewing new immigrants, c. 1910. From 1892 to 1954, New York’s Ellis Island was the gateway for millions of immigrants to the United States.

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disempowerment of African Americans in the former states of the Confederacy. In spite of the genuine pro gress that had occurred since the Civil War, African Americans often found themselves returning to the questions that had underlain that terrible con`ict. Speaking on “The Race Prob lem in Amer i ca” at the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, the famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass faced down a crowd of hecklers. “Men talk of the Negro prob lem,” he declaimed. “ There is no Negro prob lem. The prob lem is whether the American people have honesty enough, loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough to live up to their own Constitution.”

THE LITERARY MARKETPLACE

Douglass’s words remind us that for all that was new about post– Civil War Amer- i ca, there were also substantial continuities with what had come before. Writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Walt Whitman remained active and in`uential "gures into the 1880s and the 1890s. Emily Dickinson’s most productive years as a poet occurred during the Civil War, but she would not become widely known as a poet until the 1890s, when her verses were published in heavi ly edited versions. Herman Melville published three books of poetry in the 1870s and 1880s, and then composed the masterful novella Billy Budd, which remained unpublished until long after his death in 1891.

In spite of the in`uence of such writers in the years following the Civil War, many American writers of this era began to understand themselves as belonging to a dis- tinct generation. Indeed, the late nineteenth century was when scholars and critics began dividing the lit er a ture of the United States into distinct historical periods, seeking to create a coherent history of American writing. The turn of the twentieth century witnessed the publication of several in`uential anthologies of American lit er a ture— and even the "rst college courses on the subject. By that time, the realm of lit er a ture—of literary writing and reading— had under gone substantial changes. The post– Civil War de cades saw the United States create and import many features of the literary marketplace that we now take for granted: the standardization and proliferation of book reviewing; the circulation of best- seller lists; the growth, si mul- ta neously, of several classes of readers, including well- educated white- collar readers, middle- class readers who attended book clubs, and increasingly literate working classes who might encounter lit er a ture through newspapers or dime novels. The commercial realm governing both author and text changed in signi"cant ways, most crucially with the rati"cation of the International Copyright Act of 1891, a law supported by literary "gures such as Mark Twain and William Dean Howells. The act extended copyright protection to foreign writers in the United States and enabled American authors to receive the same protection abroad.

During this period, the center of the growing publishing industry migrated from New Eng land to New York, and commercial publishing became a more professional and specialized enterprise. As the American reading public grew, publishing houses increasingly focused on dif fer ent segments of the literary marketplace and devised new methods to excite publicity and increase sales. The turn of the twentieth century fostered the rise of literary celebrity in the United States, most obviously epito- mized by Mark Twain. Like later authors such as Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, and Gertrude Stein, Twain became a public "gure whose actions and words were reported regularly in newspapers and in the press, and he was arguably the most recognizable American in the world for several de cades.

The development of the railroads and the growth of urban markets both contrib- uted to the development of mass cultural expression in the post– Civil War United States. Readers of lit er a ture could purchase new works by subscribing to them, as

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one might subscribe to a magazine, or "nd them in the increasing number of lend- ing libraries—or they might encounter poems, short stories, and serialized novels in periodicals. Middle- and professional- class readers were the target audience of magazines such as the Atlantic, Century, and Harper’s— where they could "nd writers such as Henry James, Constance Fenimore Woolson, and Sarah Orne Jew- ett. In San Francisco, the Overland Monthly emerged as the leading western liter- ary periodical with a regional focus; it published Bret Harte, Ambrose Bierce, Sui Sin Far, and Mark Twain, among others. Abraham Cahan founded the Yiddish newspaper the Jewish Daily Forward in 1897, and Pauline E. Hopkins serialized her sensational novels in the Colored American Magazine, founded in 1900. As these examples suggest, new forms of cultural expression did not translate into a single, uni"ed reading public. For white nativists— who were worried about the increasing number of immigrants from eastern and southern Eu rope, as well as the in`uence of African Americans and Asian Americans— the vis i ble diversity of American lit er- a ture exacerbated their fears about the future of their country.

FORMS OF REALISM

Nowhere was the anxiety about the state of American lit er a ture and its relationship to the American populace more on display than in the debates about literary real- ism that tran spired in the last two de cades of the nineteenth century. Realism was (and is) a slippery term, one that could be applied to a variety of literary proj ects; most commonly, it was used to refer to literary "ction that was rooted in the obser- vation and documentation of the details of everyday life. American realists saw themselves as being in`uenced by the development of realist "ction in Britain and continental Eu rope; they looked to writers as diverse as George Eliot ( Eng land), Ivan Turgenev (Rus sia), and Henrik Ibsen (Norway). However, the author and editor Wil- liam Dean Howells contended that literary realism had a par tic u lar function in the demo cratic society of the United States. Howells held that by documenting the speech and manners of a wide variety of people— representing a diversity of social classes— literary realism could foster a shared demo cratic culture. “Democracy in lit er a ture . . . wishes to know and to tell the truth,” he wrote. At a time when Ameri- can society seemed on the verge of fracturing into divisions of class, race, and ethnicity, lit er a ture could help cultivate empathetic bonds that would hold it together. Howells continued, “Men are more alike than unlike one another: let us make them know one another better, that they may be all humbled and strengthened with a sense of their fraternity.”

A section of this volume pres ents several key arguments about realism and how it might be de"ned, including an example of the substantial criticism that Howells’s vision faced. Some critics believed that realism abandoned the moral purpose of art in favor of the vulgar and commonplace; others believed that realist "ction relied too much on dull observation instead of dramatic storytelling. In spite of this oppo- sition, Howells’s ideas set the agenda for the American literary establishment in his time. Indeed, this volume is "lled with writers that Howells encouraged, published, or reviewed favorably during his career. He was an early champion of his contempo- raries Henry James and Mark Twain— maintaining close ties with both writers for decades— and later promoted younger writers such as Stephen Crane, Abraham Cahan, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Charles Chesnutt (all represented in this anthol- ogy). These writers, he believed, would usher in an age in which the United States could stand on the world stage as an equal to other nations as a contributor to world letters.

The interest in forms of literary realism was especially welcoming of regional writing from throughout the United States. On a practical level, regional writing

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`ourished with the proliferation of mass magazines, for which short stories and sketches were ideal, and which catered to urban audiences with an interest in learn- ing about distant peoples and their cultures. By the end of the nineteenth century, virtually every region of the country had one or more “local colorists” dedicated to capturing its natu ral, social, and linguistic features. These works, such as Joel Chandler Harris’s plantation tales, could be suffused with nostalgia. In other cases, such as in the writing of Constance Fenimore Woolson and Charles Chesnutt about the South, or the Maine "ction of Sarah Orne Jewett, regional writers portrayed the stresses and complexities of par tic u lar locales under the pressure of tremendous change. Hamlin Garland, a vis i ble advocate of regional writing, depicted midwestern farmers coming to terms with harsh economic truths, and Mary Wilkins Freeman explored the effects of tradition on the lives of New Eng land women. The appetite for regional writing played a large role in launching the careers of writers from the American West. First published in 1865, Mark Twain’s tall tale from the California frontier, “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” remained his best known work for many years, and Bret Harte became a national "gure in 1868 with “The Luck of Roaring Camp,” a story that explores and exploits colorful myths of the West.

Literary realism and regionalism also in`uenced the way that writers portrayed the lives of racial and ethnic “ others”— nonwhites seen as dif fer ent from the major- ity of American readers. Both white and African American writers, for instance, depicted black characters as speaking in a vernacular that was distinct from the speech of their white characters, and they often took advantage of white interest in African American folk beliefs. Joel Chandler Harris’s “Wonderful Tar Baby Story” (1881), told by Uncle Remus, was im mensely popu lar, and the superstitions voiced by Jim in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) contributed to its suc- cess. Charles Chesnutt’s conjure tales offered a new take on the practice of present- ing African American traditions to white readers, one that allows the reader to see an African American storyteller as much less naïve in his engagement with white audiences. The interest in vernacular speech extended to poetry as well, as Paul Lau- rence Dunbar manipulated the rhythms of African American speech into some of the best- known verse of his time.

In their repre sen ta tions of African Americans, these authors sought to depict ways of speaking that were notably dif fer ent in vocabulary and pronunciation from the En glish spoken by their readers. To capture that difference, they represented Afri- can American voices in the form of a dialect— a variation of a language that is par- tic u lar to a group or region. For writers, putting dialect on the page involved changing the spelling and punctuation of characters’ dialogue so that it purported to match the spoken patterns of a par tic u lar race, class, or ethnicity. This practice of writing dialogue in the form of a dialect became common in the late nineteenth century, and it extended to the repre sen ta tion of all those thought to be outside the main- stream society of middle- to upper- class Anglo- Amer i ca. African Americans, recent immigrants, and the urban poor were all presented in lit er a ture as speaking a non- standard En glish. This vogue for dialect lit er a ture, which extended from newspaper sketches to literary novels, can make the writing of this period challenging for the twenty- "rst- century reader. But the dif"culty serves a purpose. For writers like Twain, Chesnutt, and others such as Abraham Cahan and Stephen Crane, transcrib- ing dialogue as nonstandard dialect was a means of representing the social dis- tances that existed among their characters— distances that could have results that were comic, tragic, or both—as well as the distance these writers presumed between their characters and their middle- class readers. Indeed, it could, in fact, be part of the purpose of a work of lit er a ture that readers must strug gle to understand speakers from racial or ethnic backgrounds dif fer ent from their own.

By the turn of the twentieth century, the literary interest in the traditions of “the folk” was vis i ble everywhere in American lit er a ture. When Kate Chopin sought an

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audience for her tales of rural Louisiana, she titled her volume Bayou Folk (1894). When W. E. B. Du Bois published his groundbreaking collection of essays about race and racism in the United States, he called the book The Souls of Black Folk (1903). During the "nal de cades of the nineteenth century, the publication of dialect lit er- a ture, folktales, and local- color sketches coincided with the rise and professional- ization of social sciences that were oriented toward the same materials. For Native Americans, the development of anthropology in the United States had par tic u lar sig- ni"cance. Even as American Indians were a target of assimilation campaigns to erase their languages, cultures, and religions, anthropologists were traveling the con- tinent attempting to document those very things. Sponsored both by the federal government and by universities, the anthropologists transcribed songs, stories, and ceremonials— collecting them on the page just as they collected physical artifacts for natu ral history museums. Native American authors such as Zitkala- Ša could "nd their way into print by producing their own versions of tribal stories, a practice that continues to this day. Just as impor tant, she and other Native writers reminded Americans that Indians would continue to persist outside of museums. The section of this volume on “Voices from Native Amer i ca” includes a variety of textual forms that presented Indian perspectives to non- Indians during this period.

In expanding the diversity of American writing, realism did not cure any of the social ills of the Gilded Age. However, the interest in realism allowed for a more

A Feast Day at Acoma, Edward S. Curtis, 1904. In 1892 Curtis (1868–1952) opened a studio in Washington Territory and began to photo graph local Indians. Curtis traveled widely, portraying Native people and scenes in an elegiac manner, attempting to document what he understood to be the last days of the “vanishing Indian.” What ever his intentions, A Feast Day at Acoma shows a bustling scene of Pueblo people in the Southwest.

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socially engaged lit er a ture, one in which the bound aries between "ction and non- "ction could become blurred. Looking back to the Civil War, Ambrose Bierce’s dark, violent tales of the con`ict and Twain’s comic “Private History of a Campaign That Failed” (1885) were both published alongside the more serious accounts of battles and generals; Constance Fenimore Woolson and Charles W. Chesnutt both wrote searing stories of Reconstruction at a time when the economic future of the South was a frequent topic of national discussion; and Booker  T. Washington’s Up from Slavery, published in 1901, offered a blueprint for African American uplift and was instantly recognized as a masterpiece of autobiography, only to meet with a sharp rejoinder two years later by W. E. B. Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folk—a mix of memoir, polemic, social science, and "ction. The turn of the twentieth century was a time of lively, even heated, argument about the future of the nation, and literary realism was an invitation for authors to dive into those debates rather than to turn away.

THE “ WOMAN QUESTION”

One such debate was about how the role of women in American life would be de"ned—or even whether it should be de"ned at all. In the post– Civil War era, females raised in middle- and professional- class homes had increasing access to sec- ondary and even higher education. They had access to new forms of mass entertain- ment, and urbanization offered new forms of cultural and po liti cal activity. The consumer culture of the late nineteenth century allowed women increasing oppor- tunity to assert their own wants and desires, and the decreasing price of magazines was coupled by an increase in the number of periodicals that sought a female read- ership.

During the last two de cades of the nineteenth century, women increasingly participated in social clubs of all kinds, a movement that facilitated the discussion among women of the cultural and po liti cal issues of the moment. Women’s clubs might invite speakers or select books for discussion, and the “clubwoman” could exert signi"cant in`uence in a community. While women’s clubs were often identi- "ed, in the popu lar press, with liberal attitudes about gender roles, they could also act as conservative forces— organized around traditional lines of class, religion, and race. Indeed, in the 1890s women formed separate national organ izations for white and African American women’s clubs. For immigrant and working- class com- munities, women’s clubs were an opportunity to discuss the challenges of urban environments. For African American women, clubs allowed members to share in an agenda of racial advancement and to achieve the middle- class respectability often denied them in their daily lives.

The “ Woman Question,” to use a common phrase from this period, was actually more than a single question; it was a host of issues related to education, participa- tion in the workforce, and the social in`uence of women on issues such as temper- ance. Although marriage and matrimony de"ned, in the popu lar imagination, the conventional roles for women of all classes, changes in the divorce laws during the 1890s fueled debates about female autonomy and the institution of marriage. The chief po liti cal issue identi"ed with women during this period was suffrage. Proponents of female suffrage were bitterly disappointed by the 1870 rati"cation of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which extended—at least in theory— the voting franchise to African American men but not to women of any race. Mem- bership in the National Woman Suffrage Association, founded in 1869, grew dramatically in the late nineteenth century. However, the question of voting rights also fostered racial and ethnic division throughout the period, as white, native- born women often raised their claims to the ballot by deriding the fact that others

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they deemed less worthy, including new immigrant and African American men, could vote. Black suffragists were often excluded from national events, and many formed their own suffrage organ izations.

The quest for female suffrage would not be complete until the rati"cation of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, but throughout the de cades between the Civil War and World War I, Americans had a sense that women were claiming new forms of autonomy. At such a time, even something as ordinary as a bicycle, increasingly popu lar in the late nineteenth century, could become a symbol of female emancipa- tion. (“It gives women a feeling of freedom and self- reliance,” Susan B. Anthony famously said.) The questions and anx i eties about the changing place of women in American culture reverberate throughout the texts in this volume of The Norton Anthology. By portraying an “American girl” attempting to navigate the world of lei- sure and desire, Henry James struck a nerve with the publication of Daisy Miller in 1879, and he returned to these themes throughout his long career as a novelist. In a dif fer ent vein, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall- paper”— a story that was quickly recognized as a classic when it was "rst published in 1892— depicts how the medical regime of the late nineteenth century attempted to contain the cre- ative energies of American women. Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899) and The- odore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie (1900), published within a year of one another, both feature protagonists who attempt to achieve autonomy and ful"ll their desires, with very dif fer ent outcomes. Edith Wharton’s short stories, such as “The Other Two” (1904), "nd comedy and pathos in an upper- class world in which divorce is increasingly common.

Female writers of color wrote about many of these same issues, but they also addressed the ways in which racism created a social landscape even more challeng- ing than that faced by their white counter parts. Ida B. Wells- Barnett’s accounts of lynching and other forms of anti- black vio lence revealed the cruelties that threat- ened the safety and well- being of all African Americans, male and female; in her autobiographical essays, Zitkala- Ša wrote about the pressures of assimilation brought to bear on Native Americans who sought an education; and Pauline Hopkins pub- lished sensational tales, like “Talma Gordon” (1900), that called into question the social "ctions that upheld racial in equality. Taken together, these works reveal that categories like “race” and “gender” could mean quite distinct things to writers at the turn of the twentieth century. What all of these authors share, though, is a sense that writing had a vital function to play in helping Americans to understand the complex prob lems of their time.

UNSEEN FORCES

As the century neared its close, Americans increasingly felt that their society was being shaped by unseen forces beyond their control. The industrialization of the United States created large corporations that seemed to obey their own laws; engi- neers were harnessing the power of electricity, bringing energy to cities that were growing faster than anything Americans had previously seen; in 1895, scientists dis- covered how to harness X- rays to penetrate the secrets of the body; and a communi- cations network that included telephones and telegraphs spread across the nation and the globe, delivering news at unpre ce dented speed. By the end of the "rst de cade of the twentieth century, an American could drive an automobile, see the `ickering image of a moving picture, and hear voices recorded on a phonograph— all won ders of a new age. Surrounded by the machinery and scienti"c advances on display at the Great Exposition in Paris in 1900, Henry Adams described himself as having “his historical neck broken by the sudden irruption of forces totally new.” For the sixty- two- year- old historian, the grand son and great- grand son of U.S. presidents, the turn

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of the twentieth century was a time of promise and peril, unleashing “occult, super- sensual, irrational” forces that exerted the same power in the modern world that the Christian cross had wielded in the Middle Ages.

One force that changed how many Americans understood the physical and social world was the emerging theory of evolution. In The Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871), Charles Darwin theorized that human beings had developed over the ages from nonhuman forms of life, successfully adapting to changing envi- ronmental conditions. Darwin, a naturalist, was not interested in the competition that took place among human socie ties, but in the 1860s the En glish phi los o pher Herbert Spencer began using the theory of natu ral se lection as a lens for understand- ing competition among people. Spencer coined the phrase “survival of the "ttest” to describe this pro cess, and Darwin even included it in later editions of The Origin of Species. Though relatively few Americans read Spencer himself— and even fewer actually read Darwin— ideas about evolution, natu ral se lection, and competition would shape American thought over the next half century. As it was most often invoked, evolution could describe a social world in which pro gress was achieved only through ruthless competition. Given the collateral damage caused by the dramatic booms and busts of the business cycle during the late nineteenth century, it is small won der that some of the leading American businessmen happily adopted this rhe- toric to describe the value of capitalism. Andrew Car ne gie, for example, argued that unrestrained competition was the equivalent of a law of nature designed to elimi- nate those un"t for the new economic order.

Darwinism could justify other forms of vio lence as well. Fear that the racial char- acter of the United States would be contaminated by Asian blood— and therefore rendered “un"t”— was one rationale offered for the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which prohibited immigration from China. White Americans believed that the forces of evolution destined American Indians to the margins of history, and this belief drove both the "nal nineteenth- century campaigns to eradicate Native military re sis- tance to the United States and the Americanization efforts of self- described “Friends of the Indian.” In the South, the language of social evolution and racial competition contributed to the violent suppression of African Americans, particularly African American men. White supremacists claimed that they were protecting the purity of white women and ensuring the future of the white race as they terrorized their black neighbors through the spectacle of lynching. In this distortion of Darwinian evolution, it was all too easy to understand any form of group vio lence as nothing more than the expression of natu ral law.

In the realm of lit er a ture, American authors at the end of the nineteenth century began to grapple more explic itly with the meaning of evolution and other social forces in the development of literary naturalism in the United States. Naturalism grew from, and overlapped with, literary realism, but there were key differences. Like Howells and his fellow realists, literary naturalists felt that they had an obligation to bring social con`ict to the page, but they found Howells and his followers too mild and too focused on the manners of the professional and upper classes. Naturalists thought that realism had left lit er a ture bloodless by failing to depict the genuine vio lence that they saw everywhere in the ruthless, modern world; they sought to explore how biology, environment, and other material forces shaped lives— particularly the lives of lower- class people, who had less control over their lives than those who were bet- ter off. Naturalism introduces characters from the fringes and depths of society, far from the middle class, whose lives really do spin out of control; their fates are seen to be the outcome of degenerate heredity, a sordid environment, and the bad luck that can often seem to control the lives of people without money or in`uence. The pro- tagonist of Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893) cannot escape the seamy vio lence of Manhattan’s Lower East Side; Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906) compares the working- class immigrants of Chicago’s meatpacking district to the pigs that they slaughter.

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Literary naturalists emphasized plot to a greater degree than did the realists of previous de cades. Their works engaged more deliberately with romance and myth, even when the result was to de`ate conventional notions of heroism, as in Crane’s Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage (1895). In the twentieth century, Jack London would take this romantic turn further with his adventure novels and stories— works that often returned to the theme of the bestial instincts that lay beneath civilization. In London’s highly popu lar The Call of the Wild (1903), the canine protagonist Buck is stolen from a California ranch and transported to Alaska, where he awakens to his primal memories of wild life and becomes transformed into the “Ghost Dog” of the wilderness. London later wrote White Fang (1906), a novel that reverses this movement by bringing a dog of the “savage, frozen- hearted North- land Wild” into the civilization and domesticity of the south. In both cases, the drama turns on a clash between the power of social environment and the primal force of instinct.

With their emphasis on men of action— whether in the gold "elds of Alaska or the stock exchanges of Chicago— the naturalist "ctions of London, Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser, and Upton Sinclair portrayed a world of masculine vio lence. (Even Jack London’s canine protagonists are male.) For de cades, some commentators in the United States had expressed concerns that “overcivilization,” thanks to the growth of professional and white- collar occupations, was leading to a kind of soft- ness among American men. This anxiety was shaped by the growing material pros- perity of the upper and professional classes, who increasingly worked in occupations that did not require physical strength, and it was also a response to the efforts by women to increase their cultural, economic, and po liti cal power. Throughout this period, cultural commentators spent considerable time and effort wringing their hands about what the `uctuating roles of men and women would mean for the future of American civilization.

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Race and Reconstruction. This 1876 cartoon by Thomas Nast (1840–1902) comments on the failure of the federal government to protect African Americans in the South. The caption reads, “Is this a republican form of government? Is this protecting life, liberty, or property? Is this equal protection of the laws?” Harper’s Weekly, September 2, 1876.

THE NEW AMERICAN EMPIRE

The increasing assertiveness of American women—or the “New Woman,” to use a phrase made popu lar in the 1890s— made it all the more imperative to shape Amer- ican manhood properly. One late- nineteenth- century movement, “muscular Chris tian ity,” attempted to merge physical and moral development through institu- tions like the Young Men’s Christian Association. Indeed, a central premise of the age was that white men could best prepare themselves for the Darwinian strug gle by becoming both mentally and physically "t. Theodore Roo se velt urged men to engage in the “strenuous life,” and he looked back on The Winning of the West (1889– 96)— the title of his four- volume history of American expansion—as a grand drama of heroism and sacri"ce. However, in the eyes of most white Americans, the West had already been “won” by the 1890s. The historian Frederick Jackson Turner declared in 1893 that the western frontier, which he regarded as crucial to the for- mation of Amer i ca’s demo cratic character, no longer existed.

Having completed the work of building a U.S. empire on the North American continent, Americans looked abroad. “Idleness and luxury have made men `abby,” a contributor to the North American Review observed in 1894, “and the man at the head of affairs [U.S. president Grover Cleveland] is beginning to ask seriously if a great war might not help them to pull themselves together.” When the United States went to war with Spain in 1898, Americans quickly embraced what Secretary of State John Hay called the “splendid little war” in Cuba, and Roo se velt or ga nized a volunteer regiment of “rough riders” that he could lead into combat. For those advocating impe- rial expansion, the Spanish– American War addressed several prob lems si mul ta- neously. It gave U.S. industry access to new markets, easing fears of “overproduction”; it gave the United States the chance to establish itself as a legitimate rival to Eu ro- pean imperial powers; and it created a new proving ground for American men. At the resolution of the con`ict in 1898, the nation had acquired new territories in Puerto Rico and the Philippines, and it would acquire the territory of Hawaii that same year. One ostensible cause of the con`ict was the American desire to secure Cuban in de pen dence, yet after Spain’s defeat the United States did not hurry to with- draw its troops. In effect, Cuba remained a U.S. protectorate for de cades. In 1892, the Cuban patriot José Martí had written a manifesto, “Our Amer i ca” (included in this volume), warning Latin Amer i ca of the “ giant” to their north. Martí lived in New York for more than a de cade, and he understood the imperial aspirations of his tem- porary home all too well.

In 1899, the Filipino in de pen dence movement began to revolt against the U.S. mil- itary forces occupying the islands, and the armed con`ict lasted for three years. Increasingly vocal critics founded the American Anti- Imperialist league. The anti- imperialists included "gures as diverse as the industrialist Andrew Car ne gie, the social worker Jane Addams, and the phi los o pher William James (Henry’s brother). As in any movement, participants’ motives varied. For some, the prospect of empire seemed in con`ict with the princi ple of self- determination that they believed to be a core American value; others were, less nobly, anxious about any territorial grab that could increase the number of nonwhites living under the American `ag. Wil- liam Dean Howells and Mark Twain were members of the Anti- Imperialist League, and both distrusted the exercise of military power and the rhe toric of patriotism that accompanied it. In his story “Editha” (1905), Howells depicts a young woman so cap- tivated by the romance of war that she sends her "ancé off to die in it— and suffers no regret, even after she encounters the scornful mother of the deceased. Twain, whose celebrity made his views especially newsworthy, penned several works oppos- ing military ventures abroad, including “The War Prayer,” a story so dark in its outlook that, after a magazine rejected it for publication in 1905, he left it unpublished in

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his own lifetime. Twain explained his decision in a letter to a friend: “None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth.”

With Twain’s passing in 1910, the generation of men and women who had lived through the American Civil War was passing too. By the early 1900s, the "rst stirrings of modernism were vis i ble: Henry James’s deep explorations of consciousness in his late novels anticipated the prose experiments of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce; in 1912 James Weldon Johnson would publish his Autobiography of an Ex- Colored Man, a novel that presages the "ction of the Harlem Re nais sance in its fascination with alienation and the bound aries of racial identity; and for many readers, the tight, ellip- tical verses of Emily Dickinson, "rst published in the 1890s, seem now to have more in common with the twentieth- century verse of poets like Hilda Doolittle or William Carlos Williams than with anything written in her own time. Indeed, many of the authors considered today to be signi"cant in`uences on American modernism— such as Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein— were already writing and publishing by the year of Twain’s death. Realism and naturalism, in other words, overlapped considerably with the artistic movements that would dominate the de cades following World War I. When the United States entered the Great War in 1917, its transformation into a global power became complete; as Eu rope imploded, the United States exerted po liti cal and cultural power far beyond what anyone might have imagined a half century earlier, when Amer i ca was coming to terms with the aftermath of its own terrible war.

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AMERICAN LIT ER A TURE 1865–1914

TEXTS CONTEXTS

1855 Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

1860–65 Emily Dickinson writes several hundred poems

1860 Short- lived Pony Express runs from Missouri to California

1861 South Carolina batteries "re on Fort Sumter, initiating the Civil War • Southern states secede from the Union and found the Confederate States of Amer i ca

1865 Walt Whitman, Drum- Taps 1865 Civil War ends • Reconstruction begins • Lincoln assassinated • Thirteenth Amendment rati"ed, prohibiting slavery

1867 Mark Twain, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches • Horatio Alger, Ragged Dick

1867 United States purchases Alaska from Rus sia • Jesse Chisholm maps out the Chisholm Trail, connecting Texas cattle ranches to railheads in Kansas City, Cheyenne, Dodge City, and Abilene

1868 Louisa May Alcott, Little Women 1868 Fourteenth Amendment passed, guaranteeing citizenship to all peoples born in the United States (exclusive of Native peoples) • Congress institutes eight- hour workday for federal employees • sweatshops, using mostly immigrant labor, begin to proliferate in cities

1869 First transcontinental railroad completed by construction crews composed largely of Chinese laborers • Susan B. Anthony elected president of American Equal Rights Association; Elizabeth Cady Stanton elected president of National Woman Suffrage Association

1870 Bret Harte, The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches

1870 Fifteenth Amendment, giving African American men the right to vote, rati"ed

1871 Indian Appropriation Act ends the practice of negotiating treaties with the tribes as sovereign nations

1872 Mark Twain, Roughing It 1872 Yellowstone, "rst U.S. national park, established

1873 Economic panic; "nancial depression lasts until 1879

1874 Women’s Christian Temperance Union founded in Cleveland • invention of barbed wire effectively ends the open range

1876 Charlot, “[He has "lled graves with our bones]”

1876 Custer’s regiment defeated by the Sioux and Cheyenne at Little Big Horn River, Montana • Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone

1877 Reconstruction ends • segregation- ist Jim Crow laws begin

1878 Henry James, Daisy Miller

Boldface titles indicate works in the anthology.

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TEXTS CONTEXTS

1879 Chief Joseph, “An Indian’s Views of Indian Affairs”

1879 Thomas Edison invents the electric lightbulb • female lawyers permitted to argue before Supreme Court

1880 Joel Chandler Harris, Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings • Constance Fenimore Woolson, Rodman the Keeper: Southern Sketches

1880–1910 Massive immigration from Eu rope

1881 Tuskegee Institute founded

1882 J. D. Rocke fel ler organizes Standard Oil Trust • Chinese Exclusion Act instituted

1883 Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus”

1884 Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

1884 Tailors’ strike in New York City brings national attention to sweatshops

1886 Statue of Liberty dedicated • Haymarket Square labor riot leaves eleven dead • American Federation of Labor or ga nized

1889 Theodore Roo se velt, The Winning of the West • Hamlin Garland, “ Under the Lion’s Paw” • Andrew Car ne gie, “The Gospel of Wealth”

1887 General Allotment Act or Dawes Act permits the president to divide tribally owned lands into individual allotments to be held in trust for twenty- "ve years, with “surplus” lands to be sold to non- Indians. This led the Indians to lose some 90 million acres of land by the time Dawes was repealed in 1934.

1890 Ambrose Bierce, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” • Emily Dickinson, Poems

1890 U.S. Bureau of the Census declares the “frontier” “to be closed.” There is no more “ free” or “unoccupied” land • Sitting Bull killed. Massacre of Big Foot’s Minneconjou band by federal troops at Wounded Knee Creek ends the Ghost Dance among the Sioux • Ellis Island Immigration Station opens

1891 José Martí, “Our Amer i ca” • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, “A New Eng land Nun”

1892 Anna Julia Cooper, A Voice from the South • Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wall- paper”

1893 Stephen Crane, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Frederick Jackson Turner, The Signi!cance of the Frontier

1893 World’s Columbian Exposition held in Chicago • economic panic and depression, set off by the collapse of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroads

1895 Crane, Black Riders and The Red Badge of Courage

1896 Paul Laurence Dunbar, Lyr ics of a Lowly Life • James Mooney publishes Ghost Dance Songs • Abraham Cahan, Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto • Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs

1896 Plessy v. Ferguson upholds segregated transportation

1897 Crane, The Open Boat and Other Tales of Adventure

1897–98 Klondike Gold Rush

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TEXTS CONTEXTS

1898 United States annexes Hawaii

1898–99 Spanish– American War

1899 Charles Chesnutt, The Conjure Woman and The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line • Kate Chopin, The Awakening • Frank Norris, McTeague

1900 Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie • Ida B. Wells- Barnett, Mob- Rule in New Orleans • Pauline Hopkins, Contending Forces • Francis LaFlesche, The Middle Five

1900 U.S. population exceeds seventy- "ve million

1901 Zitkala- Ša, Impressions of an Indian Childhood and The School Days of an Indian Girl • Norris, The Octopus • Jack London, “The Law of Life” • Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery

1901 J. P. Morgan founds U.S. Steel Corporation • "rst transatlantic radio • oil discovered in Spindletop, Texas

1903 W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk • London, The Call of the Wild

1903 Henry Ford founds Ford Motor Co. • Wright brothers make the "rst successful airplane `ight • The Great Train Robbery is "rst U.S. cinematic narrative

1904 Edith Wharton, “The Other Two” 1904 National Child Labor Committee formed

1905 William Dean Howells, “Editha” 1905 Industrial Workers of the World (the Wobblies) founded

1906 Upton Sinclair, The Jungle 1906 April 18: San Francisco earthquake and "re • dozens of African Americans killed in Atlanta race riots

1907 Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, privately printed

1908 Israel Zangwill’s “The Melting Pot” "rst performed

1909 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) founded

1910 Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull- House • Sui Sin Far, “Mrs. Spring Fragrance”

1910 Mexican Revolution

1912 James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex- Colored Man

1914 U.S. Marines invade and occupy Vera Cruz, Mexico • Panama Canal opens

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WALT WHITMAN 1819–1892

Walt Whitman revolutionized American poetry. Responding to Emerson’s call in “The Poet” (1842) for an American bard who would address all “the facts of the animal economy, sex, nutriment, gestation, birth,” he put the living, breath- ing, sexual body at the center of much of his poetry, challenging conventions of the day. Responding to Emerson’s call for a “metre- making argument,” he rejected tra- ditions of poetic scansion and elevated diction, improvising the form that has come to be known as free verse, while adopting a wide- ranging vocabulary opening new possibilities for poetic expression. A poet of democracy, Whitman celebrated the mystical, divine potential of the individual; a poet of the urban, he wrote about the sights, sounds, and energy of the modern metropolis. In his 1855 preface to Leaves of Grass, he declared that “the proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.” On the evidence of his enormous in`uence on later poets— Hart Crane, Langston Hughes, Robert Lowell, Allen Ginsberg, Cherrie Moraga, Adrienne Rich, and countless others, including Spain’s Federico García Lorca and Chile’s Pablo Neruda— Whitman not only was affec- tionately absorbed by his own country but remains a per sis tent presence in poetry throughout the world.

Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in West Hills, Long Island (New York), the second of eight surviving children of the Quakers Louisa Van Velsor and Walter Whitman. In 1823, Whitman’s father, a farmer turned carpenter, sought to take advantage of a building boom by moving the family to Brooklyn— then a town at the western and most urbanized part of Long Island. Whitman left school when he was eleven, and was soon employed in the printing of"ce of a newspaper; when his family moved east on Long Island in 1833, he remained in Brooklyn on his own. He began contributing pieces to newspapers in his midteens and spent "ve years teach- ing at country and small- town schools on Long Island, interrupting his teaching to start a newspaper of his own in 1838 and to work brie`y on another Long Island paper. By early 1840 he had started the series “Sun- Down Papers from the Desk of a School- Master” for the Jamaica, New York, Demo crat and was writing poems and "ction. One of his stories prophetically culminated with the dream of writing “a won- derful and ponderous book.”

Just before he turned twenty- one Whitman stopped teaching, moved to Manhattan, began work at the literary weekly New World, and soon became editor of a Manhattan daily, the Aurora. He also began a po liti cal career by speaking at Demo cratic rallies and writing for the Demo cratic Review, the foremost magazine of the Demo cratic Party. He exulted in the extremes of the city, where street- gang vio lence was coun- tered by the lectures of Emerson and where even a young editor could get to know the poet William Cullen Bryant, editor of the Eve ning Post. Fired from the Aurora, which publicly charged him with laziness, he wrote a temperance novel, Franklin Evans, or the Inebriate, for a one- issue extra of the New World late in 1842. After three years of vari ous literary and po liti cal jobs, he returned to Brooklyn in 1845, becoming a special contributor to the Long Island Star, assigned to Manhattan events, included theatrical and musical per for mances. All through the 1840s he attended operas on his journalist’s passes, and he would later say that without the “emotions, raptures, uplifts” of opera he could never have written Leaves of Grass. Just before he was twenty- seven he took over the editorship of the Brooklyn Ea gle,

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writing most of the literary reviews, which included books by Carlyle, Emerson, Melville, Fuller, and Goethe, among others. Like most Demo crats, he was able to justify the Mexican War (1846–48) by hailing the great American mission of “peo- pling the New World with a noble race.” Yet at the beginning of 1848 he was "red from the Ea gle because, like Bryant, he had become a Free- Soiler, opposed to the acquisition of more territory for slavery. Whitman served as a delegate to the Buf- falo Free- Soil convention and helped to found the Free- Soil newspaper the Brooklyn Freeman. Around this time he began writing poetry in a serious way, experimenting with form and prosody; he published several topical poems in 1850, including “Eu rope,” which would later appear in Leaves of Grass.

Whitman’s notebook fragments suggest that he began to invent the overall shape of his "rst volume of poetry during 1853–54. On May 15, 1855, he took out a copy- right for Leaves of Grass, and he spent the spring and early summer seeing his book through the press, prob ably setting some of the type himself. Published in Brook- lyn, New York, during the "rst week of July, the volume, bound in dark green cloth with a sprig of grass in gilt on the cover, contained twelve untitled poems (including the initial version of “Song of Myself”), along with an exuberant preface declaring his ambition to be the American bard. In the image of Whitman on the book’s fron- tispiece, which was based on an 1854 daguerreotype, the bearded Whitman— rejecting the conventional suit jacket, buttoned-up shirt, and high collar of the formal studio portrait— stands with one arm akimbo, one hand in a pocket, workingman’s hat on slightly cocked head, shirt unbuttoned at the collar, looking directly at the reader. (See the image on the following page for a reproduction of the frontispiece.) The image, like the poetry itself, de"ed convention by aligning the poet with working people. The poems, with their absence of standard verse and stanza patterns (although strongly rhythmic and controlled by numerous poetic devices of repetition and vari- ation), also introduced his use of “catalogs”— journalistic and encyclopedic listings— that were to become a hallmark of his style. Whitman sent out numerous pre sen ta tion and review copies of his book, receiving an immediate response from Emerson, who greeted him “at the beginning of a great career.” As weeks passed, Whitman chose to publish a few anonymous reviews himself, praising Leaves of Grass in the American Phrenological Journal, for instance, as one of “the most glorious triumphs, in the known history of lit er a ture.” In October he let Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune print Emerson’s private letter of praise, and he put clippings of the letter in pre sen ta tion copies to Longfellow, among others. Emerson termed Whitman’s appro- priation of the letter “a strange, rude thing,” but he remained interested in meeting the poet. While Whitman was angling for reviews in Eng land and working on expanding his book, Emerson visited him in December of 1855. Thoreau, who admired Leaves of Grass but found several of its poems “simply sensual,” visited him in 1856. That year also saw the appearance of the second edition of Leaves of Grass, now with thirty- three poems, including “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” under its initial title, “Sundown Poem.”

Returning to miscellaneous journalism, Whitman edited the Brooklyn Times from 1857 to 1859 and published several pieces in the Times af"rming his Free- Soiler hopes for a continued national expansion into the western territories that would not entail the expansion of slavery. In the third (1860) edition of Leaves of Grass, Whit- man began to group his poems thematically. For a section called “Enfans d’Adam,” later retitled “ Children of Adam,” he wrote "fteen poems focused on what he termed the “amative” love of man for woman, in contrast to the “adhesive” love of man for man. Adhesive love "gured in forty- "ve poems in a section titled “Calamus.” These two sections in the 1860 edition differ from the sections in the "nal 1891–92 edition, for in the intervening editions (1867, 1871, 1881) Whitman revised and regrouped some of the poems, as he would with numerous other poems in the expanded edi- tions he would go on to publish.

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With the outbreak of the Civil War, Whitman began to visit the wounded and eventually offered his ser vices as a nurse. He started at New- York Hospital; but in early 1863, after visiting with his wounded brother George in an army camp in Virginia, he moved to Washington, D.C., and began to work at the huge open- air military hospitals there. Nursing gave Whitman a profound sense of vocation. As he wrote a friend in 1863: “I am very happy . . . I was never so beloved. I am running over with health, fat, red & sunburnt in face. I tell thee I am just the one to go to our sick boys.” But ministering to tens of thousands of maimed and dying young men took its toll. He succinctly voiced his anguish in a notebook entry of 1864: “the dead, the dead, the dead, our dead.” During this time he worked on a series of poems that conveyed his evolving view of the war from heroic cele bration to despair at the horrifying carnage. He later wrote a chapter in his prose work Specimen Days (1882) titled “The Real War Will Never Get in the Books”; but incorporating the “real war” into a book of poetry became one of the dominant impulses of the Drum- Taps col- lection, which he published in 1865. After Lincoln’s assassination, Whitman reis- sued the volume with a sequel including “O Captain! My Captain!” and “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” his famous elegy for the murdered president.

As he prepared Drum- Taps and Sequel for publication in late 1865, Whitman was also revising Leaves of Grass at his desk in the Department of the Interior, where he had obtained a position as clerk. The new secretary of the interior, James Harlan, read the annotated copy and "red Whitman for writing an obscene book, objecting to Whitman’s frankness about bodily functions and heterosexual love. Whitman’s friend, the poet William O’Connor, found him another clerical position in the attor- ney general’s of"ce; and in his rage at the "ring O’Connor wrote The Good Gray Poet (1866), identifying Whitman with Jesus and Harlan with the forces of evil. Whitman continued to rework Leaves of Grass, incorporating Drum- Taps into it in

Leaves of Grass. Frontispiece and title page of the "rst edition.

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1867, and with his friends’ help continued to propagandize for its recognition as a landmark in the history of poetry. He also published essays in a number of 1867 and  1868 issues of the New York periodical Galaxy, which he expanded into Demo cratic Vistas (1870), a book conveying his sometimes sharply condemnatory appraisal of postwar demo cratic culture.

The Washington years came to an abrupt end in 1873 when Whitman suffered a paralytic stroke. His mother died a few months later, and Whitman joined his brother George’s house hold in Camden, New Jersey, to recuperate. During the second year of his illness, the government ceased to hold his clerk job open for him, and he became dependent for a living on occasional publication in newspapers and maga- zines. The 1867 edition of Leaves of Grass had involved much reworking and rear- rangement, and the "fth edition (1871) continued that pro cess, adding a new section titled “Passage to India.” In 1876 Whitman privately published a prose work, Memo- randa during the War, and six years later he brought out Specimen Days, which has af"nities with his early editorial accounts of strolls through the city but is even more intensely personal, the rec ord of representative days in the life of a poet who had lived in the midst of great national events.

During the 1870s and early 1880s, Whitman was increasingly noticed by the lead- ing writers of the time, especially in Eng land. The En glish poet Algernon Swin- burne sent him a poem; the poet laureate of Great Britain, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, sent him an admiring letter; and both Longfellow and Oscar Wilde visited him in Camden. In the United States, writers of a younger generation than Whitman’s own began to recognize his importance as a poetic voice and or ga nized events to support him. Despite his frail health, Whitman lectured on Thomas Paine in Philadelphia in 1877 and on Abraham Lincoln in New York in 1879 (he would continue to deliver public lectures on Lincoln until 1890). Opposition to his poetry because of its sup- posed immorality began to dissipate, and readers, having become accustomed over time to Whitman’s poetic devices, began to recognize the poet as an artist. Still, in 1881, when the reputable Boston "rm of James R. Osgood & Com pany printed the sixth edition of Leaves of Grass, the Boston district attorney threatened to prosecute on the grounds of obscenity. Ironically, when the Philadelphia "rm of Rees Welsh and Com pany reprinted this edition in 1882, the publicity contributed to Whitman’s greatest sales in his lifetime: he earned nearly $1,500 in royalties from that edition (around $25,000 in today’s value), compared to the $25 he had earned from the Osgood edition before the publisher withdrew it.

In 1884, the still in"rm Whitman moved to a cottage at 328 Mickle Street in Cam- den, which he purchased for $1,750. A year later friends and admirers, including Mark Twain and John Greenleaf Whittier, presented him with a horse and buggy for local travel. He had another stroke in 1888 and in 1890 made preparations for his death by signing a $4,000 contract for the construction in Camden’s Harleigh Cemetery of a granite mausoleum, or what he termed a “burial house,” suitable for a national bard. In 1891 he did the "nal editing of Complete Prose Works (1892) and oversaw the preparations of the “deathbed” edition of the now more than three hun- dred poems in Leaves of Grass (1891–92), which was in fact a reissue of the 1881 edition with the addition of two later groups of poems, “Sands at Seventy” and “Good- bye My Fancy.” Whitman died at Camden on March 26, 1892, and was buried in Harleigh Cemetery in the mausoleum he had helped design.

All of the Whitman poems reprinted here, regardless of when they were "rst com- posed and printed, are given in their "nal form: that of the 1891–92 edition of Leaves of Grass.

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1. In the 1855 "rst edition of Leaves of Grass, the poem later called “Song of Myself ” appeared without a title and without numbered subdivi- sions or stanzas. For the 1856 edition, Whitman titled it “Poem of Walt Whitman, an American,” and in the 1860 edition he titled it “Walt Whit-

man”; it retained that title in the 1867 and 1871 editions, and in the 1881 edition was named “Song of Myself.” Whitman made numerous other changes in the poem from the "rst 1855 printing to the 1881 "nal version.

Song of Myself1

1

I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. 5

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air, Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents

the same, I, now thirty- seven years old in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance, 10 Retiring back a while suf"ced at what they are, but never forgotten, I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, Nature without check with original energy.

2

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes,

I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it, 15 The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless,

It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it, I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked, I am mad for it to be in contact with me. 20

The smoke of my own breath, Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love- root, silk- thread, crotch and vine, My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of

blood and air through my lungs, The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark- color’d

sea- rocks, and of hay in the barn, The sound of the belch’d words of my voice loos’d to the eddies of the

wind, 25 A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms, The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,

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2. Cross- braced; reinforced.

The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the "elds and hill- sides,

The feeling of health, the full- noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun.

Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much? 30

Have you practis’d so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, ( there are millions of suns

left,) You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through

the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books, 35 You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and "lter them from your self.

3

I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end,

But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

There was never any more inception than there is now, 40 Nor any more youth or age than there is now, And will never be any more perfection than there is now, Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now. Urge and urge and urge, Always the procreant urge of the world. 45

Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and increase, always sex,

Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of life.

To elaborate is no avail, learn’d and unlearn’d feel that it is so.

Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well entretied,2 braced in the beams,

Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical, 50 I and this mystery here we stand.

Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.

Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen, Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.

Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age, 55 Knowing the perfect "tness and equanimity of things, while they discuss I

am silent, and go bathe and admire myself.

3. Calculate.

Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean,

Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be less familiar than the rest.

I am satis"ed— I see, dance, laugh, sing; As the hugging and loving bed- fellow sleeps at my side through the night,

and withdraws at the peep of the day with stealthy tread, 60 Leaving me baskets cover’d with white towels swelling the house with their

plenty, Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my eyes, That they turn from gazing after and down the road, And forthwith cipher3 and show me to a cent, Exactly the value of one and exactly the value of two, and which is

ahead? 65

4

Trippers and askers surround me, People I meet, the effect upon me of my early life or the ward and city I live

in, or the nation, The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, socie ties, authors old and new, My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues, The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love, 70 The sickness of one of my folks or of myself, or ill- doing or loss or lack of

money, or depressions or exaltations, Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news, the "tful

events; These come to me days and nights and go from me again, But they are not the Me myself.

Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am, 75 Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary, Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest, Looking with side- curved head curious what will come next, Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.

Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with linguists and contenders, 80

I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait.

5

I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you, And you must not be abased to the other.

Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat, Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the

best, 85 Only the lull I like, the hum of your valvèd voice.

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4. A basic structural unit; a reinforcing timber bolted to the keel (backbone) of a ship. 5. Fence built of interlocking rails in a zigzag pattern. 6. From the African word cuffee (name for a black

male born on a Friday). “Kanuck”: French Cana- dian (now sometimes considered pejorative). “Tuckahoe”: Virginian, from eaters of the tucka- hoe, an American Indian food plant.

I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning, How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn’d over upon me, And parted the shirt from my bosom- bone, and plunged your tongue

to my bare- stript heart, And reach’d till you felt my beard, and reach’d till you held my feet. 90

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth,

And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own, And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own, And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my

sisters and lovers, And that a kelson4 of the creation is love, 95 And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the "elds, And brown ants in the little wells beneath them, And mossy scabs of the worm fence,5 heap’d stones, elder, mullein and

poke- weed.

6

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than

he. 100 I guess it must be the `ag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff

woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt, Bearing the own er’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and

remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation. 105

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones, Growing among black folks as among white, Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff,6 I give them the same, I receive

them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves. 110

Tenderly will I use you curling grass, It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men, It may be if I had known them I would have loved them, It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their

mothers’ laps, And here you are the mothers’ laps. 115

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers, Darker than the colorless beards of old men, Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues, And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing. 120

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women, And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out

of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men? And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere, 125 The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to

arrest it, And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is dif fer ent from what any one supposed, and luckier. 130

7

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

I pass death with the dying and birth with the new- wash’d babe, and am not contain’d between my hat and boots,

And peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good, The earth good and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good. 135

I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth, I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and

fathomless as myself, (They do not know how immortal, but I know.)

Every kind for itself and its own, for me mine male and female, For me those that have been boys and that love women, 140 For me the man that is proud and feels how it stings to be slighted, For me the sweet- heart and the old maid, for me mothers and the mothers

of mothers, For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears, For me children and the begetters of children.

Undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded, 145 I see through the broadcloth and gingham whether or no, And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and cannot be shaken

away.

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8

The little one sleeps in its cradle, I lift the gauze and look a long time, and silently brush away `ies with my

hand.

The youngster and the red- faced girl turn aside up the bushy hill, 150 I peeringly view them from the top.

The suicide sprawls on the bloody `oor of the bedroom, I witness the corpse with its dabbled hair, I note where the pistol has

fallen.

The blab of the pave, tires of carts, sluff of boot- soles, talk of the promenaders,

The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb, the clank of the shod horses on the granite `oor, 155

The snow- sleighs, clinking, shouted jokes, pelts of snow- balls, The hurrahs for popu lar favorites, the fury of rous’d mobs, The `ap of the curtain’d litter, a sick man inside borne to the hospital, The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall, The excited crowd, the policeman with his star quickly working his passage

to the centre of the crowd, 160 The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes, What groans of over- fed or half- starv’d who fall sunstruck or in "ts, What exclamations of women taken suddenly who hurry home and give

birth to babes, What living and buried speech is always vibrating here, what howls

restrain’d by decorum, Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made, ac cep tances,

rejections with convex lips, 165 I mind them or the show or resonance of them— I come and I depart.

9

The big doors of the country barn stand open and ready, The dried grass of the harvest- time loads the slow- drawn wagon, The clear light plays on the brown gray and green intertinged, The armfuls are pack’d to the sagging mow. 170

I am there, I help, I came stretch’d atop of the load, I felt its soft jolts, one leg reclined on the other, I jump from the cross- beams and sieze the clover and timothy, And roll head over heels and tangle my hair full of wisps.

10

Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt, 175 Wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee, In the late after noon choosing a safe spot to pass the night, Kindling a "re and broiling the fresh- kill’d game, Falling asleep on the gather’d leaves with my dog and gun by my side.

7. Limping or swaying.

The Yankee clipper is under her sky- sails, she cuts the sparkle and scud, 180 My eyes settle the land, I bend at her prow or shout joyously from the deck.

The boatmen and clam- diggers arose early and stopt for me, I tuck’d my trowser- ends in my boots and went and had a good time; You should have been with us that day round the chowder- kettle.

I saw the marriage of the trapper in the open air in the far west, the bride was a red girl, 185

Her father and his friends sat near cross- legged and dumbly smoking, they had moccasins to their feet and large thick blankets hanging from their shoulders,

On a bank lounged the trapper, he was drest mostly in skins, his luxuriant beard and curls protected his neck, he held his bride by the hand,

She had long eyelashes, her head was bare, her coarse straight locks descended upon her voluptuous limbs and reach’d to her feet.

The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside, I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile, 190 Through the swung half- door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy7 and weak, And went where he sat on a log and led him in and assured him, And brought water and "ll’d a tub for his sweated body and bruis’d feet, And gave him a room that enter’d from my own, and gave him some

coarse clean clothes, And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness, 195 And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles; He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and pass’d north, I had him sit next me at table, my "re- lock lean’d in the corner.

11

Twenty- eight young men bathe by the shore, Twenty- eight young men and all so friendly; 200 Twenty- eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome.

She owns the "ne house by the rise of the bank, She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the win dow.

Which of the young men does she like the best? Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her. 205

Where are you off to, lady? for I see you, You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.

Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty- ninth bather, The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.

The beards of the young men glisten’d with wet, it ran from their long hair, 210

Little streams pass’d over their bodies.

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8. Dances familiar in popu lar entertainment and minstrelsy. The “shuf`e” involves the sliding of feet across the `oor, and the “break- down” is faster and noisier.

9. Long, heavy timber used to keep a load in place. 1. Twisting. 2. Smaller.

An unseen hand also pass’d over their bodies, It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.

The young men `oat on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them,

They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch, 215

They do not think whom they souse with spray.

12

The butcher- boy puts off his killing- clothes, or sharpens his knife at the stall in the market,

I loiter enjoying his repartee and his shuf`e and break- down.8

Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil, Each has his main- sledge, they are all out, there is a great heat in the

"re. 220 From the cinder- strew’d threshold I follow their movements, The lithe sheer of their waists plays even with their massive arms, Overhand the hammers swing, overhand so slow, overhand so sure, They do not hasten, each man hits in his place.

13

The negro holds "rmly the reins of his four horses, the block swags under neath on its tied- over chain, 225

The negro that drives the long dray of the stone- yard, steady and tall he stands pois’d on one leg on the string- piece,9

His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast and loosens over his hip- band,

His glance is calm and commanding, he tosses the slouch of his hat away from his forehead,

The sun falls on his crispy hair and mustache, falls on the black of his polish’d and perfect limbs.

I behold the picturesque giant and love him, and I do not stop there, 230 I go with the team also.

In me the caresser of life wherever moving, backward as well as forward sluing,1

To niches aside and ju nior2 bending, not a person or object missing, Absorbing all to myself and for this song.

Oxen that rattle the yoke and chain or halt in the leafy shade, what is that you express in your eyes? 235

It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.

3. Written notes of the scale. 4. The extended spoke of the pi lot wheel, used to maintain leverage during storms.

My tread scares the wood- drake and wood- duck on my distant and day- long ramble.

They rise together, they slowly circle around.

I believe in those wing’d purposes, And acknowledge red, yellow, white, playing within me, 240 And consider green and violet and the tufted crown intentional, And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something else, And the jay in the woods never studied the gamut,3 yet trills pretty well to

me, And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me.

14

The wild gander leads his `ock through the cool night, 245 Ya- honk he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation, The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listening close, Find its purpose and place up there toward the wintry sky. The sharp- hoof’d moose of the north, the cat on the house- sill, the

chickadee, the prairie- dog, The litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats, 250 The brood of the turkey- hen and she with her half- spread wings, I see in them and myself the same old law. The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections, They scorn the best I can do to relate them.

I am enamour’d of growing out- doors, 255 Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods, Of the builders and steerers of ships and the wielders of axes and mauls,

and the drivers of horses, I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out.

What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me, Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns, 260 Adorning myself to bestow myself on the "rst that will take me, Not asking the sky to come down to my good will, Scattering it freely forever.

15

The pure contralto sings in the organ loft, The carpenter dresses his plank, the tongue of his foreplane whistles its

wild ascending lisp, 265 The married and unmarried children ride home to their Thanksgiving

dinner, The pi lot seizes the king- pin,4 he heaves down with a strong arm, The mate stands braced in the whale- boat, lance and harpoon are ready, The duck- shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches, The deacons are ordain’d with cross’d hands at the altar, 270

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5. Sunday. Whitman frequently uses the numerical Quaker designations for the names of days and months. “Bars”: i.e., of a rail fence. 6.  I.e., a journeyman printer, or one who has passed an apprenticeship and is fully quali"ed for all professional work. 7. Term used at the time (often in reference to

slaves) to refer to light- complected people thought to be one- fourth black. 8. Black slaves (with ste reo typical emphasis on “woolly” hair). 9. Inhabitant of Michigan. 1. Man building or repairing streets.

The spinning- girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel, The farmer stops by the bars as he walks on a First- day5 loafe and looks at

the oats and rye, The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a con"rm’d case, (He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother’s

bed- room;) The jour printer6 with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case, 275 He turns his quid of tobacco while his eyes blurr with the manuscript; The malform’d limbs are tied to the surgeon’s table, What is removed drops horribly in a pail; The quadroon7 girl is sold at the auction- stand, the drunkard nods by the

bar- room stove, The machinist rolls up his sleeves, the policeman travels his beat, the gate-

keeper marks who pass, 280 The young fellow drives the express- wagon, (I love him, though I do not

know him;) The half- breed straps on his light boots to compete in the race, The western turkey- shooting draws old and young, some lean on their

ri`es, some sit on logs, Out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his position, levels his

piece; The groups of newly- come immigrants cover the wharf or levee, 285 As the woolly- pates8 hoe in the sugar- "eld, the overseer views them from

his saddle, The bugle calls in the ball- room, the gentlemen run for their partners, the

dancers bow to each other, The youth lies awake in the cedar- roof’d garret and harks to the musical

rain, The Wolverine9 sets traps on the creek that helps "ll the Huron, The squaw wrapt in her yellow- hemm’d cloth is offering moccasins and

bead- bags for sale, 290 The connoisseur peers along the exhibition- gallery with half- shut eyes bent

sideways, As the deck- hands make fast the steamboat the plank is thrown for the

shore- going passengers, The young sister holds out the skein while the elder sister winds it off in a

ball, and stops now and then for the knots, The one- year wife is recovering and happy having a week ago borne her

"rst child, The clean- hair’d Yankee girl works with her sewing- machine or in the

factory or mill, 295 The paving- man1 leans on his two- handed rammer, the reporter’s lead `ies

swiftly over the note- book, the sign- painter is lettering with blue and gold,

2. I.e., the Fourth of July. 3. Georgia rivers.

The canal boy trots on the tow- path, the book- keeper counts at his desk, the shoemaker waxes his thread,

The conductor beats time for the band and all the performers follow him, The child is baptized, the convert is making his "rst professions, The regatta is spread on the bay, the race is begun, (how the white sails

sparkle!) 300 The drover watching his drove sings out to them that would stray, The pedler sweats with his pack on his back, (the purchaser higgling about

the odd cent;) The bride unrumples her white dress, the minute- hand of the clock moves

slowly, The opium- eater reclines with rigid head and just- open’d lips, The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy and

pimpled neck, 305 The crowd laugh at her blackguard oaths, the men jeer and wink to each

other, (Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths nor jeer you;) The President holding a cabinet council is surrounded by the great

Secretaries, On the piazza walk three matrons stately and friendly with twined arms, The crew of the "sh- smack pack repeated layers of halibut in the hold, 310 The Missourian crosses the plains toting his wares and his cattle, As the fare- collector goes through the train he gives notice by the jingling

of loose change, The `oor- men are laying the `oor, the tinners are tinning the roof, the

masons are calling for mortar, In single "le each shouldering his hod pass onward the laborers; Seasons pursuing each other the indescribable crowd is gather’d, it is the

fourth of Seventh- month,2 (what salutes of cannon and small arms!) 315 Seasons pursuing each other the plougher ploughs, the mower mows, and

the winter- grain falls in the ground; Off on the lakes the pike- "sher watches and waits by the hole in the frozen

surface, The stumps stand thick round the clearing, the squatter strikes deep with

his axe, Flatboatmen make fast towards dusk near the cotton- wood or pecan- trees, Coon- seekers go through the regions of the Red river or through those

drain’d by the Tennessee, or through those of the Arkansas, 320 Torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chattahooch or Altamahaw,3 Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grand sons and great- grand sons

around them, In walls of adobie, in canvas tents, rest hunters and trappers after their

day’s sport, The city sleeps and the country sleeps, The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time, 325 The old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps by his

wife; And these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them, And such as it is to be of these more or less I am, And of these one and all I weave the song of myself.

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4. River in central Georgia. 5. River in Nebraska. 6. Inhabitants of Indiana, Wisconsin, and Ohio,

respectively. 7. Canadian.

16

I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise, 330 Regardless of others, ever regardful of others, Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man, Stuff’d with the stuff that is coarse and stuff’d with the stuff that is "ne, One of the Nation of many nations, the smallest the same and the largest

the same, A Southerner soon as a Northerner, a planter nonchalant and hospitable

down by the Oconee4 I live, 335 A Yankee bound my own way ready for trade, my joints the limberest joints

on earth and the sternest joints on earth, A Kentuckian walking the vale of the Elkhorn5 in my deer- skin leggings, a

Louisianian or Georgian, A boatman over lakes or bays or along coasts, a Hoosier, Badger, Buckeye;6 At home on Kanadian7 snow- shoes or up in the bush, or with "shermen off

Newfoundland, At home in the `eet of ice- boats, sailing with the rest and tacking, 340 At home on the hills of Vermont or in the woods of Maine, or the Texan

ranch, Comrade of Californians, comrade of free North- Westerners, (loving their

big proportions,) Comrade of raftsmen and coalmen, comrade of all who shake hands and

welcome to drink and meat, A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfullest, A novice beginning yet experient of myriads of seasons, 345 Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion, A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker, Prisoner, fancy- man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest.

I resist any thing better than my own diversity, Breathe the air but leave plenty after me, 350 And am not stuck up, and am in my place.

(The moth and the "sh- eggs are in their place, The bright suns I see and the dark suns I cannot see are in their place, The palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its place.)

17

These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me, 355

If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to nothing, If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing, If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.

This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is, This the common air that bathes the globe. 360

8. Mouthpieces of musical instruments such as the cornet.

9. Someone af`icted with a venereal (sexually transmitted) disease.

18

With music strong I come, with my cornets and my drums, I play not marches for accepted victors only, I play marches for conquer’d

and slain persons.

Have you heard that it was good to gain the day? I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they

are won.

I beat and pound for the dead, 365 I blow through my embouchures8 my loudest and gayest for them.

Vivas to those who have fail’d! And to those whose war- vessels sank in the sea! And to those themselves who sank in the sea! And to all generals that lost engagements, and all overcome heroes! 370 And the numberless unknown heroes equal to the greatest heroes known!

19

This is the meal equally set, this the meat for natu ral hunger, It is for the wicked just the same as the righ teous, I make appointments

with all, I will not have a single person slighted or left away, The kept- woman, sponger, thief, are hereby invited, 375 The heavy- lipp’d slave is invited, the venerealee9 is invited; There shall be no difference between them and the rest.

This is the press of a bashful hand, this the `oat and odor of hair, This is the touch of my lips to yours, this the murmur of yearning, This the far- off depth and height re`ecting my own face, 380 This the thoughtful merge of myself, and the outlet again.

Do you guess I have some intricate purpose? Well I have, for the Fourth- month showers have, and the mica on the side

of a rock has.

Do you take it I would astonish? Does the daylight astonish? does the early redstart twittering through the

woods? 385 Do I astonish more than they?

This hour I tell things in con"dence, I might not tell every body, but I will tell you.

20

Who goes there? hankering, gross, mystical, nude; How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat? 390

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1. Those remote in relationship, such as “third cousin, fourth removed.” “Fold with powders”: a reference to the custom of wrapping a dose of medicine in a piece of paper. 2. The seed or grain of barley, but also a unit of mea sure equal to about one- third inch. 3. Or curlicue, a fancy `ourish made with a

writing implement, here made in the dark with a lighted stick. 4. Carpenter’s terms for a par tic u lar way of join- ing two boards together. A mortise is a cavity in a piece of wood into which is placed the projection (tenon) from another piece of wood.

What is a man anyhow? what am I? what are you?

All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own, Else it were time lost listening to me.

I do not snivel that snivel the world over, That months are vacuums and the ground but wallow and "lth. 395

Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for invalids, conformity goes to the fourth- remov’d,1

I wear my hat as I please indoors or out. Why should I pray? why should I venerate and be ceremonious?

Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair, counsel’d with doctors and calculated close,

I "nd no sweeter fat than sticks to my bones. 400

In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barley- corn2 less, And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them.

I know I am solid and sound, To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually `ow, All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means. 405

I know I am deathless, I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter’s compass, I know I shall not pass like a child’s carlacue3 cut with a burnt stick at

night.

I know I am august, I do not trou ble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood, 410 I see that the elementary laws never apologize, (I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by, after all.)

I exist as I am, that is enough, If no other in the world be aware I sit content, And if each and all be aware I sit content. 415

One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself, And whether I come to my own to- day or in ten thousand or ten million

years, I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.

My foothold is tenon’d and mortis’d4 in granite, I laugh at what you call dissolution, 420 And I know the amplitude of time.

21

I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul, The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me, The "rst I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate into a new

tongue.

I am the poet of the woman the same as the man, 425 And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man, And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men. I chant the chant of dilation or pride, We have had ducking and deprecating about enough, I show that size is only development. 430

Have you outstript the rest? are you the President? It is a tri`e, they will more than arrive there every one, and still pass on.

I am he that walks with the tender and growing night, I call to the earth and sea half- held by the night.

Press close bare- bosom’d night— press close magnetic nourishing night! 435

Night of south winds— night of the large few stars! Still nodding night— mad naked summer night.

Smile O voluptuous cool- breath’d earth! Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees! Earth of departed sunset— earth of the mountains misty- topt! 440 Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue! Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river! Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake! Far- swooping elbow’d earth— rich apple- blossom’d earth! Smile, for your lover comes. 445

Prodigal, you have given me love— therefore I to you give love! O unspeakable passionate love.

22

You sea! I resign myself to you also— I guess what you mean, I behold from the beach your crooked inviting "n gers, I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me, 450 We must have a turn together, I undress, hurry me out of sight of the

land, Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse, Dash me with amorous wet, I can repay you.

Sea of stretch’d ground- swells, Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths, 455 Sea of the brine of life and of unshovell’d yet always- ready graves, Howler and scooper of storms, capricious and dainty sea, I am integral with you, I too am of one phase and of all phases.

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5. Friends (French). 6. Form of tuberculosis characterized by swell- ing of the lymph glands. 7. The number 1 followed by thirty- three zeroes.

8. On tablets of Egyptian hieroglyphics, the ornamental area noting the name of a ruler or deity. “Stonecrop”: a `eshy- leafed plant.

Partaker of in`ux and ef`ux I, extoller of hate and conciliation, Extoller of amies5 and those that sleep in each others’ arms. 460

I am he attesting sympathy, ( Shall I make my list of things in the house and skip the house that

supports them?)

I am not the poet of goodness only, I do not decline to be the poet of wickedness also.

What blurt is this about virtue and about vice? Evil propels me and reform of evil propels me, I stand indifferent, 465 My gait is no fault- "nder’s or rejecter’s gait, I moisten the roots of all that has grown.

Did you fear some scrofula6 out of the un`agging pregnancy? Did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be work’d over and recti"ed?

I "nd one side a balance and the antipodal side a balance, 470 Soft doctrine as steady help as stable doctrine, Thoughts and deeds of the pres ent our rouse and early start.

This minute that comes to me over the past decillions,7 There is no better than it and now. What behaved well in the past or behaves well to- day is not such a

won der, 475 The won der is always and always how there can be a mean man or an

in"del.

23

Endless unfolding of words of ages! And mine a word of the modern, the word En- Masse.

A word of the faith that never balks, Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely. 480

It alone is without `aw, it alone rounds and completes all, That mystic baf`ing won der alone completes all.

I accept Real ity and dare not question it. Materialism "rst and last imbuing.

Hurrah for positive science! long live exact demonstration! 485 Fetch stonecrop mixt with cedar and branches of lilac, This is the lexicographer, this the chemist, this made a grammar of

the old cartouches,8 These mari ners put the ship through dangerous unknown seas,

9. Divine wind or spirit.

This is the geologist, this works with the scalpel, and this is a mathematician.

Gentlemen, to you the "rst honors always! 490 Your facts are useful, and yet they are not my dwelling, I but enter by them to an area of my dwelling. Less the reminders of properties told my words, And more the reminders they of life untold, and of freedom and extrication, And make short account of neuters and geldings, and favor men and

women fully equipt, 495 And beat the gong of revolt, and stop with fugitives and them that plot and

conspire.

24

Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son, Turbulent, `eshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding, No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them, No more modest than immodest. 500

Unscrew the locks from the doors! Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!

Whoever degrades another degrades me, And what ever is done or said returns at last to me.

Through me the af`atus9 surging and surging, through me the current and index. 505

I speak the pass- word primeval, I give the sign of democracy, By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on

the same terms.

Through me many long dumb voices, Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves, Voices of the diseas’d and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs, 510

Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion, And of the threads that connect the stars, and of wombs and of the fatherstuff, And of the rights of them the others are down upon, Of the deform’d, trivial, `at, foolish, despised, Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung. 515

Through me forbidden voices, Voices of sexes and lusts, voices veil’d and I remove the veil, Voices indecent by me clari"ed and trans"gur’d.

I do not press my "n gers across my mouth, I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart, 520 Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.

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1. The blade at the front of a plow. 2. Cultivation or tillage of the soil.

3. Something being heaved or raised upward.

I believe in the `esh and the appetites, Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a

miracle. Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy what ever I touch or am

touch’d from, The scent of these arm- pits aroma "ner than prayer, 525 This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.

If I worship one thing more than another it shall be the spread of my own body, or any part of it,

Translucent mould of me it shall be you! Shaded ledges and rests it shall be you! Firm masculine colter1 it shall be you! 530 What ever goes to the tilth2 of me it shall be you! You my rich blood! your milky stream pale strippings of my life! Breast that presses against other breasts it shall be you! My brain it shall be your occult convolutions! Root of wash’d sweet- ̀ ag! timorous pond- snipe! nest of guarded duplicate

eggs! it shall be you! 535 Mix’d tussled hay of head, beard, brawn, it shall be you! Trickling sap of maple, "bre of manly wheat, it shall be you! Sun so generous it shall be you! Vapors lighting and shading my face it shall be you! You sweaty brooks and dews it shall be you! 540 Winds whose soft- tickling genitals rub against me it shall be you! Broad muscular "elds, branches of live oak, loving lounger in my winding

paths, it shall be you! Hands I have taken, face I have kiss’d, mortal I have ever touch’d, it shall

be you.

I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious, Each moment and what ever happens thrills me with joy, 545 I cannot tell how my ankles bend, nor whence the cause of my faint-

est wish, Nor the cause of the friendship I emit, nor the cause of the friendship I

take again.

That I walk up my stoop, I pause to consider if it really be, A morning- glory at my win dow satis"es me more than the metaphysics of

books.

To behold the day- break! 550 The little light fades the im mense and diaphanous shadows, The air tastes good to my palate.

Hefts3 of the moving world at innocent gambols silently rising freshly exuding,

Scooting obliquely high and low.

4. Fullness.

Something I cannot see puts upward libidinous prongs, 555 Seas of bright juice suffuse heaven. The earth by the sky staid with, the daily close of their junction, The heav’d challenge from the east that moment over my head, The mocking taunt, See then whether you shall be master!

25

Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun- rise would kill me, 560 If I could not now and always send sun- rise out of me.

We also ascend dazzling and tremendous as the sun, We found our own O my soul in the calm and cool of the day- break.

My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach, With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and volumes of worlds. 565

Speech is the twin of my vision, it is unequal to mea sure itself, It provokes me forever, it says sarcastically, Walt you contain enough, why don’t you let it out then?

Come now I will not be tantalized, you conceive too much of articulation, Do you not know O speech how the buds beneath you are folded? 570 Waiting in gloom, protected by frost, The dirt receding before my prophetical screams, I under lying causes to balance them at last, My knowledge my live parts, it keeping tally with the meaning of all things, Happiness, (which whoever hears me let him or her set out in search of

this day.) 575

My "nal merit I refuse you, I refuse putting from me what I really am, Encompass worlds, but never try to encompass me. I crowd your sleekest and best by simply looking toward you.

Writing and talk do not prove me, I carry the plenum4 of proof and every thing else in my face, 580 With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic.

26

Now I will do nothing but listen, To accrue what I hear into this song, to let sounds contribute toward it.

I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat, gossip of `ames, clack of sticks cooking my meals,

I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice, 585 I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused or following, Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the day and night, Talkative young ones to those that like them, the loud laugh of work- people

at their meals,

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5. Seventh planet from the sun, thought at that time to be the outermost limit of the solar system.

6. Coils of rope. 7. Edible clam of the Atlantic coast.

The angry base of disjointed friendship, the faint tones of the sick, The judge with hands tight to the desk, his pallid lips pronouncing a

death- sentence, 590 The heave’e’yo of stevedores unlading ships by the wharves, the refrain of

the anchor- lifters, The ring of alarm- bells, the cry of "re, the whirr of swift- streaking engines

and hose- carts with premonitory tinkles and color’d lights, The steam- whistle, the solid roll of the train of approaching cars, The slow march play’d at the head of the association marching two and

two, (They go to guard some corpse, the `ag- tops are draped with black muslin.) 595

I hear the violoncello (’tis the young man’s heart’s complaint,) I hear the key’d cornet, it glides quickly in through my ears, It shakes mad- sweet pangs through my belly and breast.

I hear the chorus, it is a grand opera, Ah this indeed is music— this suits me. 600

A tenor large and fresh as the creation "lls me, The orbic `ex of his mouth is pouring and "lling me full.

I hear the train’d soprano (what work with hers is this?) The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus5 `ies, It wrenches such ardors from me I did not know I possess’d them, 605 It sails me, I dab with bare feet, they are lick’d by the indolent waves, I am cut by bitter and angry hail, I lose my breath, Steep’d amid honey’d morphine, my windpipe throttled in fakes6 of death, At length let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles, And that we call Being. 610

27

To be in any form, what is that? (Round and round we go, all of us, and ever come back thither,) If nothing lay more develop’d the quahaug7 in its callous shell were enough.

Mine is no callous shell, I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop, 615 They seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.

I merely stir, press, feel with my "n gers, and am happy, To touch my person to some one else’s is about as much as I can stand.

28

Is this then a touch? quivering me to a new identity, Flames and ether making a rush for my veins, 620 Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them,

My `esh and blood playing out lightning to strike what is hardly dif fer ent from myself,

On all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs, Straining the udder of my heart for its withheld drip, Behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial, 625 Depriving me of my best as for a purpose, Unbuttoning my clothes, holding me by the bare waist, Deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight and pasture- "elds, Immodestly sliding the fellow- senses away, They bribed to swap off with touch and go and graze at the edges of me, 630 No consideration, no regard for my draining strength or my anger, Fetching the rest of the herd around to enjoy them a while, Then all uniting to stand on a headland and worry me.

The sentries desert every other part of me, They have left me helpless to a red marauder, 635 They all come to the headland to witness and assist against me.

I am given up by traitors, I talk wildly, I have lost my wits, I and nobody else am the greatest

traitor, I went myself "rst to the headland, my own hands carried me there.

You villain touch! what are you doing? my breath is tight in its throat, 640 Unclench your `oodgates, you are too much for me.

29

Blind loving wrestling touch, sheath’d hooded sharp- tooth’d touch! Did it make you ache so, leaving me?

Parting track’d by arriving, perpetual payment of perpetual loan, Rich showering rain, and recompense richer afterward. 645

Sprouts take and accumulate, stand by the curb proli"c and vital, Landscapes projected masculine, full- sized and golden.

30

All truths wait in all things, They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it, They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon, 650 The insigni"cant is as big to me as any, (What is less or more than a touch?)

Logic and sermons never convince, The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.

(Only what proves itself to every man and woman is so, 655 Only what nobody denies is so.) A minute and a drop of me settle my brain, I believe the soggy clods shall become lovers and lamps,

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8.  I.e., a compendium, in which something is reduced to a short, essential summary. 9. All- encompassing. 1. Ant.

2. Metamorphic rock in which minerals are arranged in layers. 3. Rock of igneous ("re created) or magmatic (molten) origin; from Pluto, ruler of infernal regions.

And a compend8 of compends is the meat of a man or woman, And a summit and `ower there is the feeling they have for each other, 660 And they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson until it becomes

omni"c,9 And until one and all shall delight us, and we them.

31

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey- work of the stars, And the pismire1 is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the

wren, And the tree- toad is a chief- d’œuvre for the highest, 665 And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven, And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery, And the cow crunching with depress’d head surpasses any statue, And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of in"dels.

I "nd I incorporate gneiss,2 coal, long- threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent roots, 670

And am stucco’d with quadrupeds and birds all over, And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons, But call any thing back again when I desire it. In vain the speeding or shyness, In vain the plutonic rocks3 send their old heat against my approach, 675 In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powder’d bones, In vain objects stand leagues off and assume manifold shapes, In vain the ocean settling in hollows and the great monsters lying low, In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky, In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs, 680 In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods, In vain the razor- bill’d auk sails far north to Labrador, I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the "ssure of the cliff.

32

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self- contain’d,

I stand and look at them long and long. 685

They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, Not one is dissatis"ed, not one is demented with the mania of owning

things, Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of

years ago, 690 Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

4. Belonging to every form of life. 5. Estuaries or bays.

6. Grasslands.

So they show their relations to me and I accept them, They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their

possession.

I won der where they get those tokens, Did I pass that way huge times ago and negligently drop them? 695

Myself moving forward then and now and forever, Gathering and showing more always and with velocity, In"nite and omnigenous,4 and the like of these among them, Not too exclusive toward the reachers of my remembrancers, Picking out here one that I love, and now go with him on brotherly

terms. 700

A gigantic beauty of a stallion, fresh and responsive to my caresses, Head high in the forehead, wide between the ears, Limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground, Eyes full of sparkling wickedness, ears "nely cut, `exibly moving.

His nostrils dilate as my heels embrace him, 705 His well- built limbs tremble with plea sure as we race around and return.

I but use you a minute, then I resign you, stallion, Why do I need your paces when I myself out- gallop them? Even as I stand or sit passing faster than you.

33

Space and Time! now I see it is true, what I guess’d at, 710 What I guess’d when I loaf’d on the grass, What I guess’d while I lay alone in my bed, And again as I walk’d the beach under the paling stars of the morning.

My ties and ballasts leave me, my elbows rest in sea- gaps,5 I skirt sierras, my palms cover continents, 715 I am afoot with my vision.

By the city’s quadrangular houses—in log huts, camping with lumbermen, Along the ruts of the turnpike, along the dry gulch and rivulet bed, Weeding my onion- patch or hoeing rows of carrots and parsnips, crossing

savannas,6 trailing in forests, Prospecting, gold- digging, girdling the trees of a new purchase, 720 Scorch’d ankle- deep by the hot sand, hauling my boat down the shallow

river, Where the panther walks to and fro on a limb overhead, where the buck

turns furiously at the hunter, Where the rattlesnake suns his `abby length on a rock, where the otter is

feeding on "sh, Where the alligator in his tough pimples sleeps by the bayou,

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7. I.e., plants growing from soil lodged in house gutters and drain pipes. 8. Beetle. 9. Watertight compartment for lowering passen-

gers from a ship when emergency evacuation is required. 1. Rowdy backwoods dances for which men took male partners.

Where the black bear is searching for roots or honey, where the beaver pats the mud with his paddle- shaped tail; 725

Over the growing sugar, over the yellow- ̀ ower’d cotton plant, over the rice in its low moist "eld,

Over the sharp- peak’d farm house, with its scallop’d scum and slender shoots from the gutters,7

Over the western persimmon, over the long- leav’d corn, over the delicate blue- ̀ ower `ax,

Over the white and brown buckwheat, a hummer and buzz er there with the rest,

Over the dusky green of the rye as it ripples and shades in the breeze; 730 Scaling mountains, pulling myself cautiously up, holding on by low

scragged limbs, Walking the path worn in the grass and beat through the leaves of the

brush, Where the quail is whistling betwixt the woods and the wheat- lot, Where the bat `ies in the Seventh- month eve, where the great gold- bug8

drops through the dark, Where the brook puts out of the roots of the old tree and `ows to the

meadow, 735 Where cattle stand and shake away `ies with the tremulous shuddering

of their hides, Where the cheese- cloth hangs in the kitchen, where andirons straddle

the hearth- slab, where cobwebs fall in festoons from the raf ters; Where trip- hammers crash, where the press is whirling its cylinders, Wherever the human heart beats with terrible throes under its ribs, Where the pear- shaped balloon is `oating aloft, (`oating in it myself and

looking composedly down,) 740 Where the life- car9 is drawn on the slip- noose, where the heat hatches

pale- green eggs in the dented sand, Where the she- whale swims with her calf and never forsakes it, Where the steam- ship trails hind- ways its long pennant of smoke, Where the "n of the shark cuts like a black chip out of the water, Where the half- burn’d brig is riding on unknown currents, 745 Where shells grow to her slimy deck, where the dead are corrupting below; Where the dense- star’d `ag is borne at the head of the regiments, Approaching Manhattan up by the long- stretching island, Under Niagara, the cataract falling like a veil over my countenance, Upon a door- step, upon the horse- block of hard wood outside, 750 Upon the race- course, or enjoying picnics or jigs or a good game of

baseball, At he- festivals, with blackguard gibes, ironical license, bull- dances,1

drinking, laughter, At the cider- mill tasting the sweets of the brown mash, sucking the juice

through a straw, At apple- peelings wanting kisses for all the red fruit I "nd,

2. Gatherings where people work while social- izing with their neighbors. “Musters”: assem- blages of people, particularly gatherings of military troops for drill.

3. Hayrack, from which livestock eat hay. 4. In music, encompassing a full range of tones. 5. Here, small, hard- skinned watermelons.

At musters, beach- parties, friendly bees,2 huskings, house- raisings; 755 Where the mocking- bird sounds his delicious gurgles, cackles, screams,

weeps, Where the hay- rick3 stands in the barn- yard, where the dry- stalks are

scatter’d, where the brood- cow waits in the hovel, Where the bull advances to do his masculine work, where the stud to the

mare, where the cock is treading the hen, Where the heifers browse, where geese nip their food with short jerks, Where sun- down shadows lengthen over the limitless and lonesome

prairie, 760 Where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square miles far and

near, Where the humming- bird shimmers, where the neck of the long- lived swan

is curving and winding, Where the laughing- gull scoots by the shore, where she laughs her near-

human laugh, Where bee- hives range on a gray bench in the garden half hid by the high

weeds, Where band- neck’d partridges roost in a ring on the ground with their

heads out, 765 Where burial coaches enter the arch’d gates of a cemetery, Where winter wolves bark amid wastes of snow and icicled trees, Where the yellow- crown’d heron comes to the edge of the marsh at night

and feeds upon small crabs, Where the splash of swimmers and divers cools the warm noon, Where the katy- did works her chromatic4 reed on the walnut- tree over the

well, 770 Through patches of citrons5 and cucumbers with silver- wired leaves, Through the salt- lick or orange glade, or under conical "rs, Through the gymnasium, through the curtain’d saloon, through the of"ce

or public hall; Pleas’d with the native and pleas’d with the foreign, pleas’d with the new

and old, Pleas’d with the homely woman as well as the handsome, 775 Pleas’d with the quakeress as she puts off her bonnet and talks melodiously, Pleas’d with the tune of the choir of the whitewash’d church, Pleas’d with the earnest words of the sweating Methodist preacher,

impress’d seriously at the camp- meeting; Looking in at the shop- win dows of Broadway the whole forenoon, `atting

the `esh of my nose on the thick plate glass, Wandering the same after noon with my face turn’d up to the clouds, or

down a lane or along the beach, 780 My right and left arms round the sides of two friends, and I in the middle; Coming home with the silent and dark- cheek’d bush- boy, ( behind me he

rides at the drape of the day,) Far from the settlements studying the print of animals’ feet, or the

moccasin print,

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6. The then- known moons of Saturn. 7. I.e., a crescent moon, with the full moon also palely vis i ble.

8. Toppled pieces of ice. 9. Highest platform of a foremast.

By the cot in the hospital reaching lemonade to a feverish patient, Nigh the cof"n’d corpse when all is still, examining with a candle; 785 Voyaging to every port to dicker and adventure, Hurrying with the modern crowd as eager and "ckle as any, Hot toward one I hate, ready in my madness to knife him, Solitary at midnight in my back yard, my thoughts gone from me a long

while, Walking the old hills of Judæa with the beautiful gentle God by my side, 790 Speeding through space, speeding through heaven and the stars, Speeding amid the seven satellites6 and the broad ring, and the dia meter of

eighty thousand miles, Speeding with tail’d meteors, throwing "re- balls like the rest, Carrying the crescent child that carries its own full mother in its belly,7 Storming, enjoying, planning, loving, cautioning, 795 Backing and "lling, appearing and disappearing, I tread day and night such roads.

I visit the orchards of spheres and look at the product, And look at quintillions ripen’d and look at quintillions green.

I `y those `ights of a `uid and swallowing soul, 800 My course runs below the soundings of plummets.

I help myself to material and immaterial, No guard can shut me off, no law prevent me.

I anchor my ship for a little while only, My messengers continually cruise away or bring their returns to me. 805

I go hunting polar furs and the seal, leaping chasms with a pike- pointed staff, clinging to topples of brittle and blue.8

I ascend to the foretruck,9 I take my place late at night in the crow’s- nest, We sail the arctic sea, it is plenty light enough, Through the clear atmosphere I stretch around on the wonderful

beauty, 810 The enormous masses of ice pass me and I pass them, the scenery is plain

in all directions, The white- topt mountains show in the distance, I `ing out my fancies

toward them, We are approaching some great battle- "eld in which we are soon to be

engaged, We pass the colossal outposts of the encampment, we pass with still feet

and caution, Or we are entering by the suburbs some vast and ruin’d city, 815 The blocks and fallen architecture more than all the living cities of the

globe.

1. Whitman describes the wreck of the San Francisco, which sailed from New York on December  22, 1853, bound for South Amer i ca, and was caught in a storm a day later. The ship

drifted helplessly until early January. Over 150 died in the disaster, which was reported widely in the New York papers. 2. Dribbles down, diluted with sweat.

I am a free companion, I bivouac by invading watch"res, I turn the bridegroom out of bed and stay with the bride myself, I tighten her all night to my thighs and lips.

My voice is the wife’s voice, the screech by the rail of the stairs, 820 They fetch my man’s body up dripping and drown’d.

I understand the large hearts of heroes, The courage of pres ent times and all times, How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steam- ship,

and Death chasing it up and down the storm, How he knuckled tight and gave not back an inch, and was faithful of days

and faithful of nights, 825 And chalk’d in large letters on a board, Be of good cheer, we will not desert

you; How he follow’d with them and tack’d with them three days and would

not give it up, How he saved the drifting com pany at last, How the lank loose- gown’d women look’d when boated from the side of

their prepared graves, How the silent old- faced infants and the lifted sick, and the sharp- lipp’d

unshaved men; 830 All this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well, it becomes mine, I am the man, I suffer’d, I was there.1

The disdain and calmness of martyrs, The mother of old, condemn’d for a witch, burnt with dry wood, her

children gazing on, The hounded slave that `ags in the race, leans by the fence, blowing,

cover’d with sweat, 835 The twinges that sting like needles his legs and neck, the murderous

buckshot and the bullets, All these I feel or am.

I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs, Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen, I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinn’d with the ooze of my

skin,2 840 I fall on the weeds and stones, The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close, Taunt my dizzy ears and beat me violently over the head with whip- stocks.

Agonies are one of my changes of garments, I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the

wounded person, 845 My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.

I am the mash’d "reman with breast- bone broken,

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3. During the Texan Revolution of 1835–36, emigrants from the United States to Texas—at the time part of Mexico— attempted to make Texas into an in de pen dent republic. Among the battles fought in what is now the state of Texas were the defense of the Alamo (a Spanish mis- sion church compound in San Antonio), which

fell on March 6, 1836, after a siege by Mexican forces beginning on February  23, when around two hundred men were killed— and the battle of Goliad, when some four hundred secessionist troops were killed after surrendering to the Mex- icans on March 19 of the same year.

Tumbling walls buried me in their debris, Heat and smoke I inspired, I heard the yelling shouts of my comrades, I heard the distant click of their picks and shovels, 850 They have clear’d the beams away, they tenderly lift me forth.

I lie in the night air in my red shirt, the pervading hush is for my sake, Painless after all I lie exhausted but not so unhappy, White and beautiful are the faces around me, the heads are bared of their

"re- caps, The kneeling crowd fades with the light of the torches. 855

Distant and dead resuscitate, They show as the dial or move as the hands of me, I am the clock myself.

I am an old artillerist, I tell of my fort’s bombardment, I am there again.

Again the long roll of the drummers, 860 Again the attacking cannon, mortars, Again to my listening ears the cannon responsive.

I take part, I see and hear the whole, The cries, curses, roar, the plaudits of well- aim’d shots, The ambulanza slowly passing trailing its red drip, 865 Workmen searching after damages, making indispensable repairs, The fall of grenades through the rent roof, the fan- shaped explosion, The whizz of limbs, heads, stone, wood, iron, high in the air.

Again gurgles the mouth of my dying general, he furiously waves with his hand,

He gasps through the clot Mind not me— mind— the entrenchments. 870

34

Now I tell what I knew in Texas in my early youth, (I tell not the fall of Alamo,3 Not one escaped to tell the fall of Alamo, The hundred and "fty are dumb yet at Alamo,) ’Tis the tale of the murder in cold blood of four hundred and twelve young

men. 875

Retreating they had form’d in a hollow square with their baggage for breastworks,

Nine hundred lives out of the surrounding enemy’s, nine times their number, was the price they took in advance,

Their col o nel was wounded and their ammunition gone,

4. This passage alludes to the famous Revolu- tionary sea battle on September  23, 1779, between the American Bon- Homme Richard, commanded by John Paul Jones (1747–1792), and the British Serapis off the coast of northern

Eng land. When Jones was asked to surrender, he famously declared, “I have not yet begun to "ght.” The American ship eventually defeated the Serapis.

They treated for an honorable capitulation, receiv’d writing and seal, gave up their arms and march’d back prisoners of war.

They were the glory of the race of rangers, 880 Matchless with horse, ri`e, song, supper, courtship, Large, turbulent, generous, handsome, proud, and affectionate, Bearded, sunburnt, drest in the free costume of hunters, Not a single one over thirty years of age.

The second First- day morning they were brought out in squads and massacred, it was beautiful early summer, 885

The work commenced about "ve o’clock and was over by eight.

None obey’d the command to kneel, Some made a mad and helpless rush, some stood stark and straight, A few fell at once, shot in the temple or heart, the living and dead lay

together, The maim’d and mangled dug in the dirt, the new- comers saw

them there, 890 Some half- kill’d attempted to crawl away, These were despatch’d with bayonets or batter’d with the blunts of

muskets, A youth not seventeen years old seiz’d his assassin till two more came to

release him, The three were all torn and cover’d with the boy’s blood.

At eleven o’clock began the burning of the bodies; 895 That is the tale of the murder of the four hundred and twelve young men.

35

Would you hear of an old- time sea- "ght?4 Would you learn who won by the light of the moon and stars? List to the yarn, as my grand mother’s father the sailor told it to me.

Our foe was no skulk in his ship I tell you, (said he,) 900 His was the surly En glish pluck, and there is no tougher or truer, and never

was, and never will be; Along the lower’d eve he came horribly raking us. We closed with him, the yards entangled, the cannon touch’d, My captain lash’d fast with his own hands.

We had receiv’d some eigh teen pound shots under the water, 905 On our lower- gun- deck two large pieces had burst at the "rst "re, killing all

around and blowing up overhead.

Fighting at sun- down, "ghting at dark,

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5. Storeroom for ammunition. 6. Grapeshot (“grape”), clusters of small iron balls, was packed inside a metal cylinder (“canis-

ter”) and "red from a cannon. 7.  I.e., the sailors manning the tops— platforms enclosing the heads of each mast.

Ten o’clock at night, the full moon well up, our leaks on the gain, and "ve feet of water reported,

The master- at- arms loosing the prisoners con"ned in the after- hold to give them a chance for themselves.

The transit to and from the magazine5 is now stopt by the sentinels, 910 They see so many strange faces they do not know whom to trust.

Our frigate takes "re, The other asks if we demand quarter? If our colors are struck and the "ghting done?

Now I laugh content, for I hear the voice of my little captain, 915 We have not struck, he composedly cries, we have just begun our part of the

"ghting.

Only three guns are in use, One is directed by the captain himself against the enemy’s mainmast, Two well serv’d with grape and canister6 silence his musketry and clear his

decks.

The tops7 alone second the "re of this little battery, especially the main- top, 920

They hold out bravely during the whole of the action.

Not a moment’s cease, The leaks gain fast on the pumps, the "re eats toward the powder- magazine.

One of the pumps has been shot away, it is generally thought we are sinking.

Serene stands the little captain, 925 He is not hurried, his voice is neither high nor low, His eyes give more light to us than our battle- lanterns.

Toward twelve there in the beams of the moon they surrender to us.

36

Stretch’d and still lies the midnight, Two great hulls motionless on the breast of the darkness, 930 Our vessel riddled and slowly sinking, preparations to pass to the one we

have conquer’d, The captain on the quarter- deck coldly giving his orders through a

countenance white as a sheet, Near by the corpse of the child that serv’d in the cabin, The dead face of an old salt with long white hair and carefully curl’d

whis kers, The `ames spite of all that can be done `ickering aloft and below, 935

The husky voices of the two or three of"cers yet "t for duty, Formless stacks of bodies and bodies by themselves, dabs of `esh upon the

masts and spars, Cut of cordage, dangle of rigging, slight shock of the soothe of waves, Black and impassive guns, litter of powder- parcels, strong scent, A few large stars overhead, silent and mournful shining, 940 Delicate sniffs of sea- breeze, smells of sedgy grass and "elds by the shore,

death- messages given in charge to survivors, The hiss of the surgeon’s knife, the gnawing teeth of his saw, Wheeze, cluck, swash of falling blood, short wild scream, and long, dull,

tapering groan, These so, these irretrievable.

37

You laggards there on guard! look to your arms! 945 In at the conquer’d doors they crowd! I am possess’d! Embody all presences outlaw’d or suffering, See myself in prison shaped like another man, And feel the dull unintermitted pain.

For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep watch, 950 It is I let out in the morning and barr’d at night.

Not a mutineer walks handcuff’d to jail but I am handcuff’d to him and walk by his side,

(I am less the jolly one there, and more the silent one with sweat on my twitching lips.)

Not a youngster is taken for larceny but I go up too, and am tried and sentenced.

Not a cholera patient lies at the last gasp but I also lie at the last gasp, 955 My face is ash- color’d, my sinews gnarl, away from me people retreat.

Askers embody themselves in me and I am embodied in them, I proj ect my hat, sit shame- faced, and beg.

38

Enough! enough! enough! Somehow I have been stunn’d. Stand back! 960 Give me a little time beyond my cuff’d head, slumbers, dreams, gaping, I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake. That I could forget the mockers and insults! That I could forget the trickling tears and the blows of the bludgeons and

hammers! That I could look with a separate look on my own cruci"xion and bloody

crowning. 965

I remember now, I resume the overstaid fraction,

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8. Students (French). 9. An epithet common in frontier humor, deriv- ing from the fact that some Native Americans gathered their hair into tufts at the top of the head. The poet seems to be addressing an older

Indian, perhaps picking up on the reference to “the friendly and `owing savage” of the previous stanza. 1. Courage. “Scarf ’d chops”: lined, worn- down jaw or face.

The grave of rock multiplies what has been con"ded to it, or to any graves, Corpses rise, gashes heal, fastenings roll from me.

I troop forth replenish’d with supreme power, one of an average unending pro cession, 970

Inland and sea- coast we go, and pass all boundary lines, Our swift ordinances on their way over the whole earth, The blossoms we wear in our hats the growth of thousands of years.

Eleves,8 I salute you! come forward! Continue your annotations, continue your questionings. 975

39

The friendly and `owing savage, who is he? Is he waiting for civilization, or past it and mastering it?

Is he some Southwesterner rais’d out- doors? is he Kanadian? Is he from the Mississippi country? Iowa, Oregon, California? The mountains? prairie- life, bush- life? or sailor from the sea? 980

Wherever he goes men and women accept and desire him, They desire he should like them, touch them, speak to them, stay with them.

Be hav ior lawless as snow- ̀ akes, words simple as grass, uncomb’d head, laughter, and naiveté,

Slow- stepping feet, common features, common modes and emanations, They descend in new forms from the tips of his "n gers, 985 They are wafted with the odor of his body or breath, they `y out of the

glance of his eyes.

40

Flaunt of the sunshine I need not your bask— lie over! You light surfaces only, I force surfaces and depths also.

Earth! you seem to look for something at my hands, Say, old top- knot,9 what do you want? 990 Man or woman, I might tell how I like you, but cannot, And might tell what it is in me and what it is in you, but cannot, And might tell that pining I have, that pulse of my nights and days.

Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity, When I give I give myself. 995

You there, impotent, loose in the knees, Open your scarf’d chops till I blow grit1 within you,

2. God of the Jews and Christians. 3. Kronos (or Cronus), in Greek my thol ogy, was the Titan who ruled the universe until dethroned by Zeus, his son, the chief of the Olympian gods. Hercules, the son of Zeus and the mortal Alc- mene, won immortality by performing twelve supposedly impossible feats. 4. The Indian sage Siddhartha Gautama (known

as “Buddha”), founder of Buddhism. “Osiris”: Egyptian god who annually died and was reborn, symbolizing the fertility of nature. “Isis”: Egyp- tian goddess of fertility and the sister and wife of Osiris. “Belus”: legendary god- king of Assyria. “Brahma”: in Hinduism, the divine real ity in the role of the creator god.

Spread your palms and lift the `aps of your pockets, I am not to be denied, I compel, I have stores plenty and to spare, And any thing I have I bestow. 1000

I do not ask who you are, that is not impor tant to me, You can do nothing and be nothing but what I will infold you.

To cotton- "eld drudge or cleaner of privies I lean, On his right cheek I put the family kiss, And in my soul I swear I never will deny him. 1005

On women "t for conception I start bigger and nimbler babes, (This day I am jetting the stuff of far more arrogant republics.)

To any one dying, thither I speed and twist the knob of the door, Turn the bed- clothes toward the foot of the bed, Let the physician and the priest go home. 1010

I seize the descending man and raise him with resistless will, O despairer, here is my neck, By God, you shall not go down! hang your whole weight upon me.

I dilate you with tremendous breath, I buoy you up, Every room of the house do I "ll with an arm’d force, 1015 Lovers of me, baf`ers of graves.

Sleep— I and they keep guard all night, Not doubt, not decease shall dare to lay "n ger upon you, I have embraced you, and henceforth possess you to myself, And when you rise in the morning you will "nd what I tell you is so. 1020

41

I am he bringing help for the sick as they pant on their backs, And for strong upright men I bring yet more needed help.

I heard what was said of the universe, Heard it and heard it of several thousand years; It is middling well as far as it goes— but is that all? 1025 Magnifying and applying come I, Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters, Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah,2 Lithographing Kronos, Zeus his son, and Hercules3 his grand son, Buying drafts of Osiris, Isis, Belus, Brahma, Buddha,4 1030

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5. God, as named in Islam (Arabic). “Manito”: nature god of the Algonquian Indians. 6. An Aztec war god. “Odin”: chief Norse god. 7. As Whitman implies, the bull and the bug had

been worshiped in earlier religions, the bull in several, the scarab beetle as an Egyptian symbol of the soul. 8. Testicles.

In my portfolio placing Manito loose, Allah5 on a leaf, the cruci"x engraved,

With Odin and the hideous- faced Mexitli6 and every idol and image, Taking them all for what they are worth and not a cent more, Admitting they were alive and did the work of their days, (They bore mites as for un`edg’d birds who have now to rise and `y and

sing for themselves,) 1035 Accepting the rough dei"c sketches to "ll out better in myself, bestowing

them freely on each man and woman I see, Discovering as much or more in a framer framing a house, Putting higher claims for him there with his roll’d-up sleeves driving the

mallet and chisel, Not objecting to special revelations, considering a curl of smoke or a hair

on the back of my hand just as curious as any revelation, Lads ahold of "re- engines and hook- and- ladder ropes no less to me than

the gods of the antique wars, 1040 Minding their voices peal through the crash of destruction, Their brawny limbs passing safe over charr’d laths, their white foreheads

whole and unhurt out of the `ames; By the mechanic’s wife with her babe at her nipple interceding for every

person born, Three scythes at harvest whizzing in a row from three lusty angels with

shirts bagg’d out at their waists, The snag- tooth’d hostler with red hair redeeming sins past and to come, 1045 Selling all he possesses, traveling on foot to fee lawyers for his brother and

sit by him while he is tried for forgery; What was strewn in the amplest strewing the square rod about me, and not

"lling the square rod then, The bull and the bug never worshipp’d half enough,7 Dung and dirt more admirable than was dream’d, The super natu ral of no account, myself waiting my time to be one of the

supremes, 1050 The day getting ready for me when I shall do as much good as the best, and

be as prodigious; By my life- lumps!8 becoming already a creator, Putting myself here and now to the ambush’d womb of the shadows.

42

A call in the midst of the crowd, My own voice, orotund sweeping and "nal. 1055

Come my children, Come my boys and girls, my women, house hold and intimates, Now the performer launches his nerve, he has pass’d his prelude on the

reeds within.

9. I.e., saw horses or similar supports holding up a cof"n.

1. Coins were placed on eyelids of corpses to hold them closed until burial.

Easily written loose- "n ger’d chords— I feel the thrum of your climax and close.

My head slues round on my neck, 1060 Music rolls, but not from the organ, Folks are around me, but they are no house hold of mine.

Ever the hard unsunk ground, Ever the eaters and drinkers, ever the upward and downward sun, ever

the air and the ceaseless tides, Ever myself and my neighbors, refreshing, wicked, real, 1065 Ever the old inexplicable query, ever that thorn’d thumb, that breath of

itches and thirsts, Ever the vexer’s hoot! hoot! till we "nd where the sly one hides and bring

him forth, Ever love, ever the sobbing liquid of life, Ever the ban dage under the chin, ever the trestles9 of death.

Here and there with dimes on the eyes1 walking, 1070 To feed the greed of the belly the brains liberally spooning, Tickets buying, taking, selling, but in to the feast never once going, Many sweating, ploughing, thrashing, and then the chaff for payment

receiving, A few idly owning, and they the wheat continually claiming.

This is the city and I am one of the citizens, 1075 What ever interests the rest interests me, politics, wars, markets,

newspapers, schools, The mayor and councils, banks, tariffs, steamships, factories, stocks, stores,

real estate and personal estate.

The little plentiful manikins skipping around in collars and tail’d coats, I am aware who they are, (they are positively not worms or `eas,) I acknowledge the duplicates of myself, the weakest and shallowest is

deathless with me, 1080 What I do and say the same waits for them, Every thought that `ounders in me the same `ounders in them. I know perfectly well my own egotism, Know my omnivorous lines and must not write any less, And would fetch you whoever you are `ush with myself. 1085 Not words of routine this song of mine, But abruptly to question, to leap beyond yet nearer bring; This printed and bound book— but the printer and the printing- of"ce boy? The well- taken photo graphs— but your wife or friend close and solid in

your arms? The black ship mail’d with iron, her mighty guns in her turrets— but the

pluck of the captain and engineers? 1090 In the houses the dishes and fare and furniture— but the host and hostess,

and the look out of their eyes?

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2. Magical charms, such as shells, used in Afri- can and West Indian religious practices. “Fetich”: i.e., fetish; object of worship. 3. Here, also a Buddhist priest. “Llama”: i.e., lama; a Buddhist monk of Tibet or Mongolia. 4. Member of an ancient Hindu ascetic sect. 5. The other worshipers include ancient war- riors drinking mead (an alcoholic beverage made of fermented honey) from the skulls of defeated enemies; admiring or wondering read-

ers of the sastras (or shastras or shasters, books of Hindu law) or of the Vedas (the oldest sacred writings of Hinduism); and those attentive to the Koran (the sacred book of Islam, containing Allah’s revelations to Muhammad). 6. An ancient Central American temple built on a pyramidal mound. 7. Of the New Testament of the Bible. 8. The `at parts on either side of a whale’s tail; here used "guratively.

The sky up there— yet here or next door, or across the way? The saints and sages in history— but you yourself? Sermons, creeds, theology— but the fathomless human brain, And what is reason? and what is love? and what is life? 1095

43

I do not despise you priests, all time, the world over, My faith is the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths, Enclosing worship ancient and modern and all between ancient and

modern, Believing I shall come again upon the earth after "ve thousand years, Waiting responses from oracles, honoring the gods, saluting the sun, 1100 Making a fetich of the "rst rock or stump, powowing with sticks in the

circle of obis.2 Helping the llama or brahmin3 as he trims the lamps of the idols, Dancing yet through the streets in a phallic pro cession, rapt and austere in

the woods a gymnosophist,4 Drinking mead from the skull- cup, to Shastas and Vedas admirant, minding

the Koran,5 Walking the teokallis,6 spotted with gore from the stone and knife, beating

the serpent- skin drum, 1105 Accepting the Gospels,7 accepting him that was cruci"ed, knowing

as suredly that he is divine, To the mass kneeling or the puritan’s prayer rising, or sitting patiently in a

pew, Ranting and frothing in my insane crisis, or waiting dead- like till my spirit

arouses me, Looking forth on pavement and land, or outside of pavement and land, Belonging to the winders of the cir cuit of cir cuits. 1110 One of that centripetal and centrifugal gang I turn and talk like a man

leaving charges before a journey.

Down- hearted doubters dull and excluded, Frivolous, sullen, moping, angry, affected, dishearten’d, atheistical, I know every one of you, I know the sea of torment, doubt, despair and

unbelief.

How the `ukes8 splash! 1115 How they contort rapid as lightning, with spasms and spouts of blood!

Be at peace bloody `ukes of doubters and sullen mopers, I take my place among you as much as among any,

9. I.e., syphilis. 1. Native of Sumatra.

The past is the push of you, me, all, precisely the same, And what is yet untried and afterward is for you, me, all, precisely the

same. 1120

I do not know what is untried and afterward, But I know it will in its turn prove suf"cient, and cannot fail.

Each who passes is consider’d, each who stops is consider’d, not a single one can it fail.

It cannot fail the young man who died and was buried, Nor the young woman who died and was put by his side, 1125 Nor the little child that peep’d in at the door, and then drew back and was

never seen again, Nor the old man who has lived without purpose, and feels it with bitterness

worse than gall, Nor him in the poor house tubercled by rum and the bad disorder,9

Nor the numberless slaughter’d and wreck’d, nor the brutish koboo1 call’d the ordure of humanity,

Nor the sacs merely `oating with open mouths for food to slip in, 1130 Nor any thing in the earth, or down in the oldest graves of the earth, Nor any thing in the myriads of spheres, nor the myriads of myriads that

inhabit them, Nor the pres ent, nor the least wisp that is known.

44

It is time to explain myself— let us stand up.

What is known I strip away, 1135 I launch all men and women forward with me into the Unknown.

The clock indicates the moment— but what does eternity indicate?

We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers, There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them. Births have brought us richness and variety, 1140 And other births will bring us richness and variety.

I do not call one greater and one smaller, That which "lls its period and place is equal to any.

Were mankind murderous or jealous upon you, my brother, my sister? I am sorry for you, they are not murderous or jealous upon me, 1145 All has been gentle with me, I keep no account with lamentation, (What have I to do with lamentation?)

I am an acme of things accomplish’d, and I an encloser of things to be.

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2. The highest points (variant plural of apex). 3. The “lethargic mist” (line 1154) and “fetid carbon” suggest a time before the appearance of human beings on earth.

4. Centuries. 5. Prehistoric large reptiles or dinosaurs, thought to have carried their eggs in their mouths. 6. Kissing.

My feet strike an apex of the apices2 of the stairs, On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps, 1150 All below duly travel’d, and still I mount and mount.

Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me, Afar down I see the huge "rst Nothing, I know I was even there, I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist, And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon.3 1155

Long I was hugg’d close— long and long.

Im mense have been the preparations for me, Faithful and friendly the arms that have help’d me.

Cycles4 ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen, For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings, 1160 They sent in`uences to look after what was to hold me.

Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me, My embryo has never been torpid, nothing could overlay it.

For it the nebula cohered to an orb, The long slow strata piled to rest it on, 1165 Vast vegetables gave it sustenance, Monstrous sauroids5 transported it in their mouths and deposited it with

care.

All forces have been steadily employ’d to complete and delight me, Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul.

45

O span of youth! ever- push’d elasticity! 1170 O manhood, balanced, `orid and full. My lovers suffocate me, Crowding my lips, thick in the pores of my skin, Jostling me through streets and public halls, coming naked to me at night, Crying by day Ahoy! from the rocks of the river, swinging and chirping

over my head, 1175 Calling my name from `ower- beds, vines, tangled underbrush, Lighting on every moment of my life, Bussing6 my body with soft balsamic busses, Noiselessly passing handfuls out of their hearts and giving them to be

mine.

Old age superbly rising! O welcome, ineffable grace of dying days! 1180

7. Promulgates, of"cially announces. 8. Roof hatch (as on a ship). 9. I.e., returned to the era before the formation

of the solar system. 1. Imperil, make hazardous. 2. Stock exchange, bank.

Every condition promulges7 not only itself, it promulges what grows after and out of itself,

And the dark hush promulges as much as any.

I open my scuttle8 at night and see the far- sprinkled systems, And all I see multiplied as high as I can cipher edge but the rim of the

farther systems.

Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding, 1185 Outward and outward and forever outward.

My sun has his sun and round him obediently wheels, He joins with his partners a group of superior cir cuit, And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them.

There is no stoppage and never can be stoppage, 1190 If I, you, and the worlds, and all beneath or upon their surfaces, were this

moment reduced back to a pallid `oat,9 it would not avail in the long run,

We should surely bring up again where we now stand, And surely go as much farther, and then farther and farther.

A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic leagues, do not hazard1 the span or make it impatient,

They are but parts, any thing is but a part. 1195

See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that, Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that.

My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain, The Lord will be there and wait till I come on perfect terms, The great Camerado, the lover true for whom I pine will be there. 1200

46

I know I have the best of time and space, and was never mea sured and never will be mea sured.

I tramp a perpetual journey, (come listen all!) My signs are a rain- proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the woods, No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair, I have no chair, no church, no philosophy, 1205 I lead no man to a dinner- table, library, exchange,2 But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll, My left hand hooking you round the waist, My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the public road.

Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you, 1210 You must travel it for yourself.

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It is not far, it is within reach, Perhaps you have been on it since you were born and did not know, Perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land.

Shoulder your duds dear son, and I will mine, and let us hasten forth, 1215 Wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go.

If you tire, give me both burdens, and rest the chuff3 of your hand on my hip,

And in due time you shall repay the same ser vice to me, For after we start we never lie by again.

This day before dawn I ascended a hill and look’d at the crowded heaven, 1220

And I said to my spirit When we become the enfolders of those orbs, and the plea sure and knowledge of every thing in them, shall we be "ll’d and satis"ed then?

And my spirit said No, we but level that lift to pass and continue beyond.

You are also asking me questions and I hear you, I answer that I cannot answer, you must "nd out for yourself.

Sit a while dear son, 1225 Here are biscuits to eat and here is milk to drink, But as soon as you sleep and renew yourself in sweet clothes, I kiss you

with a good-by kiss and open the gate for your egress hence.

Long enough have you dream’d contemptible dreams, Now I wash the gum from your eyes, You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of

your life. 1230

Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore, Now I will you to be a bold swimmer, To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout, and

laughingly dash with your hair.

47

I am the teacher of athletes, He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own proves the width of my

own, 1235 He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.

The boy I love, the same becomes a man not through derived power, but in his own right,

Wicked rather than virtuous out of conformity or fear, Fond of his sweetheart, relishing well his steak, Unrequited love or a slight cutting him worse than sharp steel cuts, 1240

3. The `eshy part of the palm.

First- rate to ride, to "ght, to hit the bull’s eye, to sail a skiff, to sing a song or play on the banjo,

Preferring scars and the beard and faces pitted with small- pox over all latherers,

And those well- tann’d to those that keep out of the sun.

I teach straying from me, yet who can stray from me? I follow you whoever you are from the pres ent hour, 1245 My words itch at your ears till you understand them.

I do not say these things for a dollar or to "ll up the time while I wait for a boat,

(It is you talking just as much as myself, I act as the tongue of you, Tied in your mouth, in mine it begins to be loosen’d.)

I swear I will never again mention love or death inside a house, 1250 And I swear I will never translate myself at all, only to him or her who

privately stays with me in the open air.

If you would understand me go to the heights or water- shore, The nearest gnat is an explanation, and a drop or motion of waves a key, The maul, the oar, the hand- saw, second my words.

No shutter’d room or school can commune with me, 1255 But roughs and little children better than they.

The young mechanic is closest to me, he knows me well, The woodman that takes his axe and jug with him shall take me with

him all day, The farm- boy ploughing in the "eld feels good at the sound of my voice, In vessels that sail my words sail, I go with "shermen and seamen and love

them. 1260

The soldier camp’d or upon the march is mine, On the night ere the pending battle many seek me, and I do not fail them, On that solemn night (it may be their last) those that know me seek me.

My face rubs to the hunter’s face when he lies down alone in his blanket, The driver thinking of me does not mind the jolt of his wagon, 1265 The young mother and old mother comprehend me, The girl and the wife rest the needle a moment and forget where they are, They and all would resume what I have told them.

48

I have said that the soul is not more than the body, And I have said that the body is not more than the soul, 1270 And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is, And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own

funeral drest in his shroud, And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the earth,

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4. Midwife (French).

And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the learning of all times,

And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero, 1275

And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel’d universe, And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and com-

posed before a million universes.

And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God, For I who am curious about each am not curious about God, (No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and about

death.) 1280

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least, Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.

Why should I wish to see God better than this day? I see something of God each hour of the twenty- four, and each moment then, In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in

the glass, 1285 I "nd letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign’d by God’s

name, And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go, Others will punctually come for ever and ever.

49

And as to you Death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to try to alarm me.

To his work without `inching the accoucheur4 comes, 1290 I see the elder- hand pressing receiving supporting, I recline by the sills of the exquisite `exible doors, And mark the outlet, and mark the relief and escape.

And as to you Corpse I think you are good manure, but that does not offend me,

I smell the white roses sweet- scented and growing, 1295 I reach to the leafy lips, I reach to the polish’d breasts of melons. And as to you Life I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths, (No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.)

I hear you whispering there O stars of heaven, O suns— O grass of graves— O perpetual transfers and promotions, 1300 If you do not say any thing how can I say any thing? Of the turbid pool that lies in the autumn forest, Of the moon that descends the steeps of the soughing twilight,

5. Pour forth. 6. I.e., extinguish the last glimmers of eve ning.

Toss, sparkles of day and dusk— toss on the black stems that decay in the muck,

Toss to the moaning gibberish of the dry limbs. 1305

I ascend from the moon, I ascend from the night, I perceive that the ghastly glimmer is noonday sunbeams re`ected, And debouch5 to the steady and central from the offspring great or small.

50

There is that in me— I do not know what it is— but I know it is in me.

Wrench’d and sweaty— calm and cool then my body becomes, I sleep— I sleep long. 1310

I do not know it—it is without name—it is a word unsaid, It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.

Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on, To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me.

Perhaps I might tell more. Outlines! I plead for my brothers and sisters. 1315 Do you see O my brothers and sisters? It is not chaos or death—it is form, union, plan—it is eternal life—it is

Happiness.

51

The past and pres ent wilt— I have "ll’d them, emptied them, And proceed to "ll my next fold of the future.

Listener up there! what have you to con"de to me? 1320 Look in my face while I snuff the sidle6 of eve ning, (Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) 1325

I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door- slab. Who has done his day’s work? who will soonest be through with his

supper? Who wishes to walk with me?

Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?

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52

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. 1330

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable. I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day7 holds back for me, It `ings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. 1335

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my `esh in eddies,8 and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot- soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, 1340 But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And "lter and "bre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at "rst keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you. 1345

1855, 1881

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry1

1

Flood- tide below me! I see you face to face! Clouds of the west— sun there half an hour high— I see you also face to face.

Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to me!

On the ferry- boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose,

And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose. 5

2

The impalpable sustenance of me from all things at all hours of the day, The simple, compact, well- join’d scheme, myself disintegrated, every one

disintegrated yet part of the scheme,

7. Wind- driven clouds, or merely the last rays of the sun. 8. Air currents. “Effuse”: pour forth.

1. First published as “Sun- Down Poem” in the 2nd edition of Leaves of Grass (1856), “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” was given its "nal title in 1860.

The similitudes of the past and those of the future, The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings, on the

walk in the street and the passage over the river, The current rushing so swiftly and swimming with me far away, 10 The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and them, The certainty of others, the life, love, sight, hearing of others.

Others will enter the gates of the ferry and cross from shore to shore, Others will watch the run of the `ood- tide, Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the heights

of Brooklyn to the south and east, 15 Others will see the islands large and small; Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour

high, A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will

see them, Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the `ood- tide, the falling- back to

the sea of the ebb- tide.

3

It avails not, time nor place— distance avails not, 20 I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many

generations hence, Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt, Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd, Just as you are refresh’d by the gladness of the river and the bright `ow, I

was refresh’d, Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I

stood yet was hurried, 25 Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the thick- stemm’d

pipes of steamboats, I look’d.

I too many and many a time cross’d the river of old, Watched the Twelfth- month2 sea- gulls, saw them high in the air `oating

with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies, Saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies and left the rest in

strong shadow, Saw the slow- wheeling circles and the gradual edging toward the south, 30 Saw the re`ection of the summer sky in the water, Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams, Look’d at the "ne centrifugal spokes of light round the shape of my head in

the sunlit water, Look’d on the haze on the hills southward and south- westward, Look’d on the vapor as it `ew in `eeces tinged with violet, 35 Look’d toward the lower bay to notice the vessels arriving, Saw their approach, saw aboard those that were near me, Saw the white sails of schooners and sloops, saw the ships at anchor, The sailors at work in the rigging or out astride the spars,

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2. December.

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3. Barge used to load or unload a cargo ship.

The round masts, the swinging motion of the hulls, the slender serpentine pennants, 40

The large and small steamers in motion, the pi lots in their pilot- houses, The white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of the

wheels, The `ags of all nations, the falling of them at sunset. The scallop- edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the frolicsome

crests and glistening, The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray walls of the granite

store houses by the docks, 45 On the river the shadowy group, the big steam- tug closely `ank’d on each

side by the barges, the hay- boat, the belated lighter,3 On the neighboring shore the "res from the foundry chimneys burning

high and glaringly into the night, Casting their `icker of black contrasted with wild red and yellow light over

the tops of houses, and down into the clefts of streets.

4

These and all else were to me the same as they are to you, I loved well those cities, loved well the stately and rapid river, 50 The men and women I saw were all near to me, Others the same— others who looked back on me because I look’d forward

to them, (The time will come, though I stop here to- day and to- night.)

5

What is it then between us? What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us? 55

What ever it is, it avails not— distance avails not, and place avails not, I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine, I too walk’d the streets of Manhattan island, and bathed in the waters

around it, I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me, In the day among crowds of people sometimes they came upon me, 60 In my walks home late at night or as I lay in my bed they came upon me, I too had been struck from the `oat forever held in solution, I too had receiv’d identity by my body, That I was I knew was of my body, and what I should be I knew I should be

of my body.

6

It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall, 65 The dark threw its patches down upon me also, The best I had done seem’d to me blank and suspicious, My great thoughts as I supposed them, were they not in real ity meagre?

Nor is it you alone who know what it is to be evil, I am he who knew what it was to be evil, 70 I too knitted the old knot of contrariety, Blabb’d, blush’d, resented, lied, stole, grudg’d, Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak, Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant, The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me, 75 The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, not wanting, Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these

wanting, Was one with the rest, the days and haps of the rest, Was call’d by my nighest name by clear loud voices of young men as they

saw me approaching or passing, Felt their arms on my neck as I stood, or the negligent leaning of their `esh

against me as I sat, 80 Saw many I loved in the street or ferry- boat or public assembly, yet never

told them a word, Lived the same life with the rest, the same old laughing, gnawing, sleeping, Play’d the part that still looks back on the actor or actress, The same old role, the role that is what we make it, as great as we like, Or as small as we like, or both great and small. 85

7

Closer yet I approach you, What thought you have of me now, I had as much of you— I laid in my

stores in advance, I consider’d long and seriously of you before you were born.

Who was to know what should come home to me? Who knows but I am enjoying this? 90 Who knows, for all the distance, but I am as good as looking at you now, for

all you cannot see me?

8

Ah, what can ever be more stately and admirable to me than mast- hemm’d Manhattan?

River and sunset and scallop- edg’d waves of `ood- tide? The sea- gulls oscillating their bodies, the hay- boat in the twilight, and the

belated lighter? What gods can exceed these that clasp me by the hand, and with voices I

love call me promptly and loudly by my nighest name as I approach? 95 What is more subtle than this which ties me to the woman or man that

looks in my face? Which fuses me into you now, and pours my meaning into you?

We understand then do we not? What I promis’d without mentioning it, have you not accepted? What the study could not teach— what the preaching could not accomplish

is accomplish’d, is it not? 100

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9

Flow on, river! `ow with the `ood- tide, and ebb with the ebb- tide! Frolic on, crested and scallop- edg’d waves! Gorgeous clouds of the sunset! drench with your splendor me, or the men

and women generations after me! Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers! Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta!4 stand up, beautiful hills of

Brooklyn! 105 Throb, baf`ed and curious brain! throw out questions and answers! Suspend here and everywhere, eternal `oat of solution! Gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in the house or street or public assembly! Sound out, voices of young men! loudly and musically call me by my

nighest name! Live, old life! play the part that looks back on the actor or actress! 110 Play the old role, the role that is great or small according as one makes it! Consider, you who peruse me, whether I may not in unknown ways be

looking upon you; Be "rm, rail over the river, to support those who lean idly, yet haste with

the hasting current; Fly on, sea- birds! `y sideways, or wheel in large circles high in the air; Receive the summer sky, you water, and faithfully hold it till all downcast

eyes have time to take it from you! 115 Diverge, "ne spokes of light, from the shape of my head, or any one’s

head, in the sunlit water! Come on, ships from the lower bay! pass up or down, white- sail’d

schooners, sloops, lighters! Flaunt away, `ags of all nations! be duly lower’d at sunset! Burn high your "res, foundry chimneys! cast black shadows at nightfall!

cast red and yellow light over the tops of the houses! Appearances, now or henceforth, indicate what you are, 120 You necessary "lm, continue to envelop the soul, About my body for me, and your body for you, be hung our divinest aromas, Thrive, cities— bring your freight, bring your shows, ample and suf"cient

rivers, Expand, being than which none else is perhaps more spiritual, Keep your places, objects than which none else is more lasting. 125

You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful ministers, We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate henceforward, Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves from us, We use you, and do not cast you aside—we plant you permanently within

us, We fathom you not—we love you— there is perfection in you also, 130 You furnish your parts toward eternity, Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.

1856, 1881

4. Variant of Manhattan.

Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking1

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking, Out of the mocking- bird’s throat, the musical shut tle, Out of the Ninth- month midnight, Over the sterile sands and the "elds beyond, where the child leaving his

bed wander’d alone, bareheaded, barefoot, Down from the shower’d halo, 5 Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as if they were

alive, Out from the patches of briers and blackberries, From the memories of the bird that chanted to me, From your memories sad brother, from the "tful risings and fallings I

heard, From under that yellow half- moon late- risen and swollen as if with tears, 10 From those beginning notes of yearning and love there in the mist, From the thousand responses of my heart never to cease, From the myriad thence- arous’d words, From the word stronger and more delicious than any, From such as now they start the scene revisiting, 15 As a `ock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing, Borne hither, ere all eludes me, hurriedly, A man, yet by these tears a little boy again, Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves, I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter, 20 Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them, A reminiscence sing.

Once Paumanok,2 When the lilac- scent was in the air and Fifth- month grass was growing, Up this seashore in some briers, 25 Two feather’d guests from Alabama, two together,

And their nest, and four light- green eggs spotted with brown, And every day the he- bird to and fro near at hand, And every day the she- bird crouch’d on her nest, silent, with bright

eyes, And every day I, a curious boy, never too close, never disturbing them, 30 Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating.

Shine! shine! shine! Pour down your warmth, great sun! While we bask, we two together.

Two together! 35 Winds blow south, or winds blow north,

7 1

1. First published as “A Child’s Reminiscence” in the New York Saturday Press of December 24, 1859, this poem was incorporated into the 1860 Leaves of Grass as “A Word Out of the Sea.”

Whitman continued to revise it until it reached the pres ent form in the “Sea- Drift” section of the 1881 edition. 2. Long Island.

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Day come white, or night come black, Home, or rivers and mountains from home, Singing all time, minding no time, While we two keep together. 40

Till of a sudden, May-be kill’d, unknown to her mate, One forenoon the she- bird crouch’d not on the nest, Nor return’d that after noon, nor the next Nor ever appear’d again. 45 And thenceforward all summer in the sound of the sea, And at night under the full of the moon in calmer weather, Over the hoarse surging of the sea, Or `itting from brier to brier by day, I saw, I heard at intervals the remaining one, the he- bird, 50 The solitary guest from Alabama.

Blow! blow! blow! Blow up sea- winds along Paumanok’s shore; I wait and I wait till you blow my mate to me.

Yes, when the stars glisten’d, 55 All night long on the prong of a moss- scallop’d stake, Down almost amid the slapping waves, Sat the lone singer wonderful causing tears.

He call’d on his mate, He pour’d forth the meanings which I of all men know. 60

Yes my brother I know, The rest might not, but I have trea sur’d every note, For more than once dimly down to the beach gliding, Silent, avoiding the moonbeams, blending myself with the shadows, Recalling now the obscure shapes, the echoes, the sounds and sights after

their sorts, 65 The white arms out in the breakers tirelessly tossing, I, with bare feet, a child, the wind wafting my hair, Listen’d long and long.

Listen’d to keep, to sing, now translating the notes. Following you my brother. 70

Soothe! soothe! soothe! Close on its wave soothes the wave behind, And again another behind embracing and lapping, every one close, But my love soothes not me, not me.

Low hangs the moon, it rose late, 75 It is lagging— O I think it is heavy with love, with love.

O madly the sea pushes upon the land, With love, with love.

O night! do I not see my love #uttering out among the breakers? What is that little black thing I see there in the white? 80

Loud! loud! loud! Loud I call to you, my love!

High and clear I shoot my voice over the waves, Surely you must know who is here, is here, You must know who I am, my love. 85 Low- hanging moon! What is that dusky spot in your brown yellow? O it is the shape, the shape of my mate! O moon do not keep her from me any longer.

Land! land! O land! 90 Whichever way I turn, O I think you could give me my mate back again if

you only would, For I am almost sure I see her dimly whichever way I look.

O rising stars! Perhaps the one I want so much will rise, will rise with some of

you.

O throat! O trembling throat! 95 Sound clearer through the atmosphere! Pierce the woods, the earth, Somewhere listening to catch you must be the one I want.

Shake out carols! Solitary here, the night’s carols! 100 Carols of lonesome love! death’s carols! Carols under that lagging, yellow, waning moon! O under that moon where she droops almost down into the sea! O reckless despairing carols.

But soft! sink low! 105 Soft! let me just murmur, And do you wait a moment you husky- nois’d sea, For somewhere I believe I heard my mate responding to me, So faint, I must be still, be still to listen, But not altogether still, for then she might not come immediately to

me. 110

Hither my love! Here I am! here! With this just- sustain’d note I announce myself to you, This gentle call is for you my love, for you.

Do not be decoy’d elsewhere, 115 That is the whistle of the wind, it is not my voice, That is the #uttering, the #uttering of the spray, Those are the shadows of leaves.

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O darkness! O in vain! O I am very sick and sorrowful. 120

O brown halo in the sky near the moon, drooping upon the sea! O troubled re#ection in the sea! O throat! O throbbing heart! And I singing uselessly, uselessly all the night.

O past! O happy life! O songs of joy! 125 In the air, in the woods, over "elds, Loved! loved! loved! loved! loved! But my mate no more, no more with me! We two together no more.

The aria sinking, 130 All else continuing, the stars shining, The winds blowing, the notes of the bird continuous echoing, With angry moans the "erce old mother incessantly moaning, On the sands of Paumanok’s shore gray and rustling,

The yellow half- moon enlarged, sagging down, drooping, the face of the sea almost touching, 135

The boy ecstatic, with his bare feet the waves, with his hair the atmosphere dallying,

The love in the heart long pent, now loose, now at last tumultuously bursting,

The aria’s meaning, the ears, the soul, swiftly depositing, The strange tears down the cheeks coursing, The colloquy there, the trio, each uttering, 140 The undertone, the savage old mother incessantly crying, To the boy’s soul’s questions sullenly timing, some drown’d secret hissing, To the outsetting bard.

Demon or bird! (said the boy’s soul,) Is it indeed toward your mate you sing? or is it really to me? 145 For I, that was a child, my tongue’s use sleeping, now I have heard you, Now in a moment I know what I am for, I awake, And already a thousand singers, a thousand songs, clearer, louder and more

sorrowful than yours, A thousand warbling echoes have started to life within me, never to

die.

O you singer solitary, singing by yourself, projecting me, 150 O solitary me listening, never more shall I cease perpetuating you, Never more shall I escape, never more the reverberations, Never more the cries of unsatis"ed love be absent from me, Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what there in

the night, By the sea under the yellow and sagging moon, 155 The messenger there arous’d, the "re, the sweet hell within, The unknown want, the destiny of me.

O give me the clew! (it lurks in the night here somewhere,) O if I am to have so much, let me have more!

A word then, (for I will conquer it,) 160 The word "nal, superior to all, Subtle, sent up— what is it?— I listen; Are you whispering it, and have been all the time, you sea- waves? Is that it from your liquid rims and wet sands?

Whereto answering, the sea, 165 Delaying not, hurrying not, Whisper’d me through the night, and very plainly before daybreak, Lisp’d to me the low and delicious word death, And again death, death, death, death, Hissing melodious, neither like the bird nor like my arous’d child’s

heart, 170 But edging near as privately for me rustling at my feet, Creeping thence steadily up to my ears and laving me softly all over, Death, death, death, death, death.

Which I do not forget, But fuse the song of my dusky demon and brother, 175 That he sang to me in the moonlight on Paumanok’s gray beach, With the thousand responsive songs at random, My own songs awaked from that hour, And with them the key, the word up from the waves, The word of the sweetest song and all songs, 180 That strong and delicious word which, creeping to my feet, (Or like some old crone rocking the cradle, swathed in sweet garments,

bending aside,) The sea whisper’d me.

1859, 1881

Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night1

Vigil strange I kept on the "eld one night; When you my son and my comrade dropt at my side that day, One look I but gave which your dear eyes return’d with a look I shall

never forget, One touch of your hand to mine O boy, reach’d up as you lay on the

ground, Then onward I sped in the battle, the even- contested battle, 5 Till late in the night reliev’d to the place at last again I made my way, Found you in death so cold dear comrade, found your body son of

responding kisses, (never again on earth responding,)

V I G I L S T R A N G E I K E P T O N T H E F I E L D O N E N I G H T | 7 5

1. From Whitman’s Civil War poetry volume, Drum- Taps, "rst published in 1865 and incorporated into Leaves of Grass in 1867.

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1. From Drum- Taps.

Bared your face in the starlight, curious the scene, cool blew the moderate night- wind,

Long there and then in vigil I stood, dimly around me the battle- "eld spreading,

Vigil wondrous and vigil sweet there in the fragrant silent night, 10 But not a tear fell, not even a long- drawn sigh, long, long I gazed, Then on the earth partially reclining sat by your side leaning my chin

in my hands, Passing sweet hours, immortal and mystic hours with you dearest

comrade— not a tear, not a word, Vigil of silence, love and death, vigil for you my son and my soldier, As onward silently stars aloft, eastward new ones upward stole, 15 Vigil "nal for you brave boy, (I could not save you, swift was your death, I faithfully loved you and cared for you living, I think we shall surely meet

again,) Till at latest lingering of the night, indeed just as the dawn appear’d, My comrade I wrapt in his blanket, envelop’d well his form, Folded the blanket well, tucking it carefully over head and carefully

under feet, 20 And there and then and bathed by the rising sun, my son in his grave, in

his rude- dug grave I deposited, Ending my vigil strange with that, vigil of night and battle- "eld dim, Vigil for boy of responding kisses, (never again on earth responding,) Vigil for comrade swiftly slain, vigil I never forget, how as day brighten’d, I rose from the chill ground and folded my soldier well in his blanket, 25 And buried him where he fell.

1865, 1867

The Wound- Dresser 1

1

An old man bending I come among new faces, Years looking backward resuming in answer to children, Come tell us old man, as from young men and maidens that love me, (Arous’d and angry, I’d thought to beat the alarum, and urge relentless

war, But soon my "n gers fail’d me, my face droop’d and I resign’d myself, 5 To sit by the wounded and soothe them, or silently watch the dead;) Years hence of these scenes, of these furious passions, these chances, Of unsurpass’d heroes, (was one side so brave? the other was equally

brave;) Now be witness again, paint the mightiest armies of earth, Of those armies so rapid so wondrous what saw you to tell us? 10 What stays with you latest and deepest? of curious panics, Of hard- fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains?

2. Forti"cations.

2

O maidens and young men I love and that love me, What you ask of my days those the strangest and sudden your talking

recalls, Soldier alert I arrive after a long march cover’d with sweat and dust, 15 In the nick of time I come, plunge in the "ght, loudly shout in the rush

of successful charge, Enter the captur’d works2— yet lo, like a swift- running river they fade, Pass and are gone they fade— I dwell not on soldiers’ perils or soldiers’ joys, (Both I remember well— many the hardships, few the joys, yet I was

content.)

But in silence in dreams’ projections, 20 While the world of gain and appearance and mirth goes on, So soon what is over forgotten, and waves wash the imprints off the sand, With hinged knees returning I enter the doors, (while for you up there, Whoever you are, follow without noise and be of strong heart.)

Bearing the ban dages, water and sponge, 25 Straight and swift to my wounded I go, Where they lie on the ground after the battle brought in, Where their priceless blood reddens the grass the ground, Or to the rows of the hospital tent, or under the roof’d hospital, To the long rows of cots up and down each side I return, 30 To each and all one after another I draw near, not one do I miss, An attendant follows holding a tray, he carries a refuse pail, Soon to be "ll’d with clotted rags and blood, emptied, and "ll’d again.

I onward go, I stop, With hinged knees and steady hand to dress wounds, 35 I am "rm with each, the pangs are sharp yet unavoidable, One turns to me his appealing eyes— poor boy! I never knew you, Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that would

save you.

3

On, on I go, (open doors of time! open hospital doors!) The crush’d head I dress, (poor crazed hand tear not the ban dage away,) 40 The neck of the cavalry- man with the bullet through and through I

examine, Hard the breathing rattles, quite glazed already the eye, yet life strug gles

hard, (Come sweet death! be persuaded O beautiful death! In mercy come quickly.)

From the stump of the arm, the amputated hand, 45 I undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, wash off the matter and blood,

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1. Composed in the months following Lincoln’s assassination on April  14, 1865, this elegy was printed in the fall of that year as an appendix to the recently published Drum- Taps volume. In the 1881 edition of Leaves of Grass, it and three

shorter poems were joined to make up the sec- tion Memories of President Lincoln. 2. Literally Venus, although it becomes associ- ated with Lincoln himself.

Back on his pillow the soldier bends with curv’d neck and side- falling head, His eyes are closed, his face is pale, he dares not look on the bloody stump, And has not yet look’d on it.

I dress a wound in the side, deep, deep, 50 But a day or two more, for see the frame all wasted and sinking, And the yellow- blue countenance see.

I dress the perforated shoulder, the foot with the bullet- wound, Cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so sickening, so

offensive, While the attendant stands behind aside me holding the tray and pail. 55

I am faithful, I do not give out, The fractur’d thigh, the knee, the wound in the abdomen, These and more I dress with impassive hand, (yet deep in my breast a "re,

a burning `ame.)

4

Thus in silence in dreams’ projections, Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals, 60 The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand, I sit by the restless all the dark night, some are so young, Some suffer so much, I recall the experience sweet and sad, (Many a soldier’s loving arms about this neck have cross’d and rested, Many a soldier’s kiss dwells on these bearded lips.) 65

1865, 1881

When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d1

1

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d, And the great star2 early droop’d in the western sky in the night, I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever- returning spring.

Ever- returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring, Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west, 5 And thought of him I love.

2

O power ful western fallen star! O shades of night— O moody, tearful night!

3. Blossoms. 4. The train carry ing Lincoln’s body for burial traveled from Washington, D.C., to Spring"eld,

Illinois. 5. Torches.

O great star dis appear’d— O the black murk that hides the star! O cruel hands that hold me powerless— O helpless soul of me! 10 O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul.

3

In the dooryard fronting an old farm- house near the white- wash’d palings, Stands the lilac- bush tall- growing with heart- shaped leaves of rich green, With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I

love, With every leaf a miracle— and from this bush in the dooryard, 15 With delicate- color’d blossoms and heart- shaped leaves of rich green, A sprig with its `ower I break.

4

In the swamp in secluded recesses, A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.

Solitary the thrush, 20 The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements, Sings by himself a song. Song of the bleeding throat, Death’s outlet song of life, (for well dear brother I know, If thou wast not granted to sing thou would’st surely die.) 25

5

Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities, Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peep’d from

the ground, spotting the gray debris, Amid the grass in the "elds each side of the lanes, passing the endless grass, Passing the yellow- spear’d wheat, every grain from its shroud in the

dark- brown "elds uprisen, Passing the apple- tree blows3 of white and pink in the orchards, 30 Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave, Night and day journeys a cof"n.4

6

Cof"n that passes through lanes and streets, Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land, With the pomp of the inloop’d `ags with the cities draped in black, 35 With the show of the States themselves as of crape- veil’d women standing, With pro cessions long and winding and the `ambeaus5 of the night, With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the

unbared heads, With the waiting depot, the arriving cof"n, and the sombre faces,

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With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong and solemn, 40

With all the mournful voices of the dirges pour’d around the cof"n, The dim- lit churches and the shuddering organs— where amid these you

journey, With the tolling tolling bells’ perpetual clang, Here, cof"n that slowly passes, I give you my sprig of lilac. 45

7

(Nor for you, for one alone, Blossoms and branches green to cof"ns all I bring, For fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song for you O sane and

sacred death.

All over bouquets of roses, O death, I cover you over with roses and early lilies, 50 But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the "rst, Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes, With loaded arms I come, pouring for you, For you and the cof"ns all of you O death.)

8

O western orb sailing the heaven, 55 Now I know what you must have meant as a month since I walk’d, As I walk’d in silence the transparent shadowy night, As I saw you had something to tell as you bent to me night after night, As you droop’d from the sky low down as if to my side, (while the other

stars all look’d on,) As we wander’d together the solemn night, (for something I know not

what kept me from sleep,) 60 As the night advanced, and I saw on the rim of the west how full you

were of woe, As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze in the cool transparent night, As I watch’d where you pass’d and was lost in the netherward black of the

night, As my soul in its trou ble dissatis"ed sank, as where you sad orb, Concluded, dropt in the night, and was gone. 65

9

Sing on there in the swamp, O singer bashful and tender, I hear your notes, I hear your call, I hear, I come presently, I understand you, But a moment I linger, for the lustrous star has detain’d me, The star my departing comrade holds and detains me. 70

6. April.

10

O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved? And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone? And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love? Sea- winds blown from east and west, Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from the Western sea, till there

on the prairies meeting, 75 These and with these and the breath of my chant, I’ll perfume the grave of him I love.

11

O what shall I hang on the chamber walls? And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls, To adorn the burial- house of him I love? 80

Pictures of growing spring and farms and homes, With the Fourth- month6 eve at sundown, and the gray smoke lucid and

bright, With `oods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent, sinking sun,

burning, expanding the air, With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green leaves of the

trees proli"c, In the distance the `owing glaze, the breast of the river, with a

wind- dapple here and there, 85 With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against the sky, and

shadows, And the city at hand with dwellings so dense, and stacks of chimneys, And all the scenes of life and the workshops, and the workmen homeward

returning.

12

Lo, body and soul— this land, My own Manhattan with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides,

and the ships, 90 The varied and ample land, the South and the North in the light, Ohio’s

shores and `ashing Missouri, And ever the far- spreading prairies cover’d with grass and corn.

Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty, The violet and purple morn with just- felt breezes, The gentle soft- born measureless light, 95 The miracle spreading bathing all, the ful"ll’d noon, The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars, Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land.

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13

Sing on, sing on you gray- brown bird, Sing from the swamps, the recesses, pour your chant from the bushes, 100 Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines. Sing on dearest brother, warble your reedy song, Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.

O liquid and free and tender! O wild and loose to my soul!— O wondrous singer! 105 You only I hear— yet the star holds me, (but will soon depart,) Yet the lilac with mastering odor holds me.

14

Now while I sat in the day and look’d forth, In the close of the day with its light and the "elds of spring, and the

farmers preparing their crops, In the large unconscious scenery of my land with its lakes and forests, 110 In the heavenly aerial beauty, ( after the perturb’d winds and the storms,) Under the arching heavens of the after noon swift passing, and the voices

of children and women, The many- moving sea- tides, and I saw the ships how they sail’d, And the summer approaching with richness, and the "elds all busy with

labor, And the in"nite separate houses, how they all went on, each with its

meals and minutia of daily usages, 115 And the streets how their throbbings throbb’d, and the cities pent—lo,

then and there, Falling upon them all and among them all, enveloping me with the rest, Appear’d the cloud, appear’d the long black trail, And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death.

Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me, 120 And the thought of death close- walking the other side of me, And I in the middle as with companions, and as holding the hands of

companions, I `ed forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not, Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness, To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still. 125

And the singer so shy to the rest receiv’d me, The gray- brown bird I know receiv’d us comrades three, And he sang the carol of death, and a verse for him I love.

From deep secluded recesses, From the fragrant cedars and the ghostly pines so still, 130 Came the carol of the bird.

And the charm of the carol rapt me, As I held as if by their hands my comrades in the night, And the voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird.

7. Sideways, aslant.

Come lovely and soothing death, 135 Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, In the day, in the night, to all, to each, Sooner or later delicate death.

Prais’d be the fathomless universe, For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious, 140 And for love, sweet love— but praise! praise! praise! For the sure- enwinding arms of cool- enfolding death.

Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet, Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome? Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all, 145 I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.

Approach strong deliveress, When it is so, when thou hast taken them I joyously sing the dead, Lost in the loving #oating ocean of thee, Laved in the #ood of thy bliss O death. 150

From me to thee glad serenades, Dances for thee I propose saluting thee, adornments and feastings for thee, And the sights of the open landscape and the high- spread sky are "tting, And life and the "elds, and the huge and thoughtful night.

The night in silence under many a star, 155 The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know, And the soul turning to thee O vast and well- veil’d death, And the body gratefully nestling close to thee.

Over the tree- tops I #oat thee a song, Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad "elds and the prairies

wide, 160 Over the dense- pack’d cities all and the teeming wharves and ways, I #oat this carol with joy, with joy to thee O death.

15

To the tally of my soul, Loud and strong kept up the gray- brown bird, With pure deliberate notes spreading "lling the night. 165

Loud in the pines and cedars dim, Clear in the freshness moist and the swamp- perfume, And I with my comrades there in the night.

While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed, As to long pa noramas of visions. 170

And I saw askant7 the armies, I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle- ̀ ags,

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Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierc’d with missiles I saw them,

And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody, And at last but a few shreds left on the staffs, (and all in silence,) 175 And the staffs all splinter’d and broken. I saw battle- corpses, myriads of them, And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them, I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war, But I saw they were not as was thought, 180 They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer’d not, The living remain’d and suffer’d, the mother suffer’d, And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer’d, And the armies that remain’d suffer’d.

16

Passing the visions, passing the night, 185 Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades’ hands, Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my soul, Victorious song, death’s outlet song, yet varying ever- altering song, As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling, `ooding the

night, Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again

bursting with joy, 190 Covering the earth and "lling the spread of the heaven, As that power ful psalm in the night I heard from recesses, Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart- shaped leaves, I leave thee there in the door- yard, blooming, returning with spring.

I cease from my song for thee, 195 From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, communing with

thee, O comrade lustrous with silver face in the night.

Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the night, The song, the wondrous chant of the gray- brown bird, And the tallying chant, the echo arous’d in my soul, 200 With the lustrous and drooping star with the countenance full of woe, With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird, Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep, for

the dead I loved so well, For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands— and this for his

dear sake, Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul, 205 There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.

1865–66, 1881

8 5

1. First published in 1871, Demo cratic Vistas drew on two essays, “Democracy” and “Personal- ism,” that Whitman had previously published in the New York Galaxy in 1867 and 1868. The text

is taken from Whitman’s revised version in Com- plete Prose Works (1892). 2. Pliant walking sticks.

From Demo cratic Vistas1

* * * Once, before the war, (Alas! I dare not say how many times the mood has come!) I, too, was "ll’d with doubt and gloom. A foreigner, an acute and good man, had impressively said to me, that day— putting in form, indeed, my own observations: “I have travel’d much in the United States, and watch’d their politicians, and listen’d to the speeches of the candidates, and read the jour- nals, and gone into the public houses, and heard the unguarded talk of men. And I have found your vaunted Amer i ca honeycomb’d from top to toe with in"delism, even to itself and its own programme. I have mark’d the bra- zen hell- faces of secession and slavery gazing de"antly from all the win- dows and doorways. I have everywhere found, primarily, thieves and scalli- wags arranging the nominations to of"ces, and sometimes "lling the of"ces themselves. I have found the north just as full of bad stuff as the south. Of the holders of public of"ce in the Nation or the States or their municipalities, I have found that not one in a hundred has been chosen by any spontaneous se lection of the outsiders, the people, but all have been nominated and put through by little or large caucuses of the politicians, and have got in by cor- rupt rings and electioneering, not capacity or desert. I have noticed how the millions of sturdy farmers and mechanics are thus the helpless supple- jacks2 of comparatively few politicians. And I have noticed more and more, the alarming spectacle of parties usurping the government, and openly and shamelessly wielding it for party purposes.”

Sad, serious, deep truths. Yet are there other, still deeper, amply confront- ing, dominating truths. Over those politicians and great and little rings, and over all their insolence and wiles, and over the powerfulest parties, looms a power, too sluggish maybe, but ever holding decisions and decrees in hand, ready, with stern pro cess, to execute them as soon as plainly needed— and at times, indeed, summarily crushing to atoms the mightiest parties, even in the hour of their pride.

In saner hours far dif fer ent are the amounts of these things from what, at "rst sight, they appear. Though it is no doubt impor tant who is elected gov- ernor, mayor, or legislator (and full of dismay when incompetent or vile ones get elected, as they sometimes do), there are other, quieter contingencies, in"nitely more impor tant. Shams, &c., will always be the show, like ocean’s scum; enough, if waters deep and clear make up the rest. Enough, that while the piled embroider’d shoddy gaud and fraud spreads to the super"cial eye, the hidden warp and weft are genuine, and will wear forever. Enough, in short, that the race, the land which could raise such as the late rebellion, could also put it down.

The average man of a land at last only is impor tant. He, in these States, remains immortal owner and boss, deriving good uses, somehow, out of any sort of servant in of"ce, even the basest; (certain universal requisites, and

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3.  I.e., Shakespeare (19th- century variant spell- ing).

4. Beyond the sea. 5. Of little worth.

their settled regularity and protection, being "rst secured,) a nation like ours, in a sort of geological formation state, trying continually new experiments, choosing new del e ga tions, is not served by the best men only, but sometimes more by those that provoke it—by the combats they arouse. Thus national rage, fury, discussion, &c., better than content. Thus, also, the warning sig- nals, invaluable for after times.

What is more dramatic than the spectacle we have seen repeated, and doubtless long shall see— the popu lar judgment taking the successful candi- dates on trial in the of"ces— standing off, as it were, and observing them and their doings for a while, and always giving, " nally, the "t, exactly due reward? I think, after all, the sublimest part of po liti cal history, and its cul- mination, is currently issuing from the American people. I know nothing grander, better exercise, better digestion, more positive proof of the past, the triumphant result of faith in human kind, than a well- contested American national election.

Then still the thought returns, (like the thread- passage in overtures,) giving the key and echo to these pages. When I pass to and fro, dif fer ent latitudes, dif fer ent seasons, beholding the crowds of the great cities, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Chicago, St.  Louis, San Francisco, New Orleans, Baltimore— when I mix with these interminable swarms of alert, turbulent, good- natured, in de pen dent citizens, mechanics, clerks, young persons—at the idea of this mass of men, so fresh and free, so loving and so proud, a singular awe falls upon me. I feel, with dejection and amazement, that among our geniuses and talented writers or speakers, few or none have yet really spoken to this people, created a single image- making work for them, or absorb’d the cen- tral spirit and the idiosyncrasies which are theirs— and which, thus, in highest ranges, so far remain entirely uncelebrated, unexpress’d.

Dominion strong is the body’s; dominion stronger is the mind’s. What has "ll’d, and "lls to- day our intellect, our fancy, furnishing the standards therein, is yet foreign. The great poems, Shakspere3 included, are poison- ous to the idea of the pride and dignity of the common people, the life blood of democracy. The models of our lit er a ture, as we get it from other lands, ultramarine,4 have had their birth in courts, and bask’d and grown in castle sunshine; all smells of princes’ favors. Of workers of a certain sort, we have indeed, plenty, contributing after their kind; many elegant, many learn’d, all complacent. But touch’d by the national test, or tried by the standards of demo cratic personality, they wither to ashes. I say I have not seen a single writer, artist, lecturer, or what not, that has confronted the voiceless but ever erect and active, pervading, under lying will and typic aspiration of the land, in a spirit kindred to itself. Do you call those genteel little creatures American poets? Do you term that perpetual, pistareen,5 paste- pot work, American art, American drama, taste, verse? I think I hear, echoed as from some mountain- top afar in the west, the scornful laugh of the Genius of these States.

Democracy, in silence, biding its time, ponders its own ideals, not of lit- er a ture and art only— not of men only, but of women. The idea of the women

6. The whole pres ent system of the of"cering and personnel of the army and navy of these States, and the spirit and letter of their trebly aristocratic rules and regulations, is a monstrous exotic, a nuisance and revolt, and belong here

just as much as orders of nobility, or the Pope’s council of cardinals. I say if the pres ent theory of our army and navy is sensible and true, then the rest of Amer i ca is an unmitigated fraud [Whit- man’s note].

of Amer i ca, (extricated from this daze, this fossil and unhealthy air which hangs about the word lady,) develop’d, raised to become the robust equals, workers, and, it may be, even practical and po liti cal deciders with the men— greater than man, we may admit, through their divine maternity, always their towering, emblematical attribute— but great, at any rate, as man, in all departments; or, rather, capable of being so, soon as they realize it, and can bring themselves to give up toys and "ctions, and launch forth, as men do, amid real, in de pen dent, stormy life.

Then, as towards our thought’s "nalè, (and, in that, over- arching the true scholar’s lesson,) we have to say there can be no complete or epical pre sen ta- tion of democracy in the aggregate, or anything like it, at this day, because its doctrines will only be effectually incarnated in any one branch, when, in all, their spirit is at the root and centre. Far, far, indeed, stretch, in distance, our Vistas! How much is still to be disentangled, freed! How long it takes to make this American world see that it is, in itself, the "nal authority and reliance!

Did you, too, O friend, suppose democracy was only for elections, for pol- itics, and for a party name? I say democracy is only of use there that it may pass on and come to its `ower and fruits in manners, in the highest forms of interaction between men, and their beliefs—in religion, lit er a ture, col- leges, and schools— democracy in all public and private life, and in the army and navy.6 I have intimated that, as a paramount scheme, it has yet few or no full realizers and believers. I do not see, either, that it owes any serious thanks to noted propagandists or champions, or has been essentially help’d, though often harm’d, by them. It has been and is carried on by all the moral forces, and by trade, "nance, machinery, intercommunications, and, in fact, by all the developments of history, and can no more be stopp’d than the tides, or the earth in its orbit. Doubtless, also, it resides, crude and latent, well down in the hearts of the fair average of the American- born people, mainly in the agricultural regions. But it is not yet, there or anywhere, the fully- receiv’d, the fervid, the absolute faith.

I submit, therefore, that the fruition of democracy, on aught like a grand scale, resides altogether in the future. As, under any profound and compre- hensive view of the gorgeous- composite feudal world, we see in it, through the long ages and cycles of ages, the results of a deep, integral, human and divine princi ple, or fountain, from which issued laws, ecclesia, manners, institutes, costumes, personalities, poems, (hitherto unequall’d,) faithfully partaking of their source, and indeed only arising either to betoken it, or to furnish parts of that varied- ̀ owing display, whose centre was one and abso- lute—so, long ages hence, shall the due historian or critic make at least an equal retrospect, an equal history for the demo cratic princi ple. It too must be adorn’d, credited with its results— then, when it, with imperial power, through amplest time, has dominated mankind— has been the source and test of all the moral, esthetic, social, po liti cal, and religious expressions and

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institutes of the civilized world— has begotten them in spirit and in form, and has carried them to its own unpre ce dented heights— has had, (it is pos- si ble,) monastics and ascetics, more numerous, more devout than the monks and priests of all previous creeds— has sway’d the ages with a breadth and rectitude tallying Nature’s own— has fashion’d, systematized, and trium- phantly "nish’d and carried out, in its own interest, and with unparallel’d success, a new earth and a new man.

Thus we presume to write, as it were, upon things that exist not, and travel by maps yet unmade, and a blank. But the throes of birth are upon us; and we have something of this advantage in seasons of strong formations, doubts, suspense— for then the af`atus of such themes haply may fall upon us, more or less; and then, hot from surrounding war and revolution, our speech, though without polish’d coherence, and a failure by the standard called crit- icism, comes forth, real at least as the lightnings.

And may-be we, these days, have, too, our own reward—(for there are yet some, in all lands, worthy to be so encouraged.) Though not for us the joy of entering at the last the conquer’d city— not ours the chance ever to see with our own eyes the peerless power and splendid eclat7 of the demo cratic princi ple, arriv’d at meridian, "lling the world with effulgence and majesty far beyond those of past history’s kings, or all dynastic sway— there is yet, to whoever is eligible among us, the prophetic vision, the joy of being toss’d in the brave turmoil of these times— the promulgation and the path, obedi- ent, lowly reverent to the voice, the gesture of the god, or holy ghost, which others see not, hear not— with the proud consciousness that amid what ever clouds, seductions, or heart- wearying postponements, we have never deserted, never despair’d, never abandon’d the faith.

* * *

1871, 1892

7. Brilliant success (French).

EMILY DICKINSON 1830–1886

Emily Dickinson is recognized as one of the greatest American poets, a poet who continues to exert an enormous in`uence on the way writers think about the possibilities of poetic craft and vocation. Little known in her own lifetime, she was "rst publicized in almost mythic terms as a reclusive, eccentric, death- obsessed spin- ster who wrote in "ts and starts as the spirit moved her— the image of the woman poet at her oddest. As with all myths, this one has some truth to it, but the real ity is more in ter est ing and complicated. Though she lived in her parents’ homes for all but a year of her life, she was acutely aware of current events and drew on them for some

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of her poetry. Her dazzlingly complex poems— compressed statements abounding in startling imagery and marked by an extraordinary vocabulary— explore a wide range of subjects: psychic pain and joy, the relationship of self to nature, the intensely spir- itual, and the intensely ordinary. Her poems about death confront its grim real ity with honesty, humor, curiosity, and above all a refusal to be comforted. In her poems about religion, she expressed piety and hostility, and she was fully capable of moving within the same poem from religious consolation to a rejection of doctrinal piety and a querying of God’s plans for the universe. Her many love poems seem to have emerged in part from close relationships with at least one woman and several men. It is some- times pos si ble to extract autobiography from her poems, but she was not a confessional poet; rather, she used personae— "rst- person speakers—to dramatize the vari ous situ- ations, moods, and perspectives she explored in her lyr ics. Though each of her poems is individually short, when collected in one volume her nearly eigh teen hundred surviving poems (she prob ably wrote hundreds more that were lost) have the feel of an epic produced by a person who devoted much of her life to her art.

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Mas sa- chu setts, the second child of Emily Norcross Dickinson and Edward Dickinson. Eco- nom ically, po liti cally, and intellectually, the Dickinsons were among Amherst’s most prominent families. Edward Dickinson, a lawyer, served as a state representa- tive and a state senator. He helped found Amherst College as a Calvinist alternative to the more liberal Harvard and Yale, and was its trea surer for thirty- six years. Dur- ing his term in the national House of Representatives (1853–54), Emily visited him in Washington, D.C., and stayed brie`y in Philadelphia on her way home, but travel of any kind was unusual for her. She lived most of her life in the spacious Dickinson family house in Amherst called the Homestead. Among her closest friends and life- long allies were her brother, Austin, a year and a half older than she, and her younger sister, Lavinia. In 1856, when her brother married Emily’s close friend Susan Gil- bert, the couple moved into what was called the Evergreens, a house next door to the Homestead, built for the newlyweds by Edward Dickinson. Neither Emily nor Lavinia married. The two women stayed with their parents, as was typical of unmar- ried middle- and upper- class women of the time. New Eng land in this period had many more women than men in these groups, owing to the exodus of the male popu- lation during the California gold rush years (1849 and after) and the carnage of the Civil War. For Dickinson, home was a place of “In"nite power.”

Dickinson attended Amherst Acad emy from 1840 through 1846, and then boarded at the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary— located in South Hadley, some ten miles from Amherst— for less than a year, never completing the three- year course of study. The school, presided over by the devoutly Calvinist Mary Lyon, was especially inter- ested in the students’ religious development, and hoped that those needing to sup- port themselves or their families would become missionaries. Students were regularly queried as to whether they “professed faith,” had “hope,” or were resigned to “no hope”; Dickinson remained adamantly among the small group of “no hopes.” Argu- ably, her assertion of no hope was a matter of de"ance, a refusal to capitulate to the demands of orthodoxy. A year after leaving Mount Holyoke, Dickinson, in a letter to a friend, described her failure to convert with darkly comic glee: “I am one of the lingering bad ones,” she said. But she went on to assert that it was her very “failure” to conform to the conventional expectations of her evangelical culture that helped liberate her to think on her own—to “pause,” as she put it, “and ponder, and ponder.”

Once back at home, Dickinson embarked on a lifelong course of reading. Her deepest literary debts were to the Bible and classic En glish authors, such as Shakespeare and Milton. Through the national magazines the family subscribed to and books ordered from Boston, she encountered the full range of the En glish and American lit er a ture of her time, including among Americans Longfellow, Holmes, Lowell, Hawthorne, and Emerson. She read the novels of Charles Dickens as they appeared and knew the poems of Robert Browning and the British poet laureate,

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Tennyson. But the En glish contemporaries who mattered most to her were the Brontë sisters, George Eliot, and above all, as an example of a successful con temporary woman poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

No one has persuasively traced the precise stages of Dickinson’s artistic growth from this supposedly “somber Girl” to the young woman who, within a few years of her return from Mount Holyoke, began writing a new kind of poetry, with its dis- tinctive voice, style, and transformation of traditional form. She found a paradoxi- cal poetic freedom within the con"nes of the meter of the “fourteener”— seven- beat lines usually broken into stanzas alternating four and three beats— familiar to her from earliest childhood. This is the form of nursery rhymes, ballads, church hymns, and some classic En glish poetry— strongly rhythmical, easy to memorize and recite. But Dickinson veered sharply from this form’s expectations. If Walt Whitman at this time was heeding Emerson’s call for a “metre- making argument” by turning to an open form—as though rules did not exist— Dickinson made use of this and other familiar forms only to break their rules. She used dashes and syntactical fragments to convey her pursuit of a truth that could best be communicated indirectly; these fragments dispensed with prosy verbiage and went directly to the core. Her use of enjambment (the syntactical technique of running past the conventional stopping place of a line or a stanza break) forced her reader to learn where to pause to collect the sense before reading on, often creating dizzying ambiguities. She multiplied aural possibilities by making use of what later critics termed “off” or “slant” rhymes that, as with her metrical and syntactical experimentations, contributed to the expres- sive power of her poetry. Poetic forms thought to be simple, predictable, and safe were altered irrevocably by Dickinson’s language experiments.

Dickinson wrote approximately half of her extant poems during the Civil War. Unsurprisingly, there has been increasing critical interest in Dickinson as a Civil War poet whose work can be read in relation to the Civil War poetry of Melville and Whitman. This edition of the Norton Anthology adds four poems (518, 545, 704, 1212) that appear to have been inspired by the speci"cs of the Civil War ( battles, courage, the enormity of the carnage). There are risks to interpreting any Dickinson poem as only referring to par tic u lar events in her life or the world beyond her home, but there are also risks in overemphasizing Dickinson’s isolation from current events and popu lar culture. In her poetry, which at times can appear to be hauntingly pri- vate, Dickinson regularly responded to her nineteenth- century world, which she engaged through her reading, conversations, and friendships, epistolary and other wise.

Writing about religion, science, music, nature, books, and con temporary events both national and local, Dickinson often presented her poetic ideas as terse, strik- ing de"nitions or propositions, or dramatic narrative scenes, in a highly abstracted moment or setting, often at the bound aries between life and death. The result was a poetry that focused on the speaker’s response to a situation rather than the details of the situation itself. Her “nature” poems offer precise observations that are often as much about psychological and spiritual matters as about the speci"cs of nature. The sight of a familiar bird— the robin—in the poem beginning “A Bird, came down the Walk” leads to a statement about nature’s strangeness rather than the expected statement about friendly animals. Whitman generally seems intoxicated by his abil- ity to appropriate nature for his own purposes; Dickinson’s nature is much more resistant to human schemes, and the poet’s experiences of nature range from a sense of its hostility to an ability to become an “Inebriate of air” and “Debauchee of Dew.” Openly expressive of sexual and romantic longings, her personae reject conventional gender roles. In one of her most famous poems, for instance, she imagines herself as a “Loaded Gun” with “the power to kill.”

Dickinson’s private letters, in par tic u lar three drafts of letters to an unidenti"ed “Master,” and dozens of love poems have convinced biographers that she fell in love a number of times; candidates include Benjamin Newton, a law clerk in her father’s of"ce; one or more married men; and Susan Gilbert Dickinson, the friend who

became her sister- in- law. The exact nature of any of these relationships is hard to determine, in part because Dickinson’s letters and poems could just as easily be taken as poetic meditations on desire as writings directed to speci"c people. On the evi- dence of the approximately "ve hundred letters that Dickinson wrote to Susan, many of which contained drafts or copies of her latest poems, that relationship melded love, friendship, intellectual exchange, and art. One of the men she was involved with was Samuel Bowles, editor of the Spring"eld Republican, whom Dickinson described (in a letter to Bowles himself) as having “the most triumphant face out of paradise”; another was the Reverend Charles Wadsworth, whom she met in Philadelphia in 1855 and who visited her in Amherst in 1860. Evidence suggests that she was upset by his deci- sion to move to San Francisco in 1862, but none of her letters to Wadsworth survive.

Knowing her powers as a poet, Dickinson wanted to be published, but only around a dozen poems appeared during her lifetime. She sent many poems to Bowles, per- haps hoping he would publish them in the Republican. Although he did publish a few, he also edited them into more conventional shape. She also sent poems to edi- tor Josiah Holland at Scribner’s, who chose not to publish her. She sent four poems to Thomas Went worth Higginson, a contributing editor at the Atlantic Monthly, after he printed “Letter to a Young Contributor” in the April 1862 issue. Her cover letter of April 15, 1862, asked him, “Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?” (See the two Dickinson letters to Higginson on pp. 110–11.) Higginson, like other editors, saw her formal innovations as imperfections. But he remained intrigued by Dickinson and in 1869 invited her to visit him in Boston. When she refused, he vis- ited her in 1870. He would eventually become one of the editors of her posthu- mously published poetry.

But if Dickinson sought publication, she also regarded it as “the Auction / Of the Mind of Man,” as she put it in poem 788; at the very least, she was unwilling to submit to the changes, which she called “surgery,” imposed on her poems by edi- tors. Some critics have argued that Dickinson’s letters constituted a form of publi- cation, for Dickinson included poems in many of her letters. Even more intriguing, beginning around 1858 Dickinson began to rec ord her poems on white, unlined paper, in some cases marking moments of textual revision, and then folded and stacked the sheets and sewed groups of them together in what are called fascicles. She created thirty such fascicles, ranging in length from sixteen to twenty- four pages; and there is evidence that she worked at the groupings, thinking about chronology, subject matter, and speci"c thematic orderings within each. These fascicles were left for others to discover after her death, neatly stacked in a drawer. It can be specu- lated that Dickinson, realizing that her unconventional poetry would not be pub- lished in her own lifetime as written, became a sort of self- publisher. Critics remain uncertain, however, about just how self- conscious her arrangements were and argue over what is lost and gained by considering individual poems in the context of their fascicle placement. There is also debate about whether the posthumous publication of Dickinson’s manuscript poetry violates the visual look of the poems— their incon- sistent dashes and even some of the designs that Dickinson added to par tic u lar poems. The se lections printed here include a photographic reproduction of poem 269, which can be compared to the now- standard printed version, also included here.

Dickinson’s "nal de cades were marked by health prob lems and a succession of losses. Beginning in the early 1860s she suffered from eye pain. She consulted with an ophthalmologist in Boston in 1864 and remained concerned about losing her vision. In 1874 her father died in a Boston hotel room after taking an injection of morphine for his pain, and one year later her mother had a stroke and would remain bedridden until her death in 1882. Her beloved eight- year- old nephew, Gilbert, died of typhoid fever in 1883, next door at the Evergreens; and in 1885, her close friend from childhood, Helen Hunt Jackson, who had asked to be Dickinson’s literary executor, died suddenly in San Francisco. Dickinson’s seclusion late in life may have been a response to her grief at these losses or a concern for her own health, but ultimately a focus on the

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supposed eccentricity of her desire for privacy draws attention away from the huge number of poems she wrote— she may well have secluded herself so that she could follow her vocation. She died on May 15, 1886, perhaps from a kidney disorder called “Bright’s Disease,” the of"cial diagnosis, but just as likely from hypertension.

In 1881 the astronomer David Todd, with his young wife, Mabel Loomis Todd, arrived in Amherst to direct the Amherst College Observatory. The next year, Aus- tin Dickinson and Mabel Todd began an affair that lasted until Austin’s death in 1895. Despite this turn of events, Mabel Todd and Emily Dickinson established a friendship without actually meeting (Todd saw Dickinson once, in her cof"n), and Todd deci ded that the poet was “in many re spects a genius.” Soon after Dickinson’s death, Mabel Todd (at Emily’s sister Lavinia’s invitation) painstakingly transcribed many of her poems. The subsequent preservation and publication of her poetry and letters was initiated and carried forth by Todd. She persuaded Higginson to help her see a posthumous collection of poems into print in 1890 and a second volume of poems in 1891; she went on to publish a collection of Dickinson’s letters in 1894 and a third volume of poems in 1896. Susan Dickinson and her daughter, Martha Dickinson Bianchi, also published a few of Dickinson’s poems in journals such as The Century. Though Dickinson’s poetry perplexed some critics, it impressed many others; the three volumes were popu lar, going through more than ten printings and selling over ten thousand copies. To make Dickinson’s violation of the laws of meter more palatable, Todd and Higginson edited some of the poems heavi ly. This edition of the Norton Anthology reprints one of Dickinson’s poems, “ There’s a cer- tain Slant of light” (320), as it was edited by Todd and Higginson so that readers can see Dickinson’s poetry as it would have been printed in the late nineteenth century.

By 1900 or so, Dickinson’s work had fallen out of favor, and had Martha Dickin- son Bianchi not resumed publication of her aunt’s poetry in 1914 (she published eight volumes of Dickinson’s work between 1914 and 1937), Dickinson’s writings might never have achieved the audience they have today. Taken together, the editorial labors of Todd, Higginson, Susan Dickinson, and Bianchi set in motion the critical and textual work that would help establish Dickinson as one of the great American poets. They also made her poetry available to the American modernists, poets such as Hart Crane and Marianne Moore; Dickinson and Whitman are the nineteenth- century poets who exerted the greatest in`uence on American poetry to come.

The texts of the poems, and the numbering, are from R. W. Franklin’s one- volume edition, The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition (1999), which draws on his three- volume variorum, The Poems of Emily Dickinson (1998). The dating of Dick- inson’s poetry remains uncertain. The date following each poem corresponds to Franklin’s estimate of Dickinson’s "rst "nished draft; if the poem was published in Dickinson’s lifetime, that date is supplied as well.

39

I never lost as much but twice - And that was in the sod. Twice have I stood a beggar Before the door of God!

Angels - twice descending 5 Reimbursed my store - Burglar! Banker - Father! I am poor once more!

1858

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1. Dickinson published a version of this poem in the Brooklyn Daily Union, April 27, 1864, and it was republished in A Masque of Poets (1878), edited by her friend Helen Hunt Jackson. When printed in Masque, most reviewers thought it was by Emerson. 2. I.e., triumphed.

1. Dickinson published a version of this poem in the Spring"eld Daily Republican, March  1, 1862. 2. Translucent, white chalky material. 3. Chief magistrates in the republics of Venice and Genoa from the 11th through the 16th centuries.

1121

Success is counted sweetest By those who ne’er succeed. To comprehend a nectar Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple Host 5 Who took the Flag2 today Can tell the de"nition So clear of Victory

As he defeated - dying - On whose forbidden ear 10 The distant strains of triumph Burst agonized and clear!

1859, 1864

1241

Safe in their Alabaster2 Chambers - Untouched by Morning - And untouched by noon - Sleep the meek members of the Resurrection, Rafter of Satin and Roof of Stone - 5

Grand go the Years, In the Crescent above them - Worlds scoop their Arcs - And Firmaments - row - Diadems - drop - 10 And Doges3 - surrender - Soundless as Dots, On a Disc of Snow.

1859, 1862

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1. Angels.

202

“Faith” is a "ne invention For Gentlemen who see! But Microscopes are prudent In an Emergency!

1861

207

I taste a liquor never brewed - From Tankards scooped in Pearl - Not all the Frankfort Berries Yield such an Alcohol!

Inebriate of air - am I - 5 And Debauchee of Dew - Reeling - thro’ endless summer days - From inns of molten Blue -

When “Landlords” turn the drunken Bee Out of the Foxglove’s door - 10 When Butter`ies - renounce their “drams” - I shall but drink the more!

Till Seraphs1 swing their snowy Hats - And Saints - to win dows run - To see the little Tippler 15 Leaning against the - Sun!

1861

225

I’m “wife” - I’ve "nished that - That other state - I’m Czar - I’m “ Woman” now - It’s safer so -

How odd the Girl’s life looks 5 Behind this soft Eclipse - I think that Earth feels so To folks in Heaven - now -

1. Open- sleeved ceremonial robe worn by clergymen.

2. Church custodian.

This being comfort - then That other kind - was pain - 10 But Why compare? I’m “Wife”! Stop there!

1861

236

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church - I keep it, staying at Home - With a Bobolink for a Chorister - And an Orchard, for a Dome -

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice1 5 I, just wear my Wings - And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church, Our little Sexton2 - sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman - And the sermon is never long, 10 So instead of getting to Heaven, at last - I’m going, all along.

1861

269

Wild nights - Wild nights! Were I with thee Wild nights should be Our luxury!

Futile - the winds - 5 To a Heart in port - Done with the Compass - Done with the Chart!

Rowing in Eden - Ah - the Sea! 10 Might I but moor - to night - In thee!

1861

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Poem 269 of fascicle 11, from vol. 1 of The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson (1981), ed. R. W. Franklin, reproduced with the permission of Harvard University Press. Dickinson’s handwriting, which changed over the years, can be dated by comparison with her letters.

320

There’s a certain Slant of light, Winter After noons - That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes -

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us - 5 We can "nd no scar, But internal difference - Where the Meanings, are -

None may teach it - Any - ’Tis the Seal Despair - 10 An imperial af`iction Sent us of the Air -

When it comes, the Landscape listens - Shadows - hold their breath - When it goes, ’tis like the Distance 15 On the look of Death -

1862

There’s a certain slant of light1

There’s a certain slant of light, On winter after noons, That oppresses, like the weight Of cathedral tunes.

Heavenly hurt it gives us; 5 We can "nd no scar, But internal difference Where the meanings are.

None may teach it anything, ’T is the seal, despair, - 10 An imperial af`iction Sent us of the air.

When it comes, the landscape listens, Shadows hold their breath; When it goes, ’t is like the distance On the look of death.

1890

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1. The text here shows poem 320 as it was printed in The Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Went worth Higginson

and published in 1890. Note the changes that Todd and Higginson made to Dickinson’s punc- tuation, capitalization, and even word choice.

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339

I like a look of Agony, Because I know it’s true - Men do not sham Convulsion, Nor simulate, a Throe -

The eyes glaze once - and that is Death - 5 Impossible to feign The Beads opon the Forehead By homely Anguish strung.

1862

340

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, And Mourners to and fro Kept treading - treading - till it seemed That Sense was breaking through -

And when they all were seated, 5 A Ser vice, like a Drum - Kept beating - beating - till I thought My mind was going numb -

And then I heard them lift a Box And creak across my Soul 10 With those same Boots of Lead, again, Then Space - began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell, And Being, but an Ear, And I, and Silence, some strange Race 15 Wrecked, solitary, here -

And then a Plank in Reason, broke, And I dropped down, and down - And hit a World, at every plunge, And Finished knowing - then - 20

1862

353

I’m ceded - I’ve stopped being Their’s - The name They dropped opon my face With water, in the country church

1. Splashless.

Is "nished using, now, And They can put it with my Dolls, 5 My childhood, and the string of spools, I’ve "nished threading - too -

Baptized, before, without the choice, But this time, consciously, Of Grace - Unto supremest name - 10 Called to my Full - The Crescent dropped - Existence’s whole Arc, "lled up, With one - small Diadem -

My second Rank - too small the "rst - Crowned - Crowing - on my Father’s breast - 15 A half unconscious Queen - But this time - Adequate - Erect, With Will to choose, Or to reject, And I choose, just a Crown - 20

1862

359

A Bird, came down the Walk - He did not know I saw - He bit an Angle Worm in halves And ate the fellow, raw,

And then, he drank a Dew From a con ve nient Grass - 5 And then hopped sidewise to the Wall To let a Beetle pass -

He glanced with rapid eyes, That hurried all abroad - 10 They looked like frightened Beads, I thought, He stirred his Velvet Head. -

Like one in danger, Cautious, I offered him a Crumb, And he unrolled his feathers, 15 And rowed him softer Home -

Than Oars divide the Ocean, Too silver for a seam, Or Butter`ies, off Banks of Noon, Leap, plashless1 as they swim. 20

1862

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372

After great pain, a formal feeling comes - The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs - The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’ And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?

The Feet, mechanical, go round - 5 A Wooden way Of Ground, or Air, or Ought - Regardless grown, A Quartz contentment, like a stone -

This is the Hour of Lead - 10 Remembered, if outlived, As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow - First - Chill - then Stupor - then the letting go -

1862

409

The Soul selects her own Society - Then - shuts the Door - To her divine Majority - Pres ent no more -

Unmoved - she notes the Chariots - pausing - 5 At her low Gate - Unmoved - an Emperor be kneeling Opon her Mat -

I’ve known her - from an ample nation - Choose One - 10 Then - close the Valves of her attention - Like Stone -

1862

448

I died for Beauty - but was scarce Adjusted in the Tomb When One who died for Truth, was lain In an adjoining Room -

He questioned softly “Why I failed”? 5 “For Beauty”, I replied -

“And I - for Truth - Themself are One - We Bretheren, are”, He said -

And so, as Kinsmen, met a Night - We talked between the Rooms - 10 Until the Moss had reached our lips - And covered up - Our names -

1862

477

He fumbles at your Soul As Players at the Keys - Before they drop full Music on - He stuns you by Degrees -

Prepares your brittle nature 5 For the ethereal Blow By fainter Hammers - further heard - Then nearer - Then so - slow -

Your Breath - has time to straighten - Your Brain - to bubble cool - 10 Deals One - imperial Thunderbolt - That scalps your naked soul -

When Winds hold Forests in their Paws - The Universe - is still -

1862

479

Because I could not stop for Death - He kindly stopped for me - The Carriage held but just Ourselves - And Immortality.

We slowly drove - He knew no haste 5 And I had put away My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility -

We passed the School, where Children strove At Recess - in the Ring - 10 We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain - We passed the Setting Sun -

Or rather - He passed Us - The Dews drew quivering and Chill -

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1. Delicate, light fabric. 2. Thin silk. “Tippet”: scarf for covering neck and shoulders. 3. Decorative molding beneath a roof. 1. River along the mid- Atlantic coast, `owing from Mary land, through Washington, D.C., and into the Virginias. 2. This speci"c reference may have been intended to evoke a speci"c battle, such as the battle of Antietam near Sharpsburg, Mary land,

where over 20,000 soldiers were killed and injured on a single day (September  17, 1862). Despite the reference to Mary land, some critics believe the poem was inspired by the death of Frazar Stearns (1840–1862), the son of Amherst College’s president, who died in March  1862 at the Battle of New Bern in North Carolina. Dick- inson lamented the death in a letter to her cous- ins Louise and Frances Norcross, referring to “brave Frazar.”

For only Gossamer,1 my Gown - 15 My Tippet - only Tulle2 -

We paused before a House that seemed A Swelling of the Ground - The Roof was scarcely vis i ble - The Cornice3 - in the Ground - 20

Since then - ’tis Centuries - and yet Feels shorter than the Day I "rst surmised the Horses’ Heads Were toward Eternity -

1862

518

When I was small, a Woman died - Today - her Only Boy Went up from the Potomac1 - His face all Victory

To look at her - How slowly 5 The Seasons must have turned Till Bullets clipt an Angle And He passed quickly round -

If pride shall be in Paradise - Ourself cannot decide - 10 Of their imperial conduct - No person testi"ed -

But, proud in Apparition - That Woman and her Boy Pass back and forth, before my Brain 15 As even in the sky -

I’m con"dent, that Bravoes - Perpetual break abroad For Braveries, remote as this In Yonder Mary land2 - 20

1863

519

This is my letter to the World That never wrote to Me - The simple News that Nature told - With tender Majesty

Her Message is committed 5 To Hands I cannot see - For love of Her - Sweet - countrymen - Judge tenderly - of Me

1863

545

They dropped like Flakes - They dropped like stars - Like Petals from a Rose - When suddenly across the June A Wind with "n gers - goes - 5

They perished in the seamless Grass - No eyes could "nd the place - But God can summon every face On his Repealless - List.

1863

591

I heard a Fly buzz - when I died - The Stillness in the Room Was like the Stillness in the Air - Between the Heaves of Storm -

The Eyes around - had wrung them dry - 5 And Breaths were gathering "rm For that last Onset - when the King Be witnessed - in the Room -

I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away What portion of me be 10 Assignable - and then it was There interposed a Fly -

With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz - Between the light - and me - And then the Win dows failed - and then 15 I could not see to see -

1863

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598

The Brain - is wider than the Sky - For - put them side by side - The one the other will contain With ease - and You - beside -

The Brain is deeper than the sea - 5 For - hold them - Blue to Blue - The one the other will absorb - As Sponges - Buckets - do -

The Brain is just the weight of God - For - Heft them - Pound for Pound - 10 And they will differ - if they do - As Syllable from Sound -

1863

620

Much Madness is divinest Sense - To a discerning Eye - Much Sense - the starkest Madness - ’Tis the Majority In this, as all, prevail - 5 Assent - and you are sane - Demur - you’re straightway dangerous - And handled with a Chain -

1863

656

I started Early - Took my Dog - And visited the Sea - The Mermaids in the Basement Came out to look at me -

And Frigates - in the Upper Floor 5 Extended Hempen Hands - Presuming Me to be a Mouse - Aground - opon the Sands -

But no Man moved Me - till the Tide Went past my simple Shoe - 10 And past my Apron - and my Belt And past my Boddice - too -

And made as He would eat me up - As wholly as a Dew Opon a Dandelion’s Sleeve - 15 And then - I started - too -

And He - He followed - close behind - I felt His Silver Heel Opon my Ancle - Then My Shoes Would over`ow with Pearl - 20

Until We met the Solid Town - No One He seemed to know - And bowing - with a Mighty look - At me - The Sea withdrew -

1863

704

My Portion is Defeat - today - A paler luck than Victory - Less Paeans - fewer Bells - The Drums dont follow Me - with tunes - Defeat - a somewhat slower - means - 5 More Arduous than Balls -

’Tis populous with Bone and stain - And Men too straight to stoop again - And Piles of solid Moan - And Chips of Blank - in Boyish Eyes - 10 And scraps of Prayer - And Death’s surprise, Stamped vis i ble - in stone -

There’s somewhat prouder, Over there - The Trumpets tell it to the Air - 15 How dif fer ent Victory To Him who has it - and the One Who to have had it, would have been Contenteder - to die -

1863

P O E M S | 1 0 5

1 0 6 | E M I L Y D I C K I N S O N

706

I cannot live with You - It would be Life - And Life is over there - Behind the Shelf

The Sexton keeps the key to - 5 Putting up Our Life - His Porcelain - Like a Cup -

Discarded of the House wife - Quaint - or Broke - 10

A new Sevres1 pleases - Old Ones crack -

I could not die - with You - For One must wait To shut the Other’s Gaze down - 15 You - could not -

And I - Could I stand by And see You - freeze - Without my Right of Frost - Death’s privilege? 20

Nor could I rise - with You - Because Your Face Would put out Jesus’ - That New Grace

Glow plain - and foreign 25 On my homesick eye - Except that You than He Shone closer by -

They’d judge Us - How - For You - served Heaven - You know, 30 Or sought to - I could not -

Because You saturated sight - And I had no more eyes For sordid excellence 35 As Paradise

And were You lost, I would be - Though my name

1. Porcelain china (French), usually elaborately decorated.

1. Reference to Mount Vesuvius, the active volcano in southern Italy that destroyed Pompeii (79 c.e.).

Rang loudest On the Heavenly fame - 40

And were You - saved - And I - condemned to be Where You were not That self - were Hell to me -

So we must meet apart - 45 You there - I - here - With just the Door ajar That Oceans are - and Prayer - And that White Sustenance - Despair - 50

1863

764

My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun - In Corners - till a Day The Owner passed - identi"ed - And carried Me away -

And now We roam in Sovreign Woods - 5 And now We hunt the Doe - And every time I speak for Him The Mountains straight reply -

And do I smile, such cordial light Opon the Valley glow - 10 It is as a Vesuvian1 face Had let it’s plea sure through

And when at Night - Our good Day done - I guard My Master’s Head - ’Tis better than the Eider Duck’s 15 Deep Pillow - to have shared -

To foe of His - I’m deadly foe - None stir the second time - On whom I lay a Yellow Eye - Or an emphatic Thumb - 20

Though I than He - may longer live He longer must - than I - For I have but the power to kill, Without - the power to die -

1863

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1. Dickinson published a version of this poem in the Spring"eld Daily Republican, February 14, 1866.

10961

A narrow Fellow in the Grass Occasionally rides - You may have met him? Did you not His notice instant is -

The Grass divides as with a Comb - 5 A spotted Shaft is seen, And then it closes at your Feet And opens further on -

He likes a Boggy Acre - A Floor too cool for Corn - 10 But when a Boy and Barefoot I more than once at Noon

Have passed I thought a Whip Lash Unbraiding in the Sun When stooping to secure it 15 It wrinkled And was gone -

Several of Nature’s People I know and they know me I feel for them a transport Of Cordiality 20

But never met this Fellow Attended or alone Without a tighter Breathing And Zero at the Bone.

1865, 1866

1212

My Triumph lasted till the Drums Had left the Dead alone And then I dropped my Victory And chastened stole along To where the "nished Faces 5 Conclusion turned on me And then I hated Glory And wished myself were They.

What is to be is best descried When it has also been - 10 Could Prospect taste of Retrospect

1. The poem was transcribed by Mabel Loomis Todd, and there is no surviving manuscript; it is dif"- cult to determine a probable date of composition.

The Tyrannies of Men Were Tenderer, diviner The Transitive toward - A Bayonet’s contrition 15 Is nothing to the Dead -

1871

1263

Tell all the truth but tell it slant - Success in Cir cuit lies Too bright for our in"rm Delight The Truth’s superb surprise As Lightning to the Children eased 5 With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind -

1872

1668

Apparently with no surprise To any happy Flower The Frost beheads it at it’s play - In accidental power - The blonde Assassin passes on - 5 The Sun proceeds unmoved To mea sure off another Day For an Approving God -

1884

17731

My life closed twice before it’s close; It yet remains to see If Immortality unveil A third event to me,

So huge, so hopeless to conceive 5 As these that twice befell. Parting is all we know of heaven, And all we need of hell.

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Letters to Thomas Went worth Higginson1

15 April 1862 Mr Higginson,

Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?2 The Mind is so near itself—it cannot see, distinctly— and I have none

to ask— Should you think it breathed— and had you the leisure to tell me, I

should feel quick gratitude— If I make the mistake— that you dared to tell me— would give me

sincerer honor— toward you— I enclose my name— asking you, if you please— Sir—to tell me what is

true? That you will not betray me—it is needless to ask— since Honor is it’s

own pawn— 3

25 April 1862 Mr Higginson,

Your kindness claimed earlier gratitude— but I was ill— and write today, from my pillow:

Thank you for the surgery—it was not so painful as I supposed. I bring you others—as you ask— though they might not differ—

While my thought is undressed— I can make the distinction, but when I put them in the Gown— they look alike, and numb.

You asked how old I was? I made no verse— but one or two— until this winter— Sir—

I had a terror— since September— I could tell to none— and so I sing, as the Boy does by the Burying Ground— because I am afraid— You inquire my Books— For Poets— I have Keats— and Mr and Mrs Browning. For Prose— Mr Ruskin - Sir Thomas Browne— and the Rev- elations.4 I went to school— but in your manner of the phrase— had no education. When a little Girl, I had a friend, who taught me Immortality— but venturing too near, himself—he never returned— Soon after, my Tutor, died5— and for several years, my Lexicon— was

1. Dickinson "rst wrote Higginson (1823–1911) on April 15, 1862, responding to his article “Let- ter to a Young Contributor,” which he published in the Atlantic Monthly earlier in the month. A contributing editor at the magazine, Higginson, who had trained at Harvard Divinity School, had recently resigned his ministry. As an editor, he was intrigued by Dickinson’s poetry, but he never offered to publish her work. In her letter of April 25, 1862, Dickinson refers to the editorial “surgery” he did on the poems she sent him. Over the next twenty- four years, she sent him many letters (including one just before she died) and nearly 100 poems. He visited her twice at her Amherst home, in 1870 and 1873. When he helped to publish the "rst two volumes of her poems posthumously, Higginson edited the poems, giving them more conventional rhyme

and meter. Both letters are taken from Emily Dickinson: Selected Letters (1971), ed. Thomas H. Johnson. 2. Dickinson sent four poems with the letter, including 124, “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers.” 3. Instead of signing the letter, Dickinson enclosed a card with her signature. 4. Revelation is the concluding prophetic book of the New Testament. Dickinson refers to the En glish poets John Keats (1795–1821), Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Robert Browning; the En glish art critic and social theorist John Ruskin (1819–1900); and the En glish physician and writer Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682). 5. The friend and tutor was prob ably Benjamin Franklin Newton (1821–1853), who had studied law in her father’s of"ce during the 1840s.

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my only companion— Then I found one more— but he was not con- tented I be his scholar—so he left the Land.6

You ask of my Companions Hills— Sir— and the Sundown— and a Dog— large as myself, that my Father bought me— They are better than Beings— because they know— but do not tell— and the noise in the Pool, at Noon— excels my Piano. I have a Brother and Sister— My Mother does not care for thought— and Father, too busy with his Briefs7—to notice what we do— He buys me many Books— but begs me not to read them— because he fears they joggle the Mind. They are religious— except me— and address an Eclipse, every morning— whom they call their “ Father.” But I fear my story fatigues you— I would like to learn— Could you tell me how to grow—or is it unconveyed— like Melody—or Witchcraft?

You speak of Mr Whitman— I never read his Book8— but was told that he was disgraceful—

I read Miss Prescott’s “Circumstance,”9 but it followed me, in the Dark—so I avoided her—

Two Editors of Journals1 came to my Father’s House, this winter— and asked me for my Mind— and when I asked them “Why,” they said I was penurious— and they, would use it for the World—

I could not weigh myself— Myself— My size felt small—to me— I read your Chapters in the Atlantic—

and experienced honor for you— I was sure you would not reject a con- "ding question—

Is this— Sir— what you asked me to tell you? Your friend,

E— Dickinson.

6. Dickinson’s friend the Reverend Charles Wads- worth (1814–1882) had recently accepted a pas- torate in California. 7. Legal documents. 8. The third edition of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass was published in 1860.

9. Harriet Prescott Spofford’s (1835–1921) short story “Circumstance” had appeared in the May 1860 Atlantic. 1. Possibly Samuel Bowles (1826–1878) and J. G. Holland (1819–1881), who were both associated with the Spring"eld Daily Republican.

MARK TWAIN (SAMUEL L. CLEMENS) 1835–1910

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, the third of "ve children, was born on Novem-ber 30, 1835, in the village of Florida, Missouri, and grew up in the somewhat larger Mississippi River town of Hannibal, Missouri— a place that he re imagined in his writing as St. Petersburg, the most famous boyscape in American lit er a ture. Twain’s father, a justice of the peace who had unsuccessfully tried to become a store- keeper, died when Twain was twelve, and from that time on Twain worked to sup- port himself and the rest of the family. He was apprenticed to a printer, and in 1851, when his brother Orion became a publisher in Hannibal, Twain went to work for

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him. But Twain soon escaped from his brother’s print shop, as he was being paid virtually nothing for his work, often running the entire operation by himself. In 1853 he began three years of travel, stopping in St. Louis, New York, Philadelphia, Keokuk (Iowa), and Cincinnati, in each place working as an itinerant journeyman printer. In 1856 he left Cincinnati for New Orleans by steamboat, intending to go to the Amazon. He changed his plans, however, and instead apprenticed himself to Hor- ace Bixby, a Mississippi riverboat pi lot. After training for eigh teen months, virtually committing the river to memory, Twain became a pi lot himself. He practiced this lucrative and prestigious trade until 1861, when the Civil War virtually ended com- mercial river traf"c.

Slavery was legal in Missouri, though the state did not join the Confederacy, and Twain may have seen brief ser vice in a woefully unor ga nized Confederate militia, an experience that he later "ctionalized in “The Private History of a Campaign That Failed” (1885), a work included here. In 1861, as the Mississippi was being closed by Union blockades, Twain went west with his brother Orion, who had been appointed secretary of the Nevada territorial government. This move started him on the path toward his life as a humorist, lecturer, journalist, and author. In the West, Twain began writing for newspapers, "rst the Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City and then, after 1864, the Californian in San Francisco. The fashion of the time called for a pen name, and so from a columnist for the New Orleans Times- Picayune, he borrowed “Mark Twain,” riverboat jargon for “two fathoms deep,” or “safe water.” His early writing was modeled on the humorous journalism of the day, especially that practiced by his friend and roommate in Nevada, who wrote under the pen name Dan De Quille. Also impor tant to his development during these years were friend- ships with the western writer Bret Harte, the famous professional lecturer and comic Artemus Ward, and the obscure amateur raconteur Jim Gillis. Harte was particu- larly impor tant to launching Twain’s career. He was Twain’s editor at the Califor- nian, and was considered the leading writer of the city. The fastidious Harte and the slovenly Twain made an unlikely pair, but they became friends. During this time, Twain made his reputation as a lecturer and landed his "rst major success as a writer by skillfully retelling a well- known tall tale, “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Cala- veras County,” "rst published in 1865. Widely reprinted across the United States, the sketch did more than introduce Twain to a national audience; it inaugurated a new chapter in the lit er a ture of the American West.

In this same year Twain signed with the Sacramento Union to write a series of letters covering the newly opened steamboat passenger ser vice between San Fran- cisco and Honolulu. In these letters he used a "ctitious character, Mr. Brown, to pres ent inelegant ideas and unorthodox views, attitudes, and information, often in impolite language. This device allowed him to say just about anything he wanted, provided he could convincingly claim he was simply reporting what others said and did. As he re"ned it, this deadpan technique became a staple of his lectures. Twain’s "rst book of this period, and still one of his most popu lar, was Innocents Abroad (1869), consisting, in revised form, of the letters he wrote for the Alta California and New York Tribune during his 1867 excursion on the Quaker City to the Mediterra- nean and Holy Land. With his fare paid for by the Alta California, Twain, through letters to that San Francisco newspaper, provided a running account of the "rst great modern American tourist raid on the Old World. Twain wrote hilarious satires of his fellow passengers as well as the pretentious, de cadent, and undemo cratic Old World as viewed by a citizen of a young country on the rise. A characteristically impertinent note was sounded in a remark he made upon disembarking in New York: When Twain was asked for his impressions of the Holy Land, he said he knew for a fact there would be no Second Coming, for if Jesus had been there once he certainly wouldn’t go back. Such scof"ng drew angry editorials and speeches, publicity that helped make Innocents Abroad even more successful.

In Roughing It (1872), Twain returned to the West; he "ctionally elaborated the Clemens brothers’ stagecoach adventures on the way to Carson City and recounted his unsuccessful schemes for making money (including mining the Comstock lode in Virginia City) once he got there. Throughout Roughing It, which also covers his stint in San Francisco as a reporter and his half- hearted gold mining in the Sierra Nevada mountains, Twain debunked the idea of the West as a place where fortunes could be easily made and showed its disappointing and even brutal side. In this res- pect, Twain joined the group of writers who were trying to tell Eastern readers what the West was really like, while exalting in the freedom and outright craziness of west- ern startup towns and encampments, operating far from Eastern laws, orthodoxies, and even common sense.

Twain’s publishers sold Innocents Abroad, Roughing It, and most of his other books mainly by subscription, with door- to- door salespeople offering sometimes gaudy, always lavishly illustrated volumes of his books as diversion and entertainment. Though the trade was regarded as low, and though many books sold by subscription were not reviewed by the established literary and general interest magazines of the time, subscription houses accounted for nearly two- thirds of American bookselling in the 1870s. Twain’s shrewd understanding of the dynamics of the publishing indus- try, including the importance of lining up "rst- rate illustrators, helped to establish him as a popu lar author during this time.

Twain’s many travels, including later lecture tours around the globe, did not obscure the rich material of his Missouri boyhood, which ran deep in his memory and imagination. He tentatively probed this material as early as 1870  in an early version of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer called A Boy’s Manuscript. In 1875 he wrote Old Times on the Mississippi in seven installments for the Atlantic Monthly— edited by his friend William Dean Howells, who tirelessly promoted Twain’s career. The sometimes idyllic, sometimes dangerous river towns of the antebellum border states proved to be the creative landscape that would make Twain famous. He would later incorporate his magazine writing on this region into Life on the Mississippi (1883), completed after Twain took a monthlong steamboat trip on the Mississippi, stop- ping along the way to visit Hannibal. The resulting book— part history, part mem- oir, part travelogue— offers, among other things, a critique of the southern romanticism Twain believed had made the Civil War inevitable, a theme that would reappear in his masterpiece, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884).

Twain had married Olivia Langdon, daughter of a wealthy coal dealer from Buf- falo, New York, in 1870. This entry into a higher stratum of society than he had pre- viously known, along with his increasing fascination with wealth, created a constant strug gle in his work between the conventional and the disruptive— a tension that fuels much of his best humor. In the perennially popu lar The Adventures of Tom Saw- yer (1876), the strug gle emerges in the contrast between the entrepreneurial but entirely respectable Tom and his disreputable friend Huck. In this narrative, Twain also mingles childhood pleasures with childhood fears of the vio lence, terror, and death lurking at the edges of the village. This book has long been recognized as an adult classic as well as a children’s book, and its publication further consolidated Twain’s status as a writer of popu lar "ction.

Twain began Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1876 as a sequel to Tom Sawyer, but he put the manuscript aside for several years and "nished it in 1884, when his thinking about Huck and his story had changed and matured considerably. In recent years the racial (and racist) implications of Huck Finn have been the subjects of criti- cal debate, as have questions about the racial beliefs of the author. (For more on the critical controversy, see the se lections in “Race and the Ending of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” immediately following the novel.) Similar questions have been raised about gender and sexuality in Twain’s life and work. In Twain’s own day Huck Finn was banned in many libraries and schools around the country and denounced

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in pulpits— not for its racial content but for its supposedly encouraging boys to swear, smoke, and run away. Nevertheless, Huck Finn has enjoyed extraordinary popular- ity since its publication. It broke literary ground as a novel written in the vernacular and established the vernacular’s capacity to yield high art. Its unpretentious, collo- quial, yet poetic style, its wide- ranging humor, its embodiment of the enduring and widely shared dream of innocence and freedom, and its recording of a vanished way of life in the pre– Civil War Mississippi Valley have made the book popu lar from the moment of its publication: Huck Finn sold 51,000 copies in its "rst fourteen months, compared to Tom Sawyer’s 25,000 in the same period. Ernest Hemingway once called it the source of “all modern American lit er a ture.”

Twain’s next novel was also successful, but A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889) is marked by an even sharper satiric bite. The novel describes sixth- century Arthurian Eng land as seen through the eyes of a crafty “Yankee,” Hank Mor- gan, who is transported back thirteen centuries and tries to “introduce,” in Twain’s words, the “ great and bene"cent civilization of the nineteenth century” into the chi- valric and decidedly undemo cratic world of Camelot. But Hank’s “Gilded Age” schemes end in their own destruction and the massacre of thousands of knights. The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894) similarly offers a dark and troubling view of nineteenth- century American values. Set in a Mississippi River town of the 1830s, the novel follows the tragic consequences of switching two babies at birth— one free, one slave, and both children of the same white, slave- owning father. The novel provides an intense, sometimes chaotic meditation on the absurdities of de"n- ing individuals in relation to race; on the impact on personality and fate of labels like “white” and “black”; and on biological, legal, and social descriptions of human identity.

In the time following the completion of Puddn’head Wilson, Twain experienced a series of calamities. His spectacularly poor judgment as an investor— combined with the panic of 1893— led to his bankruptcy. His health turned bad; his youn gest daughter, Jean, was diagnosed as epileptic; his oldest daughter, Susy, died of men- ingitis while he was away; and his wife, Livy, began to decline into permanent inva- lidism. For several years writing was both agonized labor and necessary therapy. The results of these circumstances were a travel book, Following the Equator (1897), which rec ords the round- the- world lecture tour that Twain undertook to pay off debts; a sardonically brilliant short story that interrogates middle- class American morality, “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg” (1900); an embittered treatise on humanity’s foibles, follies, and venality, What Is Man? (1906); and the bleakly despairing novel The Mysterious Stranger, "rst published in an inaccurate and unau- thorized version by Albert Bigelow Paine, Twain’s "rst biographer, in 1916. Scholars continue to study the large bulk of Twain’s un"nished or ( until recently) unpublished writings and have called for reevaluation of his work from the de cade after 1895. His late writings, most of which Twain declined to see published while he lived, reveal a darkening worldview and an upwelling of anger against orthodoxies of every sort, including or ga nized religious belief and international capitalism and colonialism.

In his later years, Twain, by now an international celebrity, found himself con- sulted by the press on every subject of general interest. He became an out spoken opponent of  U.S. and Eu ro pean imperialism, a stance he shared with Howells. Though Twain’s views on po liti cal, military, and social subjects were often acerbic, it was only to his best friends that he confessed the depth of his disillusionment. Much of this bitterness informs such published works as “To a Person Sitting in Darkness” (1901), “The United States of Lyncherdom” (1901), and “King Leopold’s Soliloquy” (1905), as well as other writings unpublished in his lifetime, such as “The War Prayer,” an acid commentary on the practice of praying for military victory.

In 1906, Twain embarked on a scheme to dictate his autobiography. He would allow himself to wander freely through his reminiscences— often speaking from bed—to produce a kind of “diary and history combined.” An impor tant part of Twain’s

1. The story "rst appeared in the New York Sat- urday Press of November 18, 1865, and was sub- sequently revised several times. The source of the text is the version published in Mark Twain’s

Sketches, New and Old (1875). In a note, Twain instructs his readers that “Calaveras” is pro- nounced Cal- e- VA- ras.

proj ect was that the full product would not be available until 100 years after his death, so that he could speak freely of his subjects without fear of hurting their feel- ings or reputation. Though he published excerpts while still alive, he stuck to this broader plan. The "rst volume of The Autobiography of Mark Twain appeared in 2010 and immediately became a bestseller. Twain’s appeal endures because of his deep understanding of the culture that produced him; he remains Amer i ca’s most cele- brated humorist and its most caustic critic. As his friend Howells observed, Twain was unlike any of his contemporaries in American letters: “Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes— I knew them all and all the rest of our sages, poets, seers, critics, humorists; they were like one another and like other literary men; but Clemens was sole, incomparable, the Lincoln of our lit er a ture.”

The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County1

In compliance with the request of a friend of mine, who wrote me from the East, I called on good- natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and inquired after my friend’s friend, Leonidas W. Smiley, as requested to do, and I here- unto append the result. I have a lurking suspicion that Leonidas W. Smiley is a myth; that my friend never knew such a personage; and that he only conjectured that if I asked old Wheeler about him, it would remind him of his infamous Jim Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me to death with some exasperating reminiscence of him as long and as tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was the design, it succeeded.

I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the barroom stove of the dilapidated tavern in the decayed mining camp of Angel’s, and I noticed that he was fat and bald- headed, and had an expression of winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance. He roused up, and gave me good- day. I told him a friend of mine had commissioned me to make some inquiries about a cherished companion of his boyhood named Leonidas W. Smiley— Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, a young minister of the Gospel, who he had heard was at one time a resident of Angel’s Camp. I added that if Mr. Wheeler could tell me anything about this Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, I would feel under many obligations to him.

Simon Wheeler backed me into a corner and blockaded me there with his chair, and then sat down and reeled off the monotonous narrative which fol- lows this paragraph. He never smiled, he never frowned, he never changed his voice from the gentle- ̀ owing key to which he tuned his initial sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of enthusiasm; but all through the interminable narrative there ran a vein of impressive earnestness and sincer- ity, which showed me plainly that, so far from his imagining that there was anything ridicu lous or funny about his story, he regarded it as a really impor- tant matter, and admired its two heroes as men of transcendent genius in "nesse. I let him go on in his own way, and never interrupted him once.

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1. A narrow channel "lled with water, used for conveying logs or timber.

2. The forecastle is the forward part of a ship’s upper deck.

Rev. Leonidas W. H’m, Reverend Le— well, there was a feller here once by the name of Jim Smiley, in the winter of ’49—or may be it was the spring of ’50— I don’t recollect exactly, somehow, though what makes me think it was one or the other is because I remember the big `ume1 warn’t "nished when he "rst come to the camp; but any way, he was the curiosest man about always betting on anything that turned up you ever see, if he could get any- body to bet on the other side; and if he couldn’t he’d change sides. Any way that suited the other man would suit him— any way just so’s he got a bet, he was satis"ed. But still he was lucky, uncommon lucky; he most always come out winner. He was always ready and laying for a chance; there couldn’t be no solit’ry thing mentioned but that feller’d offer to bet on it, and take ary side you please, as I was just telling you. If there was a horse- race, you’d "nd him `ush or you’d "nd him busted at the end of it; if there was a dog- "ght, he’d bet on it; if there was a cat- "ght, he’d bet on it; if there was a chicken- "ght, he’d bet on it; why, if there was two birds setting on a fence, he would bet you which one would `y "rst; or if there was a camp- meeting, he would be there reg’lar to bet on Parson Walker, which he judged to be the best exhorter about here, and so he was too, and a good man. If he even see a straddle- bug start to go anywheres, he would bet you how long it would take him to get to—to wherever he was going to, and if you took him up, he would foller that straddle- bug to Mexico but what he would "nd out where he was bound for and how long he was on the road. Lots of the boys here has seen that Smiley, and can tell you about him. Why, it never made no difference to him— he’d bet on any thing— the dang- dest feller. Parson Walker’s wife laid very sick once, for a good while, and it seemed as if they warn’t going to save her; but one morning he come in, and Smiley up and asked him how she was, and he said she was considable better— thank the Lord for his inf ’nite mercy— and coming on so smart that with the blessing of Prov’dence she’d get well yet; and Smiley, before he thought says, “Well, I’ll resk two- and- a- half she don’t anyway.”

Thish- yer Smiley had a mare— the boys called her the "fteen- minute nag, but that was only in fun, you know, because of course she was faster than that— and he used to win money on that horse, for all she was so slow and always had the asthma, or the distemper, or the consumption, or something of that kind. They used to give her two or three hundred yards start, and then pass her under way; but always at the fag end of the race she’d get excited and desperate- like, and come cavorting and straddling up, and scattering her legs around limber, sometimes in the air, and sometimes out to one side among the fences, and kicking up m- o- r- e dust and raising m- o- r- e racket with her cough- ing and sneezing and blowing her nose— and always fetch up at the stand just about a neck ahead, as near as you could cipher it down.

And he had a little small bull- pup, that to look at him you’d think he warn’t worth a cent but to set around and look ornery and lay for a chance to steal something. But as soon as money was up on him he was a dif fer ent dog; his under- jaw’d begin to stick out like the fo’ castle2 of a steamboat, and his teeth would uncover and shine like the furnaces. And a dog might tackle him and bully- rag him, and bite him, and throw him over his shoulder two or three

times, and Andrew Jackson— which was the name of the pup— Andrew Jack- son would never let on but what he was satis"ed, and hadn’t expected noth- ing else— and the bets being doubled and doubled on the other side all the time, till the money was all up; and then all of a sudden he would grab that other dog jest by the j’int of his hind leg and freeze to it— not chaw, you understand, but only just grip and hang on till they throwed up the sponge, if it was a year. Smiley always come out winner on that pup, till he harnessed a dog once that didn’t have no hind legs, because they’d been sawed off in a circular saw, and when the thing had gone along far enough, and the money was all up, and he come to make a snatch for his pet holt, he see in a minute how he’s been imposed on, and how the other dog had him in the door, so to speak, and he ’peared surprised, and then he looked sorter discouraged- like, and didn’t try no more to win the "ght, and so he got shucked out bad. He give Smiley a look, as much as to say his heart was broke, and it was his fault, for putting up a dog that hadn’t no hind legs for him to take holt of, which was his main dependence in a "ght, and then he limped off a piece and laid down and died. It was a good pup, was that Andrew Jackson, and would have made a name for hisself if he’d lived, for the stuff was in him and he had genius— I know it, because he hadn’t no opportunities to speak of, and it don’t stand to reason that a dog could make such a "ght as he could under them circumstances if he hadn’t no talent. It always makes me feel sorry when I think of that last "ght of his’n, and the way it turned out.

Well, thish- yer Smiley had rat- tarriers, and chicken cocks, and tomcats and all them kind of things, till you couldn’t rest, and you couldn’t fetch nothing for him to bet on but he’d match you. He ketched a frog one day, and took him home, and said he cal’lated to educate him; and so he never done nothing for three months but set in his back yard and learn that frog to jump. And you bet you he did learn him, too. He’d give him a little punch behind, and the next minute you’d see that frog whirling in the air like a doughnut— see him turn one summerset, or may be a couple, if he got a good start, and come down `at- footed and all right, like a cat. He got him up so in the matter of ketching `ies, and kep’ him in practice so constant, that he’d nail a `y every time as fur as he could see him. Smiley said all a frog wanted was education, and he could do ’most anything— and I believe him. Why, I’ve seen him set Dan’l Webster3 down here on this `oor— Dan’l Web- ster was the name of the frog— and sing out, “Flies, Dan’l, `ies!” and quicker’n you could wink he’d spring straight up and snake a `y off’n the counter there, and `op down on the `oor ag’in as solid as a gob of mud, and fall to scratching the side of his head with his hind foot as indifferent as if he hadn’t no idea he’d been doin’ any more’n any frog might do. You never see a frog so modest and straightfor’ard as he was, for all he was so gifted. And when it come to fair and square jumping on a dead level, he could get over more ground at one straddle than any animal of his breed you ever see. Jumping on a dead level was his strong suit, you understand; and when it come to that, Smiley would ante up money on him as long as he had a red. Smiley was monstrous proud of his frog, and well he might be, for fellers

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3. The name of a noted American senator, statesman, and orator (1782–1852).

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that had traveled and been everywheres all said he laid over any frog that ever they see.

Well, Smiley kep’ the beast in a little lattice box, and he used to fetch him down town sometimes and lay for a bet. One day a feller— a stranger in the camp, he was— come acrost him with his box, and says:

“What might it be that you’ve got in the box?” And Smiley says, sorter indifferent- like, “It might be a parrot, or it might

be a canary, maybe, but it ain’t— it’s only just a frog.” And the feller took it, and looked at it careful, and turned it round this

way and that, and says, “H’m—so ’tis. Well, what’s he good for?” “Well,” Smiley says, easy and careless, “he’s good enough for one thing, I

should judge—he can outjump any frog in Calaveras county.” The feller took the box again, and took another long, par tic u lar look, and

give it back to Smiley, and says, very deliberate, “Well,” he says, “I don’t see no p’ints about that frog that’s any better’n any other frog.”

“Maybe you don’t,” Smiley says. “Maybe you understand frogs and maybe you don’t understand ’em; maybe you’ve had experience, and maybe you ain’t only an amature, as it were. Anyways, I’ve got my opinion and I’ll resk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras county.”

And the feller studied a minute, and then says, kinder sad like, “Well, I’m only a stranger here, and I ain’t got no frog; but if I had a frog, I’d bet you.”

And then Smiley says, “That’s all right— that’s all right—if you’ll hold my box a minute, I’ll go and get you a frog.” And so the feller took the box, and put up his forty dollars along with Smiley’s, and set down to wait.

So he set there a good while thinking and thinking to hisself, and then he got the frog out and prized his mouth open and took a teaspoon and "lled him full of quail shot— "lled him pretty near up to his chin— and set him on the `oor. Smiley he went to the swamp and slopped around in the mud for a long time, and " nally he ketched a frog, and fetched him in, and give him to this feller, and says:

“Now, if you’re ready, set him alongside of Dan’l, with his forepaws just even with Dan’l’s, and I’ll give the word.” Then he says, “One— two— three- git!” and him and the feller touched up the frogs from behind, and the new frog hopped off lively, but Dan’l give a heave, and hysted up his shoulders— so— like a Frenchman, but it warn’t no use—he couldn’t budge; he was planted as solid as a church, and he couldn’t no more stir than if he was anchored out. Smiley was a good deal surprised, and he was disgusted too, but he didn’t have no idea what the matter was, of course.

The feller took the money and started away; and when he was going out at the door, he sorter jerked his thumb over his shoulder— so—at Dan’l, and says again, very deliberate, “Well,” he says, “I don’t see no p’ints about that frog that’s any better’n any other frog.”

Smiley he stood scratching his head and looking down at Dan’l a long time, and at last he says, “I do won der what in the nation that frog throw’d off for— I won der if there ain’t something the matter with him—he ’pears to look mighty baggy, somehow.” And he ketched Dan’l by the nap of the neck, and hefted him, and says, “Why blame my cats if he don’t weigh "ve pound!” and turned him upside down and he belched out a double handful of shot. And then he see how it was, and he was the maddest man—he set the frog down and took out after that feller, but he never ketched him. And——”

1. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was "rst pub- lished in Eng land in December 1884. The text printed here is a corrected version of the "rst American edition of 1885.

2. I.e., between 1835 and 1845— well before the Civil War. 3. Pike County, Missouri.

[ Here Simon Wheeler heard his name called from the front yard, and got up to see what was wanted.] And turning to me as he moved away, he said: “Just set where you are, stranger, and rest easy— I ain’t going to be gone a second.”

But, by your leave, I did not think that a continuation of the history of the enterprising vagabond Jim Smiley would be likely to afford me much infor- mation concerning the Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, and so I started away.

At the door I met the sociable Wheeler returning, and he button- holed me and recommenced:

“Well, thish- yer Smiley had a yaller one- eyed cow that didn’t have no tail, only jest a short stump like a bannanner, and— —”

However, lacking both time and inclination, I did not wait to hear about the af`icted cow, but took my leave.

1865, 1867

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn1

(Tom Sawyer’s Comrade)

Scene: The Mississippi Valley

Time: Forty to Fifty Years Ago2

NOTICE Persons attempting to "nd a motive in this narrative will

be prosecuted; persons attempting to "nd a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to "nd a plot in it will be shot.

BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR Per G. G., CHIEF OF ORDNANCE.

Explanatory

In this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri negro dia- lect; the extremest form of the backwoods South- Western dialect; the ordi- nary “Pike- County”3 dialect; and four modi"ed va ri e ties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a hap- hazard fashion, or by guess- work; but pains- takingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech.

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4. Published in 1876.

I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding.

THE AUTHOR

Chapter I

You don’t know about me, without you have read a book by the name of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” 4 but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen any- body but lied, one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly— Tom’s Aunt Polly, she is— and Mary, and the Widow Douglas, is all told about in that book— which is mostly a true book; with some stretchers, as I said before.

Now the way that the book winds up, is this: Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars apiece— all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up.

Huck. E. W. Kemble’s illustration of Huckleberry Finn on the frontispiece of the "rst edition (1884).

5. A large barrel. 6. Pha raoh’s daughter discovered the infant Moses `oating in the Nile in a basket woven from bul-

rushes (Exodus 2). She adopted him into the royal family just as the widow has adopted Huck.

Well, Judge Thatcher, he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece, all the year round— more than a body could tell what to do with. The Widow Douglas, she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, con- sidering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn’t stand it no longer, I lit out. I got into my old rags, and my sugar- hogshead5 again, and was free and satis"ed. But Tom Saw- yer, he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back.

The widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she called me a lot of other names, too, but she never meant no harm by it. She put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn’t do nothing but sweat and sweat, and feel all cramped up. Well, then, the old thing commenced again. The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come to time. When you got to the table you couldn’t go right to eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victuals, though there warn’t really anything the matter with them. That is, nothing only every thing was cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds and ends it is dif fer ent; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better.

After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushers;6 and I was in a sweat to "nd out all about him; but by- and-by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn’t care no more about him; because I don’t take no stock in dead people.

Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. But she wouldn’t. She said it was a mean practice and wasn’t clean, and I must try to not do it any more. That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don’t know nothing about it. Here she was a bothering about Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody, being gone, you see, yet "nding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in it. And she took snuff too; of course that was all right, because she done it herself.

Her sister, Miss Watson, a tolerable slim old maid, with goggles on, had just come to live with her, and took a set at me now, with a spelling- book. She worked me middling hard for about an hour, and then the widow made her ease up. I couldn’t stood it much longer. Then for an hour it was deadly dull, and I was "dgety. Miss Watson would say, “ Don’t put your feet up there, Huckleberry”; and “ don’t scrunch up like that, Huckleberry— set up straight”; and pretty soon she would say, “ Don’t gap and stretch like that, Huckleberry— why don’t you try to behave?” Then she told me all about the bad place, and I said I wished I was there. She got mad, then, but I didn’t mean no harm. All I wanted was to go somewheres; all I wanted was a change, I warn’t par tic u lar. She said it was wicked to say what I said; said she wouldn’t say it for the whole world; she was going to live so as to go to

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7. Conventional conceptions of the Christian heaven were satirized early and late in Twain’s writings. 8. This word is now unacceptable, but at the time of this novel’s setting (before the Civil War) it was a common, though vulgar, term among

whites without the powerfully negative conno- tations it has since acquired. For debate on the racial politics of Huckleberry Finn, see the se lections in “Critical Controversy: Race and the Ending of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” pp. 303–18.

the good place. Well, I couldn’t see no advantage in going where she was going, so I made up my mind I wouldn’t try for it. But I never said so, because it would only make trou ble, and wouldn’t do no good.

Now she had got a start, and she went on and told me all about the good place. She said all a body would have to do there was to go around all day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever.7 So I didn’t think much of it. But I never said so. I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer would go there, and, she said, not by a considerable sight. I was glad about that, because I wanted him and me to be together.

Miss Watson she kept pecking at me, and it got tiresome and lonesome. By- and-by they fetched the niggers8 in and had prayers, and then every body was off to bed. I went up to my room with a piece of candle and put it on the table. Then I set down in a chair by the win dow and tried to think of some- thing cheerful, but it warn’t no use. I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead. The stars was shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and I heard an owl, away off, who- whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die; and the wind was trying to whisper something to me and I couldn’t make out what it was, and so it made the cold shivers run over me. Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that’s on its mind and can’t make itself understood, and so can’t rest easy in its grave and has to go about that way every night grieving. I got so down- hearted and scared, I did wish I had some com pany. Pretty soon a spider went crawling up my shoulder, and I `ipped it off and it lit in the candle; and before I could budge it was all shriveled up. I didn’t need anybody to tell me that that was an awful bad sign and would fetch me some bad luck, so I was scared and most shook the clothes off of me. I got up and turned around in my tracks three times and crossed my breast every time; and then I tied up a little lock of my hair with a thread to keep witches away. But I hadn’t no con"dence. You do that when you’ve lost a horse- shoe that you’ve found, instead of nailing it up over the door, but I hadn’t ever heard anybody say it was any way to keep off bad luck when you’d killed a spider.

I set down again, a shaking all over, and got out my pipe for a smoke; for the house was all as still as death, now, and so the widow wouldn’t know. Well, after a long time I heard the clock away off in the town go boom— boom— boom— twelve licks— and all still again— stiller than ever. Pretty soon I heard a twig snap, down in the dark amongst the trees— something was a stirring. I set still and listened. Directly I could just barely hear a “me- yow! me- yow!” down there. That was good! Says I, “me- yow! me- yow!” as soft as I could, and then I put out the light and scram- bled out of the win dow onto the shed. Then I slipped down to the ground and crawled in amongst the trees, and sure enough there was Tom Sawyer waiting for me.

Chapter II

We went tip- toeing along a path amongst the trees back towards the end of the widow’s garden, stooping down so as the branches wouldn’t scrape our heads. When we was passing by the kitchen I fell over a root and made a noise. We scrouched down and laid still. Miss Watson’s big nigger, named Jim, was setting in the kitchen door; we could see him pretty clear, because there was a light behind him. He got up and stretched his neck out about a minute, listening. Then he says,

“Who dah?” He listened some more; then he come tip- toeing down and stood right

between us; we could a touched him, nearly. Well, likely it was minutes and minutes that there warn’t a sound, and we all there so close together. There was a place on my ankle that got to itching; but I dasn’t scratch it; and then my ear begun to itch; and next my back, right between my shoulders. Seemed like I’d die if I couldn’t scratch. Well, I’ve noticed that thing plenty of times since. If you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain’t sleepy—if you are anywheres where it won’t do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand places. Pretty soon Jim says:

“Say— who is you? Whar is you? Dog my cats ef I didn’ hear sumf’n. Well, I knows what I’s gwyne to do. I’s gwyne to set down here and listen tell I hears it agin.”

So he set down on the ground betwixt me and Tom. He leaned his back up against a tree, and stretched his legs out till one of them most touched one of mine. My nose begun to itch. It itched till the tears come into my eyes. But I dasn’t scratch. Then it begun to itch on the inside. Next I got to itching under neath. I didn’t know how I was going to set still. This misera- bleness went on as much as six or seven minutes; but it seemed a sight lon- ger than that. I was itching in eleven dif fer ent places now. I reckoned I couldn’t stand it more’n a minute longer, but I set my teeth hard and got ready to try. Just then Jim begun to breathe heavy; next he begun to snore— and then I was pretty soon comfortable again.

Tom he made a sign to me— kind of a little noise with his mouth— and we went creeping away on our hands and knees. When we was ten foot off, Tom whispered to me and wanted to tie Jim to the tree for fun; but I said no; he might wake and make a disturbance, and then they’d "nd out I warn’t in. Then Tom said he hadn’t got candles enough, and he would slip in the kitchen and get some more. I didn’t want him to try. I said Jim might wake up and come. But Tom wanted to resk it; so we slid in there and got three candles, and Tom laid "ve cents on the table for pay. Then we got out, and I was in a sweat to get away; but nothing would do Tom but he must crawl to where Jim was, on his hands and knees, and play something on him. I waited, and it seemed a good while, every thing was so still and lonesome.

As soon as Tom was back, we cut along the path, around the garden fence, and by- and-by fetched up on the steep top of the hill the other side of the house. Tom said he slipped Jim’s hat off of his head and hung it on a limb right over him, and Jim stirred a little, but he didn’t wake. Afterwards Jim said the witches bewitched him and put him in a trance, and rode him all over the State, and then set him under the trees again and hung his hat on

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a limb to show who done it. And next time Jim told it he said they rode him down to New Orleans; and after that, every time he told it he spread it more and more, till by- and-by he said they rode him all over the world, and tired him most to death, and his back was all over saddle- boils. Jim was monstrous proud about it, and he got so he wouldn’t hardly notice the other niggers. Niggers would come miles to hear Jim tell about it, and he was more looked up to than any nigger in that country. Strange niggers9 would stand with their mouths open and look him all over, same as if he was a won der. Nig- gers is always talking about witches in the dark by the kitchen "re; but when- ever one was talking and letting on to know all about such things, Jim would happen in and say, “Hm! What you know ’bout witches?” and that nigger was corked up and had to take a back seat. Jim always kept that "ve- center piece around his neck with a string and said it was a charm the devil give to him with his own hands and told him he could cure anybody with it and fetch witches whenever he wanted to, just by saying something to it; but he never told what it was he said to it. Niggers would come from all around there and give Jim anything they had, just for a sight of the "ve- center piece; but they wouldn’t touch it, because the devil had had his hands on it. Jim was most ruined, for a servant, because he got so stuck up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches.

Well, when Tom and me got to the edge of the hill- top, we looked away down into the village1 and could see three or four lights twinkling, where there was sick folks, may be; and the stars over us was sparkling ever so "ne; and down by the village was the river, a whole mile broad, and awful still and grand. We went down the hill and found Jo Harper, and Ben Rogers, and two or three more of the boys, hid in the old tanyard. So we unhitched a skiff and pulled down the river two mile and a half, to the big scar on the hill- side, and went ashore.

We went to a clump of bushes, and Tom made every body swear to keep the secret, and then showed them a hole in the hill, right in the thickest part of the bushes. Then we lit the candles and crawled in on our hands and knees. We went about two hundred yards, and then the cave opened up. Tom poked about amongst the passages and pretty soon ducked under a wall where you wouldn’t a noticed that there was a hole. We went along a narrow place and got into a kind of room, all damp and sweaty and cold, and there we stopped. Tom says:

“Now we’ll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer’s Gang. Every body that wants to join has got to take an oath, and write his name in blood.”

Every body was willing. So Tom got out a sheet of paper that he had wrote the oath on, and read it. It swore every boy to stick to the band, and never tell any of the secrets; and if anybody done anything to any boy in the band, whichever boy was ordered to kill that person and his family must do it, and he mustn’t eat and he mustn’t sleep till he had killed them and hacked a cross in their breasts, which was the sign of the band. And nobody that didn’t belong to the band could use that mark, and if he did he must be sued; and

9. Those who did not live in the immediate area. 1. The village, called St.  Petersburg here and

in Tom Sawyer, is modeled on Hannibal, Mis- souri.

2. Damnation.

if he done it again he must be killed. And if anybody that belonged to the band told the secrets, he must have his throat cut, and then have his car- cass burnt up and the ashes scattered all around, and his name blotted off of the list with blood and never mentioned again by the gang, but have a curse put on it and be forgot, forever.

Every body said it was a real beautiful oath, and asked Tom if he got it out of his own head. He said, some of it, but the rest was out of pirate books, and robber books, and every gang that was high- toned had it.

Some thought it would be good to kill the families of boys that told the secrets. Tom said it was a good idea, so he took a pencil and wrote it in. Then Ben Rogers says:

“ Here’s Huck Finn, he hain’t got no family— what you going to do ’bout him?”

“Well, hain’t he got a father?” says Tom Sawyer. “Yes, he’s got a father, but you can’t never "nd him, these days. He used

to lay drunk with the hogs in the tanyard, but he hain’t been seen in these parts for a year or more.”

They talked it over, and they was going to rule me out, because they said every boy must have a family or somebody to kill, or else it wouldn’t be fair and square for the others. Well, nobody could think of anything to do— every body was stumped, and set still. I was most ready to cry; but all at once I thought of a way, and so I offered them Miss Watson— they could kill her. Every body said:

“Oh, she’ll do, she’ll do. That’s all right. Huck can come in.” Then they all stuck a pin in their "n gers to get blood to sign with, and I

made my mark on the paper. “Now,” says Ben Rogers, “what’s the line of business of this Gang?” “Nothing only robbery and murder,” Tom said. “But who are we going to rob? houses—or cattle—or—” “Stuff! stealing cattle and such things ain’t robbery, it’s burglary,” says Tom

Sawyer. “We ain’t burglars. That ain’t no sort of style. We are highwaymen. We stop stages and carriages on the road, with masks on, and kill the people and take their watches and money.”

“Must we always kill the people?” “Oh, certainly. It’s best. Some authorities think dif fer ent, but mostly it’s

considered best to kill them. Except some that you bring to the cave here and keep them till they’re ransomed.”

“Ransomed? What’s that?” “I don’t know. But that’s what they do. I’ve seen it in books; and so of

course that’s what we’ve got to do.” “But how can we do it if we don’t know what it is?” “Why blame it all, we’ve got to do it. Don’t I tell you it’s in the books? Do

you want to go to doing dif fer ent from what’s in the books, and get things all muddled up?”

“Oh, that’s all very "ne to say, Tom Sawyer, but how in the nation2 are these fellows going to be ransomed if we don’t know how to do it to them? that’s the thing I want to get at. Now what do you reckon it is?”

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3. “But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet” (Matthew 6.6) is apparently the admonition Miss Watson has in mind.

“Well I don’t know. But per’aps if we keep them till they’re ransomed, it means that we keep them till they’re dead.”

“Now, that’s something like. That’ll answer. Why couldn’t you said that before? We’ll keep them till they’re ransomed to death— and a bothersome lot they’ll be, too, eating up every thing and always trying to get loose.”

“How you talk, Ben Rogers. How can they get loose when there’s a guard over them, ready to shoot them down if they move a peg?”

“A guard. Well, that is good. So somebody’s got to set up all night and never get any sleep, just so as to watch them. I think that’s foolishness. Why can’t a body take a club and ransom them as soon as they get here?”

“ Because it ain’t in the books so— that’s why. Now Ben Rogers, do you want to do things regular, or don’t you?— that’s the idea. Don’t you reckon that the people that made the books knows what’s the correct thing to do? Do you reckon you can learn ’em anything? Not by a good deal. No, sir, we’ll just go on and ransom them in the regular way.”

“All right. I don’t mind; but I say it’s a fool way, anyhow. Say—do we kill the women, too?”

“Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you I wouldn’t let on. Kill the women? No— nobody ever saw anything in the books like that. You fetch them to the cave, and you’re always as polite as pie to them; and by- and-by they fall in love with you and never want to go home any more.”

“Well, if that’s the way, I’m agreed, but I don’t take no stock in it. Mighty soon we’ll have the cave so cluttered up with women, and fellows waiting to be ransomed, that there won’t be no place for the robbers. But go ahead, I ain’t got nothing to say.”

Little Tommy Barnes was asleep, now, and when they waked him up he was scared, and cried, and said he wanted to go home to his ma, and didn’t want to be a robber any more.

So they all made fun of him, and called him cry- baby, and that made him mad, and he said he would go straight and tell all the secrets. But Tom give him "ve cents to keep quiet, and said we would all go home and meet next week and rob somebody and kill some people.

Ben Rogers said he couldn’t get out much, only Sundays, and so he wanted to begin next Sunday; but all the boys said it would be wicked to do it on Sunday, and that settled the thing. They agreed to get together and "x a day as soon as they could, and then we elected Tom Sawyer "rst captain and Jo Harper second captain of the Gang, and so started home.

I clumb up the shed and crept into my win dow just before day was break- ing. My new clothes was all greased up and clayey, and I was dog- tired.

Chapter III

Well, I got a good going- over in the morning, from old Miss Watson, on account of my clothes; but the widow she didn’t scold, but only cleaned off the grease and clay and looked so sorry that I thought I would behave a while if I could. Then Miss Watson she took me in the closet3 and prayed, but noth- ing come of it. She told me to pray every day, and what ever I asked for I

4. Captured, secured.

would get it. But it warn’t so. I tried it. Once I got a "sh- line, but no hooks. It warn’t any good to me without hooks. I tried for the hooks three or four times, but somehow I couldn’t make it work. By- and-by, one day, I asked Miss Watson to try for me, but she said I was a fool. She never told me why, and I couldn’t make it out no way.

I set down, one time, back in the woods, and had a long think about it. I says to myself, if a body can get anything they pray for, why don’t Deacon Winn get back the money he lost on pork? Why can’t the widow get back her silver snuff- box that was stole? Why can’t Miss Watson fat up? No, says I to myself, there ain’t nothing in it. I went and told the widow about it, and she said the thing a body could get by praying for it was “spiritual gifts.” This was too many for me, but she told me what she meant— I must help other people, and do every thing I could for other people, and look out for them all the time, and never think about myself. This was including Miss Watson, as I took it. I went out in the woods and turned it over in my mind a long time, but I couldn’t see no advantage about it— except for the other people—so at last I reckoned I wouldn’t worry about it any more, but just let it go. Some- times the widow would take me one side and talk about Providence in a way to make a boy’s mouth water; but maybe next day Miss Watson would take hold and knock it all down again. I judged I could see that there was two Providences, and a poor chap would stand considerable show with the widow’s Providence, but if Miss Watson’s got him there warn’t no help for him any more. I thought it all out, and reckoned I would belong to the widow’s, if he wanted me, though I couldn’t make out how he was agoing to be any better off then than what he was before, seeing I was so ignorant and so kind of low- down and ornery.

Pap he hadn’t been seen for more than a year, and that was comfortable for me; I didn’t want to see him no more. He used to always whale me when he was sober and could get his hands on me; though I used to take to the woods most of the time when he was around. Well, about this time he was found in the river drowned, about twelve mile above town, so people said. They judged it was him, anyway; said this drowned man was just his size, and was ragged, and had uncommon long hair— which was all like pap— but they couldn’t make nothing out of the face, because it had been in the water so long it warn’t much like a face at all. They said he was `oating on his back in the water. They took him and buried him on the bank. But I warn’t comfortable long, because I happened to think of something. I knowed mighty well that a drownded man don’t `oat on his back, but on his face. So I knowed, then, that this warn’t pap, but a woman dressed up in a man’s clothes. So I was uncomfortable again. I judged the old man would turn up again by- and-by, though I wished he wouldn’t.

We played robber now and then about a month, and then I resigned. All the boys did. We hadn’t robbed nobody, we hadn’t killed any people, but only just pretended. We used to hop out of the woods and go charging down on hog- drovers and women in carts taking garden stuff to market, but we never hived4 any of them. Tom Sawyer called the hogs “ingots,” and he called the turnips and stuff “ julery” and we would go to the cave and pow- wow over

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what we had done and how many people we had killed and marked. But I couldn’t see no pro"t in it. One time Tom sent a boy to run about town with a blazing stick, which he called a slogan (which was the sign for the Gang to get together), and then he said he had got secret news by his spies that next day a whole parcel of Spanish merchants and rich A- rabs was going to camp in Cave Hollow with two hundred elephants, and six hundred camels, and over a thousand “sumter” mules,5 all loaded with di’monds, and they didn’t have only a guard of four hundred soldiers, and so we would lay in ambuscade, as he called it, and kill the lot and scoop the things. He said we must slick up our swords and guns, and get ready. He never could go after even a turnip- cart but he must have the swords and guns all scoured up for it; though they was only lath and broom- sticks, and you might scour at them till you rotted and then they warn’t worth a mouthful of ashes more than what they was before. I didn’t believe we could lick such a crowd of Span- iards and A- rabs, but I wanted to see the camels and elephants, so I was on hand next day, Saturday, in the ambuscade; and when we got the word, we rushed out of the woods and down the hill. But there warn’t no Spaniards and A- rabs, and there warn’t no camels nor no elephants. It warn’t anything but a Sunday- school picnic, and only a primer- class at that. We busted it up, and chased the children up the hollow; but we never got anything but some doughnuts and jam, though Ben Rogers got a rag doll, and Jo Harper got a hymn- book and a tract; and then the teacher charged in and made us drop every thing and cut. I didn’t see no di’monds, and I told Tom Sawyer so. He said there was loads of them there, anyway; and he said there was A- rabs there, too, and elephants and things. I said, why couldn’t we see them, then? He said if I warn’t so ignorant, but had read a book called “Don Quixote,” 6 I would know without asking. He said it was all done by enchant- ment. He said there was hundreds of soldiers there, and elephants and trea- sure, and so on, but we had enemies which he called magicians, and they had turned the whole thing into an infant Sunday school, just out of spite. I said, all right, then the thing for us to do was to go for the magicians. Tom Sawyer said I was a numskull.

“Why,” says he, “a magician could call up a lot of genies, and they would hash you up like nothing before you could say Jack Robinson. They are as tall as a tree and as big around as a church.”

“Well,” I says, “s’pose we got some genies to help us— can’t we lick the other crowd then?”

“How you going to get them?” “I don’t know. How do they get them?” “Why they rub an old tin lamp or an iron ring, and then the genies come

tearing in, with the thunder and lightning a- ripping around and the smoke a- rolling, and every thing they’re told to do they up and do it. They don’t think nothing of pulling a shot tower7 up by the roots, and belting a Sunday- school superintendent over the head with it—or any other man.”

“Who makes them tear around so?”

5. Pack mules. 6. Tom is here alluding to stories in The Arabian Nights Entertainments (1838–41) and to the hero

in Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1605). 7. A device in which gunshot was formed by dripping molten lead into water.

8. Common, vulgar term for “Indian,” used frequently in Huck’s time.

“Why, whoever rubs the lamp or the ring. They belong to whoever rubs the lamp or the ring, and they’ve got to do what ever he says. If he tells them to build a palace forty miles long, out of di’monds, and "ll it full of chewing gum, or what ever you want, and fetch an emperor’s daughter from China for you to marry, they’ve got to do it— and they’ve got to do it before sun-up next morning, too. And more— they’ve got to waltz that palace around over the country whenever you want it, you understand.”

“Well,” says I, “I think they are a pack of `atheads for not keeping the palace themselves ’stead of fooling them away like that. And what’s more— if I was one of them I would see a man in Jericho before I would drop my business and come to him for the rubbing of an old tin lamp.”

“How you talk, Huck Finn. Why, you’d have to come when he rubbed it, whether you wanted to or not.”

“What, and I as high as a tree and as big as a church? All right, then; I would come; but I lay I’d make that man climb the highest tree there was in the country.”

“Shucks, it ain’t no use to talk to you, Huck Finn. You don’t seem to know anything, somehow— perfect sap- head.”

I thought all this over for two or three days, and then I reckoned I would see if there was anything in it. I got an old tin lamp and an iron ring and went out in the woods and rubbed and rubbed till I sweat like an Injun,8 calculating to build a palace and sell it; but it warn’t no use, none of the genies come. So then I judged that all that stuff was only just one of Tom Sawyer’s lies. I reckoned he believed in the A- rabs and the elephants, but as for me I think dif fer ent. It had all the marks of a Sunday school.

Chapter IV

Well, three or four months run along, and it was well into the winter, now. I had been to school most all the time, and could spell, and read, and write just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirty- "ve, and I don’t reckon I could ever get any further than that if I was to live forever. I don’t take no stock in mathe matics, anyway.

At "rst I hated the school, but by- and-by I got so I could stand it. When- ever I got uncommon tired I played hookey, and the hiding I got next day done me good and cheered me up. So the longer I went to school the easier it got to be. I was getting sort of used to the widow’s ways, too, and they warn’t so raspy on me. Living in a house, and sleeping in a bed, pulled on me pretty tight, mostly, but before the cold weather I used to slide out and sleep in the woods, sometimes, and so that was a rest to me. I liked the old ways best, but I was getting so I liked the new ones, too, a little bit. The widow said I was coming along slow but sure, and doing very satisfactory. She said she warn’t ashamed of me.

One morning I happened to turn over the salt- cellar at breakfast. I reached for some of it as quick as I could, to throw over my left shoulder and keep off the bad luck, but Miss Watson was in ahead of me, and crossed me off. She says, “Take your hands away, Huckleberry— what a mess you are always

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9. Steps that `ank and straddle a fence. 1. Clump of hair found in an animal’s stomach; believed by Jim and Huck to have magical powers.

making.” The widow put in a good word for me, but that warn’t going to keep off the bad luck, I knowed that well enough. I started out, after breakfast, feeling worried and shaky, and wondering where it was going to fall on me, and what it was going to be. There is ways to keep off some kinds of bad luck, but this wasn’t one of them kind; so I never tried to do anything, but just poked along low- spirited and on the watch- out.

I went down the front garden and clumb over the stile,9 where you go through the high board fence. There was an inch of new snow on the ground, and I seen somebody’s tracks. They had come up from the quarry and stood around the stile a while, and then went on around the garden fence. It was funny they hadn’t come in, after standing around so. I couldn’t make it out. It was very curious, somehow. I was going to follow around, but I stooped down to look at the tracks "rst. I didn’t notice anything at "rst, but next I did. There was a cross in the left boot- heel made with big nails, to keep off the devil.

I was up in a second and shinning down the hill. I looked over my shoul- der every now and then, but I didn’t see nobody. I was at Judge Thatcher’s as quick as I could get there. He said:

“Why, my boy, you are all out of breath. Did you come for your interest?” “No sir,” I says; “is there some for me?” “Oh, yes, a half- yearly is in, last night. Over a hundred and "fty dollars.

Quite a fortune for you. You better let me invest it along with your six thou- sand, because if you take it you’ll spend it.”

“No sir,” I says, “I don’t want to spend it. I don’t want it at all— nor the six thousand, nuther. I want you to take it; I want to give it to you— the six thou- sand and all.”

He looked surprised. He couldn’t seem to make it out. He says: “Why, what can you mean, my boy?” I says, “ Don’t you ask me no questions about it, please. You’ll take it—

won’t you?” He says: “Well I’m puzzled. Is something the matter?” “Please take it,” says I, “and don’t ask me nothing— then I won’t have to

tell no lies.” He studied a while, and then he says: “Oho- o. I think I see. You want to sell all your property to me— not give

it. That’s the correct idea.” Then he wrote something on a paper and read it over, and says: “ There— you see it says ‘for a consideration.’ That means I have bought it

of you and paid you for it. Here’s a dollar for you. Now, you sign it.” So I signed it, and left. Miss Watson’s nigger, Jim, had a hair- ball1 as big as your "st, which had

been took out of the fourth stomach of an ox, and he used to do magic with it. He said there was a spirit inside of it, and it knowed every thing. So I went to him that night and told him pap was here again, for I found his tracks in the snow. What I wanted to know, was, what he was going to do, and was he going to stay? Jim got out his hair- ball, and said something over it, and then

2. Predestined.

he held it up and dropped it on the `oor. It fell pretty solid, and only rolled about an inch. Jim tried it again, and then another time, and it acted just the same. Jim got down on his knees and put his ear against it and listened. But it warn’t no use; he said it wouldn’t talk. He said sometimes it wouldn’t talk without money. I told him I had an old slick counterfeit quarter that warn’t no good because the brass showed through the silver a little, and it  wouldn’t pass nohow, even if the brass didn’t show, because it was so slick it felt greasy, and so that would tell on it every time. (I reckoned I wouldn’t say nothing about the dollar I got from the judge.) I said it was pretty bad money, but maybe the hair- ball would take it, because maybe it wouldn’t know the difference. Jim smelt it, and bit it, and rubbed it, and said he would manage so the hair- ball would think it was good. He said he would split open a raw Irish potato and stick the quarter in between and keep it there all night, and next morning you couldn’t see no brass, and it wouldn’t feel greasy no more, and so anybody in town would take it in a minute, let alone a hair- ball. Well, I knowed a potato would do that, before, but I had forgot it.

Jim put the quarter under the hair- ball and got down and listened again. This time he said the hair- ball was all right. He said it would tell my whole fortune if I wanted it to. I says, go on. So the hair- ball talked to Jim, and Jim told it to me. He says:

“Yo’ ole father doan’ know, yit, what he’s a- gwyne to do. Sometimes he spec he’ll go ’way, en den agin he spec he’ll stay. De bes’ way is to res’ easy en let de ole man take his own way. Dey’s two angels hoverin’ roun’ ’bout him. One uv ’em is white en shiny, en ’tother one is black. De white one gits him to go right, a little while, den de black one sail in en bust it all up. A body can’t tell, yit, which one gwyne to fetch him at de las’. But you is all right. You gwyne to have considable trou ble in yo’ life, en considable joy. Sometimes you gwyne to git hurt, en sometimes you gwyne to git sick; but every time you’s gwyne to git well agin. Dey’s two gals `yin’ ’bout you in yo’ life. One uv ’em’s light en ’tother one is dark. One is rich en ’tother is po’. You’s gwyne to marry de po’ one fust en de rich one by- en-by. You wants to keep ’way fum de water as much as you kin, en don’t run no resk, ’kase it’s down in de bills2 dat you’s gwyne to git hung.”

When I lit my candle and went up to my room that night, there set pap, his own self!

Chapter V

I had shut the door to. Then I turned around, and there he was. I used to be scared of him all the time, he tanned me so much. I reckoned I was scared now, too; but in a minute I see I was mistaken. That is, after the "rst jolt, as you may say, when my breath sort of hitched—he being so unexpected; but right away after, I see I warn’t scared of him worth bothering about.

He was most "fty, and he looked it. His hair was long and tangled and greasy, and hung down, and you could see his eyes shining through like he was behind vines. It was all black, no gray; so was his long, mixed-up whis- kers. There warn’t no color in his face, where his face showed; it was white;

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3. A beating with a cowhide whip.

not like another man’s white, but a white to make a body sick, a white to make a body’s `esh crawl— a tree- toad white, a "sh- belly white. As for his clothes— just rags, that was all. He had one ankle resting on ’tother knee; the boot on that foot was busted, and two of his toes stuck through, and he worked them now and then. His hat was laying on the `oor; an old black slouch with the top caved in, like a lid.

I stood a- looking at him; he set there a- looking at me, with his chair tilted back a little. I set the candle down. I noticed the win dow was up; so he had clumb in by the shed. He kept a- looking me all over. By- and-by he says:

“Starchy clothes— very. You think you’re a good deal of a big- bug, don’t you?”

“Maybe I am, maybe I ain’t,” I says. “ Don’t you give me none o’ your lip,” says he. “ You’ve put on considerble

many frills since I been away. I’ll take you down a peg before I get done with you. You’re educated, too, they say; can read and write. You think you’re better’n your father, now, don’t you, because he can’t? I’ll take it out of you. Who told you you might meddle with such hifalut’n foolishness, hey?— who told you you could?”

“The widow. She told me.” “The widow, hey?— and who told the widow she could put in her shovel

about a thing that ain’t none of her business?” “Nobody never told her.” “Well, I’ll learn her how to meddle. And looky here— you drop that school,

you hear? I’ll learn people to bring up a boy to put on airs over his own father and let on to be better’n what he is. You lemme catch you fooling around that school again, you hear? Your mother couldn’t read, and she couldn’t write, nuther, before she died. None of the family couldn’t, before they died. I can’t; and here you’re a- swelling yourself up like this. I ain’t the man to stand it— you hear? Say— lemme hear you read.”

I took up a book and begun something about General Washington and the wars. When I’d read about a half a minute, he fetched the book a whack with his hand and knocked it across the house. He says:

“It’s so. You can do it. I had my doubts when you told me. Now looky here; you stop that putting on frills. I won’t have it. I’ll lay for you, my smarty; and if I catch you about that school I’ll tan you good. First you know you’ll get religion, too. I never see such a son.”

He took up a little blue and yaller picture of some cows and a boy, and says:

“What’s this?” “It’s something they give me for learning my lessons good.” He tore it up, and says— “I’ll give you something better— I’ll give you a cowhide.”3 He set there a- mumbling and a- growling a minute, and then he says— “ Ain’t you a sweet- scented dandy, though? A bed; and bedclothes; and a

look’n- glass; and a piece of carpet on the `oor— and your own father got to sleep with the hogs in the tanyard. I never see such a son. I bet I’ll take some

4. Pay.

o’ these frills out o’ you before I’m done with you. Why there ain’t no end to your airs— they say you’re rich. Hey?— how’s that?”

“They lie— that’s how.” “Looky here— mind how you talk to me; I’m a- standing about all I can

stand, now—so don’t gimme no sass. I’ve been in town two days, and I hain’t heard nothing but about you bein’ rich. I heard about it away down the river, too. That’s why I come. You git me that money to- morrow— I want it.”

“I hain’t got no money.” “It’s a lie. Judge Thatcher’s got it. You git it. I want it.” “I hain’t got no money, I tell you. You ask Judge Thatcher; he’ll tell you

the same.” “All right. I’ll ask him; and I’ll make him pungle,4 too, or I’ll know the

reason why. Say— how much you got in your pocket? I want it.” “I hain’t got only a dollar, and I want that to—” “It don’t make no difference what you want it for— you just shell it out.” He took it and bit it to see if it was good, and then he said he was going

down town to get some whiskey; said he hadn’t had a drink all day. When he had got out on the shed, he put his head in again, and cussed me for putting on frills and trying to be better than him; and when I reckoned he was gone, he come back and put his head in again, and told me to mind about that school, because he was going to lay for me and lick me if I didn’t drop that.

Next day he was drunk, and he went to Judge Thatcher’s and bullyragged him and tried to make him give up the money, but he couldn’t, and then he swore he’d make the law force him.

The judge and the widow went to law to get the court to take me away from him and let one of them be my guardian; but it was a new judge that had just come, and he didn’t know the old man; so he said courts mustn’t interfere and separate families if they could help it; said he’d druther not take a child away from its father. So Judge Thatcher and the widow had to quit on the business.

That pleased the old man till he couldn’t rest. He said he’d cowhide me till I was black and blue if I didn’t raise some money for him. I borrowed three dollars from Judge Thatcher, and pap took it and got drunk and went a- blowing around and cussing and whooping and carry ing on; and he kept it up all over town, with a tin pan, till most midnight; then they jailed him, and next day they had him before court, and jailed him again for a week. But he said he was satis"ed; said he was boss of his son, and he’d make it warm for him.

When he got out the new judge said he was agoing to make a man of him. So he took him to his own house, and dressed him up clean and nice, and had him to breakfast and dinner and supper with the family, and was just old pie to him, so to speak. And after supper he talked to him about temper- ance and such things till the old man cried, and said he’d been a fool, and fooled away his life; but now he was agoing to turn over a new leaf and be a man nobody wouldn’t be ashamed of, and he hoped the judge would help him and not look down on him. The judge said he could hug him for them words; so he cried, and his wife she cried again; pap said he’d been a man that had always been misunderstood before, and the judge said he believed

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5. Home- distilled whiskey strong enough to knock a person forty rods, or 220 yards.

6. Loitering.

it. The old man said that what a man wanted that was down, was sympathy; and the judge said it was so; so they cried again. And when it was bedtime, the old man rose up and held out his hand, and says:

“Look at it gentlemen, and ladies all; take ahold of it; shake it. There’s a hand that was the hand of a hog; but it ain’t so no more; it’s the hand of a man that’s started in on a new life, and ’ll die before he’ll go back. You mark them words— don’t forget I said them. It’s a clean hand now; shake it— don’t be afeard.”

So they shook it, one after the other, all around, and cried. The judge’s wife she kissed it. Then the old man he signed a pledge— made his mark. The judge said it was the holiest time on rec ord, or something like that. Then they tucked the old man into a beautiful room, which was the spare room, and in the night sometime he got power ful thirsty and clumb out onto the porch- roof and slid down a stanchion and traded his new coat for a jug of forty- rod,5 and clumb back again and had a good old time; and towards day- light he crawled out again, drunk as a "ddler, and rolled off the porch and broke his left arm in two places and was almost froze to death when some- body found him after sun-up. And when they come to look at that spare room, they had to take soundings before they could navigate it.

The judge he felt kind of sore. He said he reckoned a body could reform the ole man with a shot- gun, maybe, but he didn’t know no other way.

Chapter VI

Well, pretty soon the old man was up and around again, and then he went for Judge Thatcher in the courts to make him give up that money, and he went for me, too, for not stopping school. He catched me a couple of times and thrashed me, but I went to school just the same, and dodged him or out- run him most of the time. I didn’t want to go to school much, before, but I reckoned I’d go now to spite pap. That law trial was a slow business; appeared like they warn’t ever going to get started on it; so every now and then I’d borrow two or three dollars off of the judge for him, to keep from getting a cowhiding. Every time he got money he got drunk; and every time he got drunk he raised Cain around town; and every time he raised Cain he got jailed. He was just suited— this kind of thing was right in his line.

He got to hanging around the widow’s too much, and so she told him at last, that if he didn’t quit using6 around there she would make trou ble for him. Well, wasn’t he mad? He said he would show who was Huck Finn’s boss. So he watched out for me one day in the spring, and catched me, and took me up the river about three mile, in a skiff, and crossed over to the Illinois shore where it was woody and there warn’t no houses but an old log hut in a place where the timber was so thick you couldn’t "nd it if you didn’t know where it was.

He kept me with him all the time, and I never got a chance to run off. We lived in that old cabin, and he always locked the door and put the key under his head, nights. He had a gun which he had stole, I reckon, and we "shed and hunted, and that was what we lived on. Every little while he locked me

in and went down to the store, three miles, to the ferry, and traded "sh and game for whiskey and fetched it home and got drunk and had a good time, and licked me. The widow she found out where I was, by- and-by, and she sent a man over to try to get hold of me, but pap drove him off with the gun, and it warn’t long after that till I was used to being where I was, and liked it, all but the cowhide part.

It was kind of lazy and jolly, laying off comfortable all day, smoking and "shing, and no books nor study. Two months or more run along, and my clothes got to be all rags and dirt, and I didn’t see how I’d ever got to like it so well at the widow’s, where you had to wash, and eat on a plate, and comb up, and go to bed and get up regular, and be forever bothering over a book and have old Miss Watson pecking at you all the time. I didn’t want to go back no more. I had stopped cussing, because the widow didn’t like it; but now I took to it again because pap hadn’t no objections. It was pretty good times up in the woods there, take it all around.

But by- and-by pap got too handy with his hick’ry, and I couldn’t stand it. I was all over welts. He got to going away so much, too, and locking me in. Once he locked me in and was gone three days. It was dreadful lonesome. I judged he had got drowned and I wasn’t ever going to get out any more. I was scared. I made up my mind I would "x up some way to leave there. I had tried to get out of that cabin many a time, but I couldn’t "nd no way. There warn’t a win dow to it big enough for a dog to get through. I couldn’t get up the chimbly, it was too narrow. The door was thick solid oak slabs. Pap was pretty careful not to leave a knife or anything in the cabin when he was away; I reckon I had hunted the place over as much as a hundred times; well, I was ’most all the time at it, because it was about the only way to put in the time. But this time I found something at last; I found an old rusty wood- saw without any handle; it was laid in between a rafter and the clap- boards of the roof. I greased it up and went to work. There was an old horse- blanket nailed against the logs at the far end of the cabin behind the table, to keep the wind from blowing through the chinks and putting the candle out. I got under the table and raised the blanket and went to work to saw a section of the big bottom log out, big enough to let me through. Well, it was a good long job, but I was getting towards the end of it when I heard pap’s gun in the woods. I got rid of the signs of my work, and dropped the blanket and hid my saw, and pretty soon pap come in.

Pap warn’t in a good humor—so he was his natu ral self. He said he was down to town, and every thing was going wrong. His lawyer said he reck- oned he would win his lawsuit and get the money, if they ever got started on the trial; but then there was ways to put it off a long time, and Judge Thatcher knowed how to do it. And he said people allowed there’d be another trial to get me away from him and give me to the widow for my guardian, and they guessed it would win, this time. This shook me up considerable, because I didn’t want to go back to the widow’s any more and be so cramped up and sivilized, as they called it. Then the old man got to cussing, and cussed every thing and every body he could think of, and then cussed them all over again to make sure he hadn’t skipped any, and after that he polished off with a kind of general cuss all round, including a considerable parcel of people which he didn’t know the names of, and so called them what’s- his- name, when he got to them, and went right along with his cussing.

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7. Cheap rope. “Wadding”: material ( here paper) used to pack the gunpowder in a ri`e. 8. God created Adam from earth in Genesis 2.7.

9. Mulatto, of mixed white and black ancestry. Ohio was a free state.

He said he would like to see the widow get me. He said he would watch out, and if they tried to come any such game on him he knowed of a place six or seven mile off, to stow me in, where they might hunt till they dropped and they couldn’t "nd me. That made me pretty uneasy again, but only for a minute; I reckoned I wouldn’t stay on hand till he got that chance.

The old man made me go to the skiff and fetch the things he had got. There was a "fty- pound sack of corn meal, and a side of bacon, ammunition, and a four- gallon jug of whiskey, and an old book and two newspapers for wadding, besides some tow.7 I toted up a load, and went back and set down on the bow of the skiff to rest. I thought it all over, and I reckoned I would walk off with the gun and some lines, and take to the woods when I run away. I guessed I wouldn’t stay in one place, but just tramp right across the country, mostly night times, and hunt and "sh to keep alive, and so get so far away that the old man nor the widow couldn’t ever "nd me any more. I judged I would saw out and leave that night if pap got drunk enough, and I reckoned he would. I got so full of it I didn’t notice how long I was staying, till the old man hollered and asked me whether I was asleep or drownded.

I got the things all up to the cabin, and then it was about dark. While I was cooking supper the old man took a swig or two and got sort of warmed up, and went to ripping again. He had been drunk over in town, and laid in the gutter all night, and he was a sight to look at. A body would a thought he was Adam, he was just all mud.8 Whenever his liquor begun to work, he most always went for the govment. This time he says:

“Call this a govment! why, just look at it and see what it’s like. Here’s the law a- standing ready to take a man’s son away from him— a man’s own son, which he has had all the trou ble and all the anxiety and all the expense of raising. Yes, just as that man has got that son raised at last, and ready to go to work and begin to do suthin’ for him and give him a rest, the law up and goes for him. And they call that govment! That ain’t all, nuther. The law backs that old Judge Thatcher up and helps him to keep me out o’ my prop- erty. Here’s what the law does. The law takes a man worth six thousand dol- lars and upards, and jams him into an old trap of a cabin like this, and lets him go round in clothes that ain’t "tten for a hog. They call that govment! A man can’t get his rights in a govment like this. Sometimes I’ve a mighty notion to just leave the country for good and all. Yes, and I told ’em so: I told old Thatcher so to his face. Lots of ’em heard me, and can tell what I said. Says I, for two cents I’d leave the blamed country and never come anear it agin. Them’s the very words. I says, look at my hat—if you call it a hat— but the lid raises up and the rest of it goes down till it’s below my chin, and then it ain’t rightly a hat at all, but more like my head was shoved up through a jint o’ stove- pipe. Look at it, says I— such a hat for me to wear— one of the wealthiest men in this town, if I could git my rights.

“Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. Why, looky here. There was a free nigger there, from Ohio; a mulatter,9 most as white as a white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat; and there ain’t a man in that town that’s got as "ne clothes as what he had; and

1. Someone of con spic u ous wealth. 2. Missouri’s original constitution prohibited the entrance of freed slaves and mulattoes into the state, but the second Missouri Compromise of 1820 deleted the provision. In the 1830s and

1840s, however, increasingly strict antiblack laws were passed, and by 1850 a black person without freedom papers could be sold downriver with a mere sworn statement of owner ship from a white man.

he had a gold watch and chain and a silver- headed cane— the awfulest old gray- headed nabob1 in the State. And what do you think? they said he was a p’fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed every thing. And that ain’t the wust. They said he could vote, when he was at home. Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is the country a- coming to? It was ’lection day, and I was just about to go and vote, myself, if I warn’t too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a State in this country where they’d let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says I’ll never vote agin. Them’s the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may rot for all me— I’ll never vote agin as long as I live. And to see the cool way of that nigger— why, he wouldn’t a give me the road if I hadn’t shoved him out o’ the way. I says to the people, why ain’t this nigger put up at auction and sold?— that’s what I want to know. And what do you reckon they said? Why, they said he couldn’t be sold till he’d been in the State six months, and he hadn’t been there that long yet. There, now— that’s a specimen. They call that a govment that can’t sell a free nigger till he’s been in the State six months. Here’s a govment that calls itself a govment, and lets on to be a govment, and thinks it is a govment, and yet’s got to set stock- still for six whole months before it can take ahold of a prowling, thieving, infernal, white- shirted free nigger, and2—”

Pap was agoing on so, he never noticed where his old limber legs was tak- ing him to, so he went head over heels over the tub of salt pork, and barked both shins, and the rest of his speech was all the hottest kind of language— mostly hove at the nigger and the govment, though he give the tub some, too, all along, here and there. He hopped around the cabin considerble, "rst on one leg and then on the other, holding "rst one shin and then the other one, and at last he let out with his left foot all of a sudden and fetched the tub a rattling kick. But it warn’t good judgment, because that was the boot that had a couple of his toes leaking out of the front end of it; so now he raised a howl that fairly made a body’s hair raise, and down he went in the dirt, and rolled there, and held his toes; and the cussing he done then laid over anything he had ever done previous. He said so his own self, after- wards. He had heard old Sowberry Hagan in his best days, and he said it laid over him, too; but I reckon that was sort of piling it on, maybe.

After supper pap took the jug, and said he had enough whiskey there for two drunks and one delirium tremens. That was always his word. I judged he would be blind drunk in about an hour, an then I would steal the key, or saw myself out, one or ’tother. He drank, and drank, and tumbled down on his blankets, by- and- by; but luck didn’t run my way. He didn’t go sound asleep, but was uneasy. He groaned, and moaned, and thrashed around this way and that, for a long time. At last I got so sleepy I couldn’t keep my eyes open, all I could do, and so before I knowed what I was about I was sound asleep, and the candle burning.

I don’t know how long I was asleep, but all of a sudden there was an awful scream and I was up. There was pap, looking wild and skipping around every which way and yelling about snakes. He said they was crawling up his legs;

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3. Tired. 4. I.e., splint- bottom, made by interweaving thin strips of wood.

and then he would give a jump and scream, and say one had bit him on the cheek— but I couldn’t see no snakes. He started to run round and round the cabin, hollering “take him off! take him off! he’s biting me on the neck!” I never see a man look so wild in the eyes. Pretty soon he was all fagged3 out, and fell down panting; then he rolled over and over, wonderful fast, kicking things every which way, and striking and grabbing at the air with his hands, and screaming, and saying there was dev ils ahold of him. He wore out, by- and-by, and laid still a while, moaning. Then he laid stiller, and didn’t make a sound. I could hear the owls and the wolves, away off in the woods, and it seemed terrible still. He was laying over by the corner. By- and-by he raised up, part way, and listened, with his head to one side. He says very low:

“Tramp— tramp— tramp; that’s the dead; tramp— tramp— tramp; they’re coming after me; but I won’t go— Oh, they’re here! don’t touch me— don’t! hands off— they’re cold; let go— Oh, let a poor devil alone!”

Then he went down on all fours and crawled off begging them to let him alone, and he rolled himself up in his blanket and wallowed in under the old pine table, still a- begging; and then he went to crying. I could hear him through the blanket.

By- and-by he rolled out and jumped up on his feet looking wild, and he see me and went for me. He chased me round and round the place, with a clasp- knife, calling me the Angel of Death and saying he would kill me and then I couldn’t come for him no more. I begged, and told him I was only Huck, but he laughed such a screechy laugh, and roared and cussed, and kept on chasing me up. Once when I turned short and dodged under his arm he made a grab and got me by the jacket between my shoulders, and I thought I was gone; but I skid out of the jacket quick as lightning, and saved myself. Pretty soon he was all tired out, and dropped down with his back against the door, and said he would rest a minute and then kill me. He put his knife under him, and said he would sleep and get strong, and then he would see who was who.

So he dozed off, pretty soon. By- and-by I got the old split bottom4 chair and clumb up, as easy as I could, not to make any noise, and got down the gun. I slipped the ramrod down it to make sure it was loaded, and then I laid it across the turnip barrel, pointing towards pap, and set down behind it to wait for him to stir. And how slow and still the time did drag along.

Chapter VII

“Git up! what you ’bout!” I opened my eyes and looked around, trying to make out where I was. It

was after sun-up, and I had been sound asleep. Pap was standing over me, looking sour— and sick, too. He says—

“What you doin’ with this gun?” I judged he didn’t know nothing about what he had been doing, so I says: “Somebody tried to get in, so I was laying for him.” “Why didn’t you roust me out?” “Well I tried to, but I couldn’t; I couldn’t budge you.”

5. A long "shing line fastened across a stream; to this line several shorter baited lines are attached.

“Well, all right. Don’t stand there palavering all day, but out with you and see if there’s a "sh on the lines for breakfast. I’ll be along in a minute.”

He unlocked the door and I cleared out, up the river bank. I noticed some pieces of limbs and such things `oating down, and a sprinkling of bark; so I knowed the river had begun to rise. I reckoned I would have great times, now, if I was over at the town. The June rise used to be always luck for me; because as soon as that rise begins, here comes cord- wood `oating down, and pieces of log rafts— sometimes a dozen logs together; so all you have to do is to catch them and sell them to the wood yards and the sawmill.

I went along up the bank with one eye out for pap and ’tother one out for what the rise might fetch along. Well, all at once, here comes a canoe; just a beauty, too, about thirteen or fourteen foot long, riding high like a duck. I shot head "rst off of the bank, like a frog, clothes and all on, and struck out for the canoe. I just expected there’d be somebody laying down in it, because people often done that to fool folks, and when a chap had pulled a skiff out most to it they’d raise up and laugh at him. But it warn’t so this time. It was a drift- canoe, sure enough, and I clumb in and paddled her ashore. Thinks I, the old man will be glad when he sees this— she’s worth ten dollars. But when I got to shore pap wasn’t in sight yet, and as I was running her into a little creek like a gully, all hung over with vines and wil- lows, I struck another idea; I judged I’d hide her good, and then, stead of tak- ing to the woods when I run off, I’d go down the river about "fty mile and camp in one place for good, and not have such a rough time tramping on foot.

It was pretty close to the shanty, and I thought I heard the old man com- ing, all the time; but I got her hid; and then I out and looked around a bunch of willows, and there was the old man down the path apiece just drawing a bead on a bird with his gun. So he hadn’t seen anything.

When he got along, I was hard at it taking up a “trot” line.5 He abused me a little for being so slow, but I told him I fell in the river and that was what made me so long. I knowed he would see I was wet, and then he would be asking questions. We got "ve cat"sh off of the lines and went home.

While we laid off, after breakfast, to sleep up, both of us being about wore out, I got to thinking that if I could "x up some way to keep pap and the widow from trying to follow me, it would be a certainer thing than trusting to luck to get far enough off before they missed me; you see, all kinds of things might happen. Well, I didn’t see no way for a while, but by- and-by pap raised up a minute, to drink another barrel of water, and he says:

“Another time a man comes a- prowling round here, you roust me out, you hear? That man warn’t here for no good. I’d a shot him. Next time, you roust me out, you hear?”

Then he dropped down and went to sleep again— but what he had been saying give me the very idea I wanted. I says to myself, I can "x it now so nobody won’t think of following me.

About twelve o’clock we turned out and went along up the bank. The river was coming up pretty fast, and lots of drift- wood going by on the rise. By- and-by, along comes part of a log raft— nine logs fast together. We went out with the skiff and towed it ashore. Then we had dinner. Anybody but pap

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would a waited and seen the day through, so as to catch more stuff; but that warn’t pap’s style. Nine logs was enough for one time; he must shove right over to town and sell. So he locked me in and took the skiff and started off towing the raft about half- past three. I judged he wouldn’t come back that night. I waited till I reckoned he had got a good start, then I out with my saw and went to work on that log again. Before he was ’tother side of the river I was out of the hole; him and his raft was just a speck on the water away off yonder.

I took the sack of corn meal and took it to where the canoe was hid, and shoved the vines and branches apart and put it in; then I done the same with the side of bacon; then the whiskey jug; I took all the coffee and sugar there was, and all the ammunition; I took the wadding; I took the bucket and gourd, I took a dipper and a tin cup, and my old saw and two blankets, and the skillet and the coffee- pot. I took "sh- lines and matches and other things— every thing that was worth a cent. I cleaned out the place. I wanted an axe, but there wasn’t any, only the one out at the wood pile, and I knowed why I was going to leave that. I fetched out the gun, and now I was done.

I had wore the ground a good deal, crawling out of the hole and dragging out so many things. So I "xed that as good as I could from the outside by scattering dust on the place, which covered up the smoothness and the saw- dust. Then I "xed the piece of log back into its place, and put two rocks under it and one against it to hold it there,— for it was bent up at the place, and didn’t quite touch ground. If you stood four or "ve foot away and didn’t know it was sawed, you wouldn’t ever notice it; and besides, this was the back of the cabin and it warn’t likely anybody would go fooling around there.

It was all grass clear to the canoe; so I hadn’t left a track. I followed around to see. I stood on the bank and looked out over the river. All safe. So I took the gun and went up a piece into the woods and was hunting around for some birds, when I see a wild pig; hogs soon went wild in them bottoms after they had got away from the prairie farms. I shot this fellow and took him into camp.

I took the axe and smashed in the door— I beat it and hacked it consider- able, a- doing it. I fetched the pig in and took him back nearly to the table and hacked into his throat with the ax, and laid him down on the ground to bleed— I say ground, because it was ground— hard packed, and no boards. Well, next I took an old sack and put a lot of big rocks in it,— all I could drag— and I started it from the pig and dragged it to the door and through the woods down to the river and dumped it in, and down it sunk, out of sight. You could easy see that something had been dragged over the ground. I did wish Tom Sawyer was there, I knowed he would take an interest in this kind of business, and throw in the fancy touches. Nobody could spread himself like Tom Sawyer in such a thing as that.

Well, last I pulled out some of my hair, and bloodied the ax good, and stuck it on the back side, and slung the ax in the corner. Then I took up the pig and held him to my breast with my jacket (so he couldn’t drip) till I got a good piece below the house and then dumped him into the river. Now I thought of something else. So I went and got the bag of meal and my old saw out of the canoe and fetched them to the house. I took the bag to where it used to stand, and ripped a hole in the bottom of it with the saw, for there warn’t no knives and forks on the place— pap done every thing with his clasp- knife, about the cooking. Then I carried the sack about a hundred yards across the grass and through the willows east of the house, to a shallow lake

6. The same island that serves for an adventure in Tom Sawyer (ch. 13).

that was "ve mile wide and full of rushes— and ducks too, you might say, in the season. There was a slough or a creek leading out of it on the other side, that went miles away, I don’t know where, but it didn’t go to the river. The meal sifted out and made a little track all the way to the lake. I dropped pap’s whetstone there too, so as to look like it had been done by accident. Then I tied up the rip in the meal sack with a string, so it wouldn’t leak no more, and took it and my saw to the canoe again.

It was about dark, now; so I dropped the canoe down the river under some willows that hung over the bank, and waited for the moon to rise. I made fast to a willow; then I took a bite to eat, and by- and-by laid down in the canoe to smoke a pipe and lay out a plan. I says to myself, they’ll follow the track of that sackful of rocks to the shore and then drag the river for me. And they’ll follow that meal track to the lake and go browsing down the creek that leads out of it to "nd the robbers that killed me and took the things. They won’t ever hunt the river for anything but my dead carcass. They’ll soon get tired of that, and won’t bother no more about me. All right; I can stop anywhere I want to. Jackson’s Island6 is good enough for me; I know that island pretty well, and nobody ever comes there. And then I can paddle over to town, nights, and slink around and pick up things I want. Jackson’s Island’s the place.

I was pretty tired, and the "rst thing I knowed, I was asleep. When I woke up I didn’t know where I was, for a minute. I set up and looked around, a little scared. Then I remembered. The river looked miles and miles across. The moon was so bright I could a counted the drift logs that went a slipping along, black and still, hundreds of yards out from shore. Every thing was dead quiet, and it looked late, and smelt late. You know what I mean— I don’t know the words to put it in.

I took a good gap and a stretch, and was just going to unhitch and start, when I heard a sound away over the water. I listened. Pretty soon I made it out. It was that dull kind of a regular sound that comes from oars working in rowlocks when it’s a still night. I peeped out through the willow branches, and there it was— a skiff, away across the water. I couldn’t tell how many was in it. It kept a- coming, and when it was abreast of me I see there warn’t but one man in it. Thinks I, maybe it’s pap, though I warn’t expecting him. He dropped below me, with the current, and by- and-by he come a- swinging up shore in the easy water, and he went by so close I could a reached out the gun and touched him. Well, it was pap, sure enough— and sober, too, by the way he laid to his oars.

I didn’t lose no time. The next minute I was a- spinning down stream soft but quick in the shade of the bank. I made two mile and a half, and then struck out a quarter of a mile or more towards the middle of the river, because pretty soon I would be passing the ferry landing and people might see me and hail me. I got out amongst the drift- wood and then laid down in the bottom of the canoe and let her `oat. I laid there and had a good rest and a smoke out of my pipe, looking away into the sky, not a cloud in it. The sky looks ever so deep when you lay down on your back in the moonshine; I never knowed it before. And how far a body can hear on the water such

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7. Starboard, the right- hand side of a boat, facing forward.

nights! I heard people talking at the ferry landing. I heard what they said, too, every word of it. One man said it was getting towards the long days and the short nights, now. ’Tother one said this warn’t one of the short ones, he reckoned— and then they laughed, and he said it over again and they laughed again; then they waked up another fellow and told him, and laughed, but he didn’t laugh; he ripped out something brisk and said let him alone. The "rst fellow said he ’lowed to tell it to his old woman— she would think it was pretty good; but he said that warn’t nothing to some things he had said in his time. I heard one man say it was nearly three o’clock, and he hoped daylight wouldn’t wait more than about a week longer. After that, the talk got further and further away, and I couldn’t make out the words any more, but I could hear the mumble; and now and then a laugh, too, but it seemed a long ways off.

I was away below the ferry now. I rose up and there was Jackson’s Island, about two mile and a half down stream, heavy- timbered and standing up out of the middle of the river, big and dark and solid, like a steamboat with- out any lights. There warn’t any signs of the bar at the head—it was all under water, now.

It didn’t take me long to get there. I shot past the head at a ripping rate, the current was so swift, and then I got into the dead water and landed on the side towards the Illinois shore. I run the canoe into a deep dent in the bank that I knowed about; I had to part the willow branches to get in; and when I made fast nobody could a seen the canoe from the outside.

I went up and set down on a log at the head of the island and looked out on the big river and the black driftwood, and away over to the town, three mile away, where there was three or four lights twinkling. A monstrous big lumber raft was about a mile up stream, coming along down, with a lantern in the middle of it. I watched it come creeping down, and when it was most abreast of where I stood I heard a man say, “Stern oars, there! heave her head to stabboard!”7 I heard that just as plain as if the man was by my side.

There was a little gray in the sky, now; so I stepped into the woods and laid down for a nap before breakfast.

Chapter VIII

The sun was up so high when I waked, that I judged it was after eight o’clock. I laid there in the grass and the cool shade, thinking about things and feel- ing rested and ruther comfortable and satis"ed. I could see the sun out at one or two holes, but mostly it was big trees all about, and gloomy in there amongst them. There was freckled places on the ground where the light sifted down through the leaves, and the freckled places swapped about a little, showing there was a little breeze up there. A couple of squirrels set on a limb and jabbered at me very friendly.

I was power ful lazy and comfortable— didn’t want to get up and cook breakfast. Well, I was dozing off again, when I thinks I hears a deep sound of “boom!” away up the river. I rouses up and rests on my elbow and listens; pretty soon I hears it again. I hopped up and went and looked out at a hole

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8. Mercury. 9. Corn bread.

in the leaves, and I see a bunch of smoke laying on the water a long ways up— about abreast the ferry. And there was the ferry- boat full of people, `oating along down. I knowed what was the matter, now. “Boom!” I see the white smoke squirt out of the ferry- boat’s side. You see, they was "ring can- non over the water, trying to make my carcass come to the top.

I was pretty hungry, but it warn’t going to do for me to start a "re, because they might see the smoke. So I set there and watched the cannon- smoke and listened to the boom. The river was a mile wide, there, and it always looks pretty on a summer morning—so I was having a good enough time seeing them hunt for my remainders, if I only had a bite to eat. Well, then I happened to think how they always put quicksilver8 in loaves of bread and `oat them off because they always go right to the drownded carcass and stop there. So says I, I’ll keep a lookout, and if any of them’s `oating around after me, I’ll give them a show. I changed to the Illinois edge of the island to see what luck I could have, and I warn’t disappointed. A big double loaf come along, and I most got it, with a long stick, but my foot slipped and she ̀ oated out further. Of course I was where the current set in the closest to the shore— I knowed enough for that. But by- and-by along comes another one, and this time I won. I took out the plug and shook out the little dab of quick- silver, and set my teeth in. It was “baker’s bread”— what the quality eat— none of your low- down corn- pone.9

I got a good place amongst the leaves, and set there on a log, munching the bread and watching the ferry- boat, and very well satis"ed. And then something struck me. I says, now I reckon the widow or the parson or somebody prayed that this bread would "nd me, and here it has gone and done it. So there ain’t no doubt but there is something in that thing. That is, there’s something in it when a body like the widow or the parson prays, but it don’t work for me, and I reckon it don’t work for only just the right kind.

I lit a pipe and had a good long smoke and went on watching. The ferry- boat was `oating with the current, and I allowed I’d have a chance to see who was aboard when she come along, because she would come in close, where the bread did. When she’d got pretty well along down towards me, I put out my pipe and went to where I "shed out the bread, and laid down behind a log on the bank in a little open place. Where the log forked I could peep through.

By- and-by she came along, and she drifted in so close that they could a run out a plank and walked ashore. Most every body was on the boat. Pap, and Judge Thatcher, and Bessie Thatcher, and Jo Harper, and Tom Sawyer, and his old Aunt Polly, and Sid and Mary, and plenty more. Every body was talking about the murder, but the captain broke in and says:

“Look sharp, now; the current sets in the closest here, and maybe he’s washed ashore and got tangled amongst the brush at the water’s edge. I hope so, anyway.”

I didn’t hope so. They all crowded up and leaned over the rails, nearly in my face, and kept still, watching with all their might. I could see them "rst- rate, but they couldn’t see me. Then the captain sung out:

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“Stand away!” and the cannon let off such a blast right before me that it made me deef with the noise and pretty near blind with the smoke, and I judged I was gone. If they’d a had some bullets in, I reckon they’d a got the corpse they was after. Well, I see I warn’t hurt, thanks to goodness. The boat `oated on and went out of sight around the shoulder of the island. I could hear the booming, now and then, further and further off, and by- and-by after an hour, I didn’t hear it no more. The island was three mile long. I judged they had got to the foot, and was giving it up. But they didn’t yet a while. They turned around the foot of the island and started up the channel on the Missouri side, under steam, and booming once in a while as they went. I crossed over to that side and watched them. When they got abreast the head of the island they quit shooting and dropped over to the Missouri shore and went home to the town.

I knowed I was all right now. Nobody else would come a- hunting after me. I got my traps out of the canoe and made me a nice camp in the thick woods. I made a kind of a tent out of my blankets to put my things under so the rain couldn’t get at them. I catched a cat "sh and haggled him open with my saw, and towards sundown I started my camp "re and had supper. Then I set out a line to catch some "sh for breakfast.

When it was dark I set by my camp "re smoking, and feeling pretty satis- "ed; but by- and-by it got sort of lonesome, and so I went and set on the bank and listened to the currents washing along, and counted the stars and drift- logs and rafts that come down, and then went to bed; there ain’t no better way to put in time when you are lonesome; you can’t stay so, you soon get over it.

And so for three days and nights. No difference— just the same thing. But the next day I went exploring around down through the island. I was boss of it; it all belonged to me, so to say, and I wanted to know all about it; but mainly I wanted to put in the time. I found plenty strawberries, ripe and prime; and green summer- grapes, and green razberries; and the green blackberries was just beginning to show. They would all come handy by- and-by, I judged.

Well, I went fooling along in the deep woods till I judged I warn’t far from the foot of the island. I had my gun along, but I hadn’t shot nothing; it was for protection; thought I would kill some game nigh home. About this time I mighty near stepped on a good sized snake, and it went sliding off through the grass and `owers, and I after it, trying to get a shot at it. I clipped along, and all of sudden I bounded right on to the ashes of a camp "re that was still smoking.

My heart jumped up amongst my lungs. I never waited for to look further, but uncocked my gun and went sneaking back on my tip- toes as fast as ever I could. Every now and then I stopped a second, amongst the thick leaves, and listened; but my breath come so hard I couldn’t hear nothing else. I slunk along another piece further, then listened again; and so on, and so on; if I see a stump, I took it for a man; if I trod on a stick and broke it, it made me feel like a person had cut one of my breaths in two and I only got half, and the short half, too.

When I got to camp I warn’t feeling very brash, there warn’t much sand in my craw;1 but I says, this ain’t no time to be fooling around. So I got all my traps into my canoe again so as to have them out of sight, and I put out

1. Slang for not feeling very brave.

2. Apparently this episode is a vestige of an early conception of the novel involving Pap in a mur- der plot and court trial.

3. A state of tension, uneasiness, or nervousness— what we might now call “the willies.”

the "re and scattered the ashes around to look like an old last year’s camp, and then clumb a tree.

I reckon I was up in the tree two hours; but I didn’t see nothing, I didn’t hear nothing— I only thought I heard and seen as much as a thousand things. Well, I couldn’t stay up there forever; so at last I got down, but I kept in the thick woods and on the lookout all the time. All I could get to eat was ber- ries and what was left over from breakfast.

By the time it was night I was pretty hungry. So when it was good and dark, I slid out from shore before moonrise and paddled over to the Illinois bank— about a quarter of a mile. I went out in the woods and cooked a sup- per, and I had about made up my mind I would stay there all night, when I hear a plunkety- plunk, plunkety- plunk, and says to myself, horses coming; and next I hear people’s voices. I got every thing into the canoe as quick as I could, and then went creeping through the woods to see what I could "nd out. I hadn’t got far when I hear a man say:

“We’d better camp here, if we can "nd a good place; the horses is about beat out. Let’s look around.”2

I didn’t wait, but shoved out and paddled away easy. I tied up in the old place, and reckoned I would sleep in the canoe.

I didn’t sleep much. I couldn’t, somehow, for thinking. And every time I waked up I thought somebody had me by the neck. So the sleep didn’t do me no good. By- and-by I says to myself, I can’t live this way; I’m agoing to "nd out who it is that’s here on the island with me; I’ll "nd it out or bust. Well, I felt better, right off.

So I took my paddle and slid out from shore just a step or two, and then let the canoe drop along down amongst the shadows. The moon was shin- ing, and outside of the shadows it made it most as light as day. I poked along well onto an hour, every thing still as rocks and sound asleep. Well by this time I was most down to the foot of the island. A little ripply, cool breeze begun to blow, and that was as good as saying the night was about done. I give her a turn with the paddle and brung her nose to shore; then I got my gun and slipped out and into the edge of the woods. I set down there on a log and looked out through the leaves. I see the moon go off watch and the darkness begin to blanket the river. But in a little while I see a pale streak over the tree- tops, and knowed the day was coming. So I took my gun and slipped off towards where I had run across that camp "re, stopping every minute or two to listen. But I hadn’t no luck, somehow; I couldn’t seem to "nd the place. But by- and-by, sure enough, I catched a glimpse of "re, away through the trees. I went for it, cautious and slow. By- and-by I was close enough to have a look, and there laid a man on the ground. It most give me the fan- tods.3 He had a blanket around his head, and his head was nearly in the "re. I set there behind a clump of bushes, in about six foot of him, and kept my eyes on him steady. It was getting gray daylight, now. Pretty soon he gapped, and stretched himself, and hove off the blanket, and it was Miss Watson’s Jim! I bet I was glad to see him. I says:

“Hello, Jim!” and skipped out.

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He bounced up and stared at me wild. Then he drops down on his knees, and puts his hands together and says:

“Doan’ hurt me— don’t! I hain’t ever done no harm to a ghos’. I awluz liked dead people, en done all I could for ’em. You go en git in de river agin, whah you b’longs, en doan’ do nuffn to Ole Jim, ’at ’uz awluz yo’ fren’.”

Well, I warn’t long making him understand I warn’t dead. I was ever so glad to see Jim. I warn’t lonesome, now. I told him I warn’t afraid of him telling the people where I was. I talked along, but he only set there and looked at me; never said nothing. Then I says:

“It’s good daylight. Let’s get breakfast. Make up your camp "re good.” “What’s de use er makin’ up de camp "re to cook strawbries en sich truck?

But you got a gun, hain’t you? Den we kin git sumfn better den strawbries.” “Strawberries and such truck,” I says. “Is that what you live on?” “I couldn’ git nuffn else,” he says. “Why, how long you been on the island, Jim?” “I come heah de night arter you’s killed.” “What, all that time?” “Yes- indeedy.” “And ain’t you had nothing but that kind of rubbage to eat?” “No, sah— nuffn else.” “Well, you must be most starved, ain’t you?” “I reck’n I could eat a hoss. I think I could. How long you ben on de islan’?” “Since the night I got killed.” “No! W’y, what has you lived on? But you got a gun. Oh, yes, you got a

gun. Dat’s good. Now you kill sumfn en I’ll make up de "re.” So we went over to where the canoe was, and while he built a "re in a grassy

open place amongst the trees, I fetched meal and bacon and coffee, and coffee- pot and frying- pan, and sugar and tin cups, and the nigger was set back con- siderable, because he reckoned it was all done with witchcraft. I catched a good big cat- "sh, too, and Jim cleaned him with his knife, and fried him.

When breakfast was ready, we lolled on the grass and eat it smoking hot. Jim laid it in with all his might, for he was most about starved. Then when we had got pretty well stuffed, we laid off and lazied.

By- and-by Jim says: “But looky here, Huck, who wuz it dat ’uz killed in dat shanty, ef it warn’t

you?” Then I told him the whole thing, and he said it was smart. He said Tom

Sawyer couldn’t get up no better plan than what I had. Then I says: “How do you come to be here, Jim, and how’d you get here?” He looked pretty uneasy, and didn’t say nothing for a minute. Then he

says: “Maybe I better not tell.” “Why, Jim?” “Well, dey’s reasons. But you wouldn’ tell on me ef I ’uz to tell you, would

you, Huck?” “Blamed if I would, Jim.” “Well, I b’lieve you, Huck. I— I run off.” “Jim!” “But mind, you said you wouldn’t tell— you know you said you wouldn’t

tell, Huck.”

“Well, I did. I said I wouldn’t, and I’ll stick to it. Honest injun I will. People would call me a low down Ablitionist and despise me for keeping mum— but that don’t make no difference. I ain’t agoing to tell, and I ain’t agoing back there anyways. So now, le’s know all about it.”

“Well, you see, it ’uz dis way. Ole Missus— dat’s Miss Watson— she pecks on me all de time, en treats me pooty rough, but she awluz said she wouldn’ sell me down to Orleans. But I noticed dey wuz a nigger trader roun’ de place considable, lately, en I begin to git oneasy. Well, one night I creeps to de do’, pooty late, en de do’ warn’t quite shet, en I hear ole missus tell de widder she gwyne to sell me down to Orleans, but she didn’ want to, but she could git eight hund’d dollars for me, en it ’uz sich a big stack o’ money she couldn’ resis’. De widder she try to git her to say she wouldn’ do it, but I never waited to hear de res’. I lit out mighty quick, I tell you.

“I tuck out en shin down de hill en ’spec to steal a skift ’long de sho’ som’ers ’bove de town, but dey wuz people a- stirrin’ yit, so I hid in de ole tumble- down cooper shop on de bank to wait for every body to go ’way. Well, I wuz dah all night. Dey wuz somebody roun’ all de time. ’Long ’bout six in de mawnin’, skifts begin to go by, en ’bout eight or nine every skift dat went ’long wuz talkin’ ’bout how yo’ pap come over to de town en say you’s killed. Dese las’ skifts wuz full o’ ladies en genlmen agoin’ over for to see de place. Sometimes dey’d pull up at de sho’ en take a res’ b’fo’ dey started acrost, so by de talk I got to know all ’bout de killin’. I ’uz power ful sorry you’s killed, Huck, but I ain’t no mo’, now.

“I laid dah under de shavins all day. I ’uz hungry, but I warn’t afeared; bekase I knowed ole missus en de widder wuz goin’ to start to de camp- meetn’ right arter breakfas’ en be gone all day, en dey knows I goes off wid de cattle ’bout daylight, so dey wouldn’ ’spec to see me roun’ de place, en so dey wouldn’ miss me tell arter dark in de evenin’. De yuther servants wouldn’ miss me, kase dey’d shin out en take holiday, soon as de ole folks ’uz out’n de way.

“Well, when it come dark I tuck out up de river road, en went ’bout two mile er more to whah dey warn’t no houses. I’d made up my mind ’bout what I’s agwyne to do. You see ef I kep’ on tryin’ to git away afoot, de dogs ’ud track me; ef I stole a skift to cross over, dey’d miss dat skift, you see, en dey’d know ’bout whah I’d lan’ on de yuther side en whah to pick up my track. So I says, a raff is what I’s arter; it doan’ make no track.

“I see a light a- comin’ roun’ de p’int, bymeby, so I wade’ in en shove’ a log ahead o’ me, en swum more’n half- way acrost de river, en got in ’mongst de drift- wood, en kep’ my head down low, en kinder swum agin de current tell de raff come along. Den I swum to de stern uv it, en tuck aholt. It clouded up en ’uz pooty dark for a little while. So I clumb up en laid down on de planks. De men ’uz all ’way yonder in de middle, whah de lantern wuz. De river wuz arisin’ en dey wuz a good current; so I reck’n’d ’at by fo’ in de mawnin’ I’d be twenty- "ve mile down de river, en den I’d slip in, jis’ b’fo’ daylight, en swim asho’ en take to de woods on de Illinoi side.4

4. Though Illinois was not a slave state, by state law any black person without freedom papers could be arrested and subjected to forced labor.

Jim’s chances for escape would be improved if he went down the Mississippi and then up the Ohio.

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5. Cheap tobacco.

“But I didn’ have no luck. When we ’uz mos’ down to de head er de islan’, a man begin to come aft wid de lantern. I see it warn’t no use fer to wait, so I slid overboad, en struck out fer de islan’. Well, I had a notion I could lan’ mos’ anywhers, but I couldn’— bank too bluff. I ’uz mos’ to de foot er de islan’ b’fo’ I foun’ a good place. I went into de woods en jedged I wouldn’ fool wid raffs no mo’, long as dey move de lantern roun’ so. I had my pipe en a plug er dog- leg,5 en some matches in my cap, en dey warn’t wet, so I ’uz all right.”

“And so you ain’t had no meat nor bread to eat all this time? Why didn’t you get mud- turkles?”

“How you gwyne to git’m? You can’t slip up on um en grab um; en how’s a body gwyne to hit um wid a rock? How could a body do it in de night? en I warn’t gwyne to show myself on de bank in de daytime.”

“Well, that’s so. You’ve had to keep in the woods all the time, of course. Did you hear ’em shooting the cannon?”

“Oh, yes. I knowed dey was arter you. I see um go by heah; watched um thoo de bushes.”

Some young birds come along, `ying a yard or two at a time and lighting. Jim said it was a sign it was going to rain. He said it was a sign when young chickens `ew that way, and so he reckoned it was the same way when young birds done it. I was going to catch some of them, but Jim wouldn’t let me. He said it was death. He said his father laid mighty sick once, and some of them catched a bird, and his old granny said his father would die, and he did.

And Jim said you mustn’t count the things you are going to cook for din- ner, because that would bring bad luck. The same if you shook the table- cloth after sundown. And he said if a man owned a bee- hive, and that man died, the bees must be told about it before sun-up next morning, or else the bees would all weaken down and quit work and die. Jim said bees wouldn’t sting idiots; but I didn’t believe that, because I had tried them lots of times myself, and they wouldn’t sting me.

I had heard about some of these things before, but not all of them. Jim knowed all kinds of signs. He said he knowed most every thing. I said it looked to me like all the signs was about bad luck, and so I asked him if there warn’t any good- luck signs. He says:

“Mighty few—an’ dey ain’ no use to a body. What you want to know when good luck’s a- comin’ for? want to keep it off?” And he said: “Ef you’s got hairy arms en a hairy breas’, it’s a sign dat you’s agwyne to be rich. Well, dey’s some use in a sign like dat, ’kase it’s so fur ahead. You see, maybe you’s got to be po’ a long time fust, en so you might git discourage’ en kill yo’sef ’f you didn’ know by de sign dat you gwyne to be rich bymeby.”

“Have you got hairy arms and a hairy breast, Jim?” “What’s de use to ax dat question? don’ you see I has?” “Well, are you rich?” “No, but I ben rich wunst, and gwyne to be rich agin. Wunst I had foteen

dollars, but I tuck to specalat’n’, en got busted out.” “What did you speculate in, Jim?” “Well, fust I tackled stock.” “What kind of stock?”

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6. A `at- bottomed boat used to transport timber. 7. In the Old Testament, God’s avenging angel interrupts the journey of Balaam, a prophet, to curse the Israelites by standing in his path. Balaam is blind to the angel’s presence, but his

donkey sees the angel clearly and swerves off the road. The donkey receives the power to speak and complains to Balaam of its treatment (Num- bers 22).

“Why, live stock. Cattle, you know. I put ten dollars in a cow. But I ain’t gwyne to resk no mo’ money in stock. De cow up ’n’ died on my han’s.”

“So you lost the ten dollars.” “No, I didn’ lose it all. I on’y los’ ’bout nine of it. I sole de hide en taller for

a dollar en ten cents.” “You had "ve dollars and ten cents left. Did you speculate any more?” “Yes. You know dat one- laigged nigger dat b’longs to old Misto Bradish?

well, he sot up a bank, en say anybody dat put in a dollar would git fo’ dol- lars mo’ at de en’ er de year. Well, all de niggers went in, but dey didn’ have much. I wuz de on’y one dat had much. So I stuck out for mo’ dan fo’ dollars, en I said ’f I didn’ git it I’d start a bank myself. Well o’ course dat nigger want’ to keep me out er de business, bekase he say dey warn’t business ’nough for two banks, so he say I could put in my "ve dollars en he pay me thirty- "ve at de en’ er de year.

“So I done it. Den I reck’n’d I’d inves’ de thirty- "ve dollars right off en keep things a- movin’. Dey wuz a nigger name’ Bob, dat had ketched a wood- `at,6 en his marster didn’ know it; en I bought it off’n him en told him to take de thirty- "ve dollars when de en’ er de year come; but somebody stole de wood- ̀ at dat night, en nex’ day de one- laigged nigger say de bank ’s busted. So dey didn’ none uv us git no money.”

“What did you do with the ten cents, Jim?” “Well, I ’uz gwyne to spen’ it, but I had a dream, en de dream tole me to

give it to a nigger name’ Balum— Balum’s Ass7 dey call him for short, he’s one er dem chuckle- heads, you know. But he’s lucky, dey say, en I see I warn’t lucky. De dream say let Balum inves’ de ten cents en he’d make a raise for me. Well, Balum he tuck de money, en when he wuz in church he hear de preacher say dat whoever give to de po’ len’ to de Lord, en boun’ to git his money back a hund’d times. So Balum he tuck en give de ten cents to de po’, en laid low to see what wuz gwyne to come of it.”

“Well, what did come of it, Jim?” “Nuffn never come of it. I couldn’ manage to k’leck dat money no way; en

Balum he couldn’. I ain’ gwyne to len’ no mo’ money ’dout I see de security. Boun’ to git yo’ money back a hund’d times, de preacher says! Ef I could git de ten cents back, I’d call it squah, en be glad er de chanst.”

“Well, it’s all right anyway, Jim, long as you’re going to be rich again some time or other.”

“Yes—en I’s rich now, come to look at it. I owns mysef, en I’s wuth eight hund’d dollars. I wisht I had de money, I wouldn’ want no mo’.”

Chapter IX

I wanted to go and look at a place right about the middle of the island, that I’d found when I was exploring; so we started, and soon got to it, because the island was only three miles long and a quarter of a mile wide.

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This place was a tolerable long steep hill or ridge, about forty foot high. We had a rough time getting to the top, the sides was so steep and the bushes so thick. We tramped and clumb around all over it, and by- and-by found a good big cavern in the rock, most up to the top on the side towards Illinois. The cavern was as big as two or three rooms bunched together, and Jim could stand up straight in it. It was cool in there. Jim was for putting our traps in there, right away, but I said we didn’t want to be climbing up and down there all the time.

Jim said if we had the canoe hid in a good place, and had all the traps in the cavern, we could rush there if anybody was to come to the island, and they would never "nd us without dogs. And besides, he said them little birds had said it was going to rain, and did I want the things to get wet?

So we went back and got the canoe and paddled up abreast the cavern, and lugged all the traps up there. Then we hunted up a place close by to hide the canoe in, amongst the thick willows. We took some "sh off of the lines and set them again, and begun to get ready for dinner.

The door of the cavern was big enough to roll a hogshead in, and on one side of the door the `oor stuck out a little bit and was `at and a good place to build a "re on. So we built it there and cooked dinner.

We spread the blankets inside for a carpet, and eat our dinner in there. We put all the other things handy at the back of the cavern. Pretty soon it darkened up and begun to thunder and lighten; so the birds was right about it. Directly it begun to rain, and it rained like all fury, too, and I never see the wind blow so. It was one of these regular summer storms. It would get so dark that it looked all blue- black outside, and lovely; and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spider- webby; and here would come a blast of wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale underside of the leaves; and then a perfect rip- per of a gust would follow along and set the branches to tossing their arms as if they was just wild; and next, when it was just about the bluest and blackest— fst! it was as bright as glory and you’d have a little glimpse of tree- tops a- plunging about, away off yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you could see before; dark as sin again in a second, and now you’d hear the thunder let go with an awful crash and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling down the sky towards the under side of the world, like rolling empty barrels down stairs, where it’s long stairs and they bounce a good deal, you know.

“Jim, this is nice,” I says. “I wouldn’t want to be nowhere else but here. Pass me along another hunk of "sh and some hot cornbread.”

“Well, you wouldn’ a ben here, ’f it hadn’ a ben for Jim. You’d a ben down dah in de woods widout any dinner, en gittn’ mos’ drownded, too, dat you would, honey. Chickens knows when its gwyne to rain, en so do de birds, chile.”

The river went on raising and raising for ten or twelve days, till at last it was over the banks. The water was three or four foot deep on the island in the low places and on the Illinois bottom. On that side it was a good many miles wide; but on the Missouri side it was the same old distance across— a half a mile— because the Missouri shore was just a wall of high bluffs.

Daytimes we paddled all over the island in the canoe. It was mighty cool and shady in the deep woods even if the sun was blazing outside. We went winding in and out amongst the trees; and sometimes the vines hung so thick

we had to back away and go some other way. Well, on every old broken- down tree, you could see rabbits, and snakes, and such things; and when the island had been over`owed a day or two, they got so tame, on account of being hungry, that you could paddle right up and put your hand on them if you wanted to; but not the snakes and turtles— they would slide off in the water. The ridge our cavern was in, was full of them. We could a had pets enough if we’d wanted them.

One night we catched a little section of a lumber raft— nice pine planks. It was twelve foot wide and about "fteen or sixteen foot long, and the top stood above water six or seven inches, a solid level `oor. We could see saw- logs go by in the daylight, sometimes, but we let them go; we didn’t show ourselves in daylight.

Another night, when we was up at the head of the island, just before day- light, here comes a frame house down, on the west side. She was a two- story, and tilted over, considerable. We paddled out and got aboard— clumb in at an up- stairs win dow. But it was too dark to see yet, so we made the canoe fast and set in her to wait for daylight.

The light begun to come before we got to the foot of the island. Then we looked in at the win dow. We could make out a bed, and a table, and two old chairs, and lots of things around about on the `oor; and there was clothes hanging against the wall. There was something laying on the `oor in the far corner that looked like a man. So Jim says.

“Hello, you!” But it didn’t budge. So I hollered again, and then Jim says: “De man ain’ asleep— he’s dead. You hold still— I’ll go en see.” He went and bent down and looked, and says: “It’s a dead man. Yes, indeedy; naked, too. He’s ben shot in de back. I

reck’n he’s ben dead two er three days. Come in, Huck, but doan’ look at his face— it’s too gashly.”

I didn’t look at him at all. Jim throwed some old rags over him, but he needn’t done it; I didn’t want to see him. There was heaps of old greasy cards scattered around over the ̀ oor, and old whiskey bottles, and a couple of masks made out of black cloth; and all over the walls was the ignorantest kind of words and pictures, made with charcoal. There was two old dirty calico dresses, and a sun- bonnet, and some women’s under- clothes, hanging against the wall, and some men’s clothing, too. We put the lot into the canoe; it might come good. There was a boy’s old speckled straw hat on the `oor; I took that too. And there was a bottle that had had milk in it; and it had a rag stopper for a baby to suck. We would a took the bottle, but it was broke. There was a seedy old chest, and an old hair trunk with the hinges broke. They stood open, but there warn’t nothing left in them that was any account. The way things was scattered about, we reckoned the people left in a hurry and warn’t "xed so as to carry off most of their stuff.

We got an old tin lantern, and a butcher- knife without any handle, and a bran- new Barlow knife8 worth two bits in any store, and a lot of tallow can- dles, and a tin candlestick, and a gourd, and a tin cup, and a ratty old bed- quilt off the bed, and a reticule with needles and pins and beeswax and

8. Pocketknife with one blade, named for the inventor.

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9. Impertinent.

buttons and thread and all such truck in it, and a hatchet and some nails, and a "sh- line as thick as my little "n ger, with some monstrous hooks on it, and a roll of buckskin, and a leather dog- collar, and a horse- shoe, and some vials of medicine that didn’t have no label on them; and just as we was leav- ing I found a tolerable good curry- comb, and Jim he found a ratty old "ddle- bow, and a wooden leg. The straps was broke off of it, but barring that, it was a good enough leg, though it was too long for me and not long enough for Jim, and we couldn’t "nd the other one, though we hunted all around.

And so, take it all around, we made a good haul. When we was ready to shove off, we was a quarter of a mile below the island, and it was pretty broad day; so I made Jim lay down in the canoe and cover up with the quilt, because if he set up, people could tell he was a nigger a good ways off. I paddled over to the Illinois shore, and drifted down most a half a mile doing it. I crept up the dead water under the bank, and hadn’t no accidents and didn’t see nobody. We got home all safe.

Chapter X

After breakfast I wanted to talk about the dead man and guess out how he come to be killed, but Jim didn’t want to. He said it would fetch bad luck; and besides, he said, he might come and ha’nt us; he said a man that warn’t buried was more likely to go a- ha’nting around than one that was planted and comfortable. That sounded pretty reasonable, so I didn’t say no more; but I couldn’t keep from studying over it and wishing I knowed who shot the man, and what they done it for.

We rummaged the clothes we’d got, and found eight dollars in silver sewed up in the lining of an old blanket overcoat. Jim said he reckoned the people in that house stole the coat, because if they’d a knowed the money was there they wouldn’t a left it. I said I reckoned they killed him, too; but Jim didn’t want to talk about that. I says:

“Now, you think it’s bad luck; but what did you say when I fetched in the snake- skin that I found on the top of the ridge day before yesterday? You said it was the worst bad luck in the world to touch a snake- skin with my hands. Well, here’s your bad luck! We’ve raked in all this truck and eight dollars besides. I wish we could have some bad luck like this every day, Jim.”

“Never you mind, honey, never you mind. Don’t you git too peart.9 It’s a- comin’. Mind I tell you, it’s a- comin’.”

It did come, too. It was Tuesday that we had that talk. Well, after dinner Friday, we was laying around in the grass at the upper end of the ridge, and got out of tobacco. I went to the cavern to get some, and found a rattlesnake in there. I killed him, and curled him up on the foot of Jim’s blanket, ever so natu ral, thinking there’d be some fun when Jim found him there. Well, by night I forgot all about the snake, and when Jim `ung himself down on the blanket while I struck a light, the snake’s mate was there, and bit him.

He jumped up yelling, and the "rst thing the light showed was the var- mint curled up and ready for another spring. I laid him out in a second with a stick, and Jim grabbed pap’s whiskey jug and began to pour it down.

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He was barefooted, and the snake bit him right on the heel. That all comes of my being such a fool as to not remember that whenever you leave a dead snake its mate always comes there and curls around it. Jim told me to chop off the snake’s head and throw it away, and then skin the body and roast a piece of it. I done it, and he eat it and said it would help cure him. He made me take off the rattles and tie them around his wrist, too. He said that that would help. Then I slid out quiet and throwed the snakes clear away amongst the bushes; for I warn’t going to let Jim "nd out it was all my fault, not if I could help it.

Jim sucked and sucked at the jug, and now and then he got out of his head and pitched around and yelled; but every time he come to himself he went to sucking at the jug again. His foot swelled up pretty big, and so did his leg; but by- and-by the drunk begun to come, and so I judged he was all right; but I’d druther been bit with a snake than pap’s whiskey.

Jim was laid up for four days and nights. Then the swelling was all gone and he was around again. I made up my mind I wouldn’t ever take aholt of a snake- skin again with my hands, now that I see what had come of it. Jim said he reckoned I would believe him next time. And he said that handling a snake- skin was such awful bad luck that maybe we hadn’t got to the end of it yet. He said he druther see the new moon over his left shoulder as much as a thousand times than take up a snake- skin in his hand. Well, I was get- ting to feel that way myself, though I’ve always reckoned that looking at the new moon over your left shoulder is one of the carelessest and foolishest things a body can do. Old Hank Bunker done it once, and bragged about it; and in less than two years he got drunk and fell off of the shot tower and spread himself out so that he was just a kind of layer, as you may say; and they slid him edgeways between two barn doors for a cof"n, and buried him so, so they say, but I didn’t see it. Pap told me. But anyway, it all come of looking at the moon that way, like a fool.

Well, the days went along, and the river went down between its banks again; and about the "rst thing we done was to bait one of the big hooks with a skinned rabbit and set it and catch a cat- "sh that was as big as a man, being six foot two inches long, and weighed over two hundred pounds. We couldn’t handle him, of course; he would a `ung us into Illinois. We just set there and watched him rip and tear around till he drowned. We found a brass button in his stomach, and a round ball, and lots of rubbage. We split the ball open with the hatchet, and there was a spool in it. Jim said he’d had it there a long time, to coat it over so and make a ball of it. It was as big a "sh as was ever catched in the Mississippi, I reckon. Jim said he hadn’t ever seen a bigger one. He would a been worth a good deal over at the village. They peddle out such a "sh as that by the pound in the market house there; every- body buys some of him; his meat’s as white as snow and makes a good fry.

Next morning I said it was getting slow and dull, and I wanted to get a stirring up, some way. I said I reckoned I would slip over the river and "nd out what was going on. Jim liked that notion; but he said I must go in the dark and look sharp. Then he studied it over and said, couldn’t I put on some of them old things and dress up like a girl? That was a good notion, too. So we shortened up one of the calico gowns and I turned up my trowser- legs to my knees and got into it. Jim hitched it behind with the hooks, and it was a fair "t. I put on the sun- bonnet and tied it under my chin, and then for a body to look in and see my face was like looking down a joint of stove- pipe. Jim said

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nobody would know me, even in the daytime, hardly. I practiced around all day to get the hang of the things, and by- and-by I could do pretty well in them, only Jim said I didn’t walk like a girl; and he said I must quit pulling up my gown to get at my britches pocket. I took notice, and done better.

I started up the Illinois shore in the canoe just after dark. I started across to the town from a little below the ferry landing, and the

drift of the current fetched me in at the bottom of the town. I tied up and started along the bank. There was a light burning in a little shanty that hadn’t been lived in for a long time, and I wondered who had took up quarters there. I slipped up and peeped in at the win dow. There was a woman about forty year old in there, knitting by a candle that was on a pine table. I didn’t know her face; she was a stranger, for you couldn’t start a face in that town that I didn’t know. Now this was lucky, because I was weakening; I was getting afraid I had come; people might know my voice and "nd me out. But if this woman had been in such a little town two days she could tell me all I wanted to know; so I knocked at the door, and made up my mind I wouldn’t forget I was a girl.

Chapter XI

“Come in,” says the woman, and I did. She says: “Take a cheer.” I done it. She looked me all over with her little shiny eyes, and says: “What might your name be?” “Sarah Williams.” “Where ’bouts do you live? In this neighborhood?” “No’m. In Hookerville, seven mile below. I’ve walked all the way and I’m

all tired out.” “Hungry, too, I reckon. I’ll "nd you something.” “No’m, I ain’t hungry. I was so hungry I had to stop two mile below here

at a farm; so I ain’t hungry no more. It’s what makes me so late. My mother’s down sick, and out of money and every thing, and I come to tell my uncle Abner Moore. He lives at the upper end of the town, she says. I hain’t ever been here before. Do you know him?”

“No; but I don’t know every body yet. I haven’t lived here quite two weeks. It’s a considerable ways to the upper end of the town. You better stay here all night. Take off your bonnet.”

“No,” I says, “I’ll rest a while, I reckon, and go on. I ain’t afeard of the dark.” She said she wouldn’t let me go by myself, but her husband would be in

by- and-by, maybe in a hour and a half, and she’d send him along with me. Then she got to talking about her husband, and about her relations up the river, and her relations down the river, and how much better off they used to was, and how they didn’t know but they’d made a mistake coming to our town, instead of letting well alone— and so on and so on, till I was afeard I had made a mistake coming to her to "nd out what was going on in the town; but by- and-by she dropped onto pap and the murder, and then I was pretty willing to let her clatter right along. She told about me and Tom Sawyer "nd- ing the six thousand dollars (only she got it ten) and all about pap and what a hard lot he was, and what a hard lot I was, and at last she got down to where I was murdered. I says:

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“Who done it? We’ve heard considerable about these goings on, down in Hookerville, but we don’t know who ’twas that killed Huck Finn.”

“Well, I reckon there’s a right smart chance of people here that’d like to know who killed him. Some thinks old Finn done it himself.”

“No—is that so?” “Most every body thought it at "rst. He’ll never know how nigh he come

to getting lynched. But before night they changed around and judged it was done by a runaway nigger named Jim.”

“Why he—” I stopped. I reckoned I better keep still. She run on, and never noticed I

had put in at all. “The nigger run off the very night Huck Finn was killed. So there’s a

reward out for him— three hundred dollars. And there’s a reward out for old Finn too— two hundred dollars. You see, he come to town the morning after the murder, and told about it, and was out with ’em on the ferry- boat hunt, and right away after he up and left. Before night they wanted to lynch him, but he was gone, you see. Well, next day they found out the nigger was gone; they found out he hadn’t ben seen sence ten o’clock the night the mur- der was done. So then they put it on him, you see, and while they was full of it, next day back comes old Finn and went boohooing to Judge Thatcher to get money to hunt for the nigger all over Illinois with. The judge give him some, and that eve ning he got drunk and was around till after midnight with a couple of mighty hard looking strangers, and then went off with them. Well, he hain’t come back sence, and they ain’t looking for him back till this thing blows over a little, for people thinks now that he killed his boy and "xed things so folks would think robbers done it, and then he’d get Huck’s money without having to bother a long time with a lawsuit. People do say he warn’t any too good to do it. Oh, he’s sly, I reckon. If he don’t come back for a year, he’ll be all right. You can’t prove anything on him, you know; every thing will be quieted down then, and he’ll walk into Huck’s money as easy as nothing.”

“Yes, I reckon so, ’m. I don’t see nothing in the way of it. Has every body quit thinking the nigger done it?”

“Oh no, not every body. A good many thinks he done it. But they’ll get the nigger pretty soon, now, and maybe they can scare it out of him.”

“Why, are they after him yet?” “Well, you’re innocent, ain’t you! Does three hundred dollars lay round

every day for people to pick up? Some folks thinks the nigger ain’t far from here. I’m one of them— but I hain’t talked it around. A few days ago I was talking with an old couple that lives next door in the log shanty, and they happened to say hardly anybody ever goes to that island over yonder that they call Jackson’s Island. Don’t anybody live there? says I. No, nobody, says they. I didn’t say any more, but I done some thinking. I was pretty near certain I’d seen smoke over there, about the head of the island, a day or two before that, so I says to myself, like as not that nigger’s hiding over there; anyway, says I, it’s worth the trou ble to give the place a hunt. I hain’t seen any smoke sence, so I reckon maybe he’s gone, if it was him; but husband’s going over to see— him and another man. He was gone up the river; but he got back to- day and I told him as soon as he got here two hours ago.”

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I had got so uneasy I couldn’t set still. I had to do something with my hands; so I took up a needle off of the table and went to threading it. My hands shook and I was making a bad job of it. When the woman stopped talking, I looked up, and she was looking at me pretty curious, and smiling a little. I put down the needle and thread and let on to be interested— and I was, too— and says:

“Three hundred dollars is a power of money. I wish my mother could get it. Is your husband going over there to- night?”

“Oh, yes. He went up town with the man I was telling you of, to get a boat and see if they could borrow another gun. They’ll go over after midnight.”

“ Couldn’t they see better if they was to wait till daytime?” “Yes. And couldn’t the nigger see better too? After midnight he’ll likely be

asleep, and they can slip around through the woods and hunt up his camp "re all the better for the dark, if he’s got one.”

“I didn’t think of that.” The woman kept looking at me pretty curious, and I didn’t feel a bit com-

fortable. Pretty soon she says: “What did you say your name was, honey?” “M— Mary Williams.” Somehow it didn’t seem to me that I said it was Mary before, so I didn’t

look up; seemed to me I said it was Sarah; so I felt sort of cornered, and was afeared maybe I was looking it, too. I wished the woman would say some- thing more; the longer she set still, the uneasier I was. But now she says:

“Honey, I thought you said it was Sarah when you "rst come in?” “Oh, yes’m, I did. Sarah Mary Williams. Sarah’s my "rst name. Some calls

me Sarah, some calls me Mary.” “Oh, that’s the way of it?” “Yes’m.” I was feeling better, then, but I wished I was out of there, anyway. I couldn’t

look up yet. Well, the woman fell to talking about how hard times was, and how poor

they had to live, and how the rats was as free as if they owned the place, and so forth, and so on, and then I got easy again. She was right about the rats. You’d see one stick his nose out of a hole in the corner every little while. She said she had to have things handy to throw at them when she was alone, or they wouldn’t give her no peace. She showed me a bar of lead, twisted up into a knot, and she said she was a good shot with it generly, but she’d wrenched her arm a day or two ago, and didn’t know whether she could throw true, now. But she watched for a chance, and directly she banged away at a rat, but she missed him wide, and said “Ouch!” it hurt her arm so. Then she told me to try for the next one. I wanted to be getting away before the old man got back, but of course I didn’t let on. I got the thing, and the "rst rat that showed his nose I let drive, and if he’d a stayed where he was he’d a been a tolerable sick rat. She said that that was "rst- rate, and she reckoned I would hive1 the next one. She went and got the lump of lead and fetched it back and brought along a hank of yarn, which she wanted me to help her with. I held up my two hands and she put the hank over them and went on talking about her and her husband’s matters. But she broke off to say:

1. Get.

“Keep your eye on the rats. You better have the lead in your lap, handy.” So she dropped the lump into my lap, just at that moment, and I clapped

my legs together on it and she went on talking. But only about a minute. Then she took off the hank and looked me straight in the face, but very pleas- ant, and says:

“Come, now— what’s your real name?” “Wh- what, mum?” “What’s your real name? Is it Bill, or Tom, or Bob?—or what is it?” I reckon I shook like a leaf, and I didn’t know hardly what to do. But I says: “Please to don’t poke fun at a poor girl like me, mum. If I’m in the way,

here I’ll—” “No, you won’t. Set down and stay where you are. I ain’t going to hurt you,

and I ain’t going to tell on you, nuther. You just tell me your secret, and trust me. I’ll keep it; and what’s more, I’ll help you. So’ll my old man, if you want him to. You see, you’re a run- away ’prentice— that’s all. It ain’t anything. There ain’t any harm in it. You’ve been treated bad, and you made up your mind to cut. Bless you, child, I wouldn’t tell on you. Tell me all about it, now— that’s a good boy.”

So I said it wouldn’t be no use to try to play it any longer, and I would just make a clean breast and tell her every thing, but she mustn’t go back on her promise. Then I told her my father and mother was dead, and the law had bound me out to a mean old farmer in the country thirty mile back from the river, and he treated me so bad I couldn’t stand it no longer; he went away to be gone a couple of days, and so I took my chance and stole some of his daughter’s old clothes, and cleared out, and I had been three nights coming the thirty miles; I traveled nights, and hid daytimes and slept, and the bag of bread and meat I carried from home lasted me all the way and I had a plenty. I said I believed my uncle Abner Moore would take care of me, and so that was why I struck out for this town of Goshen.

“Goshen, child? This ain’t Goshen. This is St. Petersburg. Goshen’s ten mile further up the river. Who told you this was Goshen?”

“Why, a man I met at day- break this morning, just as I was going to turn into the woods for my regular sleep. He told me when the roads forked I must take the right hand, and "ve mile would fetch me to Goshen.”

“He was drunk I reckon. He told you just exactly wrong.” “Well, he did act like he was drunk, but it ain’t no matter now. I got to be

moving along. I’ll fetch Goshen before day- light.” “Hold on a minute. I’ll put you up a snack to eat. You might want it.” So she put me up a snack, and says: “Say— when a cow’s laying down, which end of her gets up "rst? Answer

up prompt, now— don’t stop to study over it. Which end gets up "rst?” “The hind end, mum.” “Well, then, a horse?” “The for’rard end, mum.” “Which side of a tree does the most moss grow on?” “North side.” “If "fteen cows is browsing on a hillside, how many of them eats with their

heads pointed the same direction?” “The whole "fteen, mum.”

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“Well, I reckon you have lived in the country. I thought maybe you was trying to hocus me again. What’s your real name, now?”

“George Peters, mum.” “Well, try to remember it, George. Don’t forget and tell me it’s Elexander

before you go, and then get out by saying it’s George Elexander when I catch you. And don’t go about women in that old calico. You do a girl tolerable poor, but you might fool men, maybe. Bless you, child, when you set out to thread a needle, don’t hold the thread still and fetch the needle up to it; hold the needle still and poke the thread at it— that’s the way a woman most always does; but a man always does ’tother way. And when you throw at a rat or anything, hitch yourself up a tip- toe, and fetch your hand up over your head as awkard as you can, and miss your rat about six or seven foot. Throw stiff- armed from the shoulder, like there was a pivot there for it to turn on— like a girl; not from the wrist and elbow, with your arm out to one side, like a boy. And mind you, when a girl tries to catch anything in her lap, she throws her knees apart; she don’t clap them together, the way you did when you catched the lump of lead. Why, I spotted you for a boy when you was threading the needle; and I contrived the other things just to make certain. Now trot along to your uncle, Sarah Mary Williams George Elexan- der Peters, and if you get into trou ble you send word to Mrs. Judith Loftus, which is me, and I’ll do what I can to get you out of it. Keep the river road, all the way, and next time you tramp, take shoes and socks with you. The river road’s a rocky one, and your feet ’ll be in a condition when you get to Goshen, I reckon.”

I went up the bank about "fty yards, and then I doubled on my tracks and slipped back to where my canoe was, a good piece below the house. I jumped in and was off in a hurry. I went up stream far enough to make the head of the island, and then started across. I took off the sun- bonnet, for I didn’t want no blinders on, then. When I was about the middle, I hear the clock begin to strike; so I stops and listens; the sound come faint over the water, but clear— eleven. When I struck the head of the island I never waited to blow, though I was most winded, but I shoved right into the tim- ber where my old camp used to be, and started a good "re there on a high- and- dry spot.

Then I jumped in the canoe and dug out for our place a mile and a half below, as hard as I could go. I landed, and slopped through the timber and up the ridge and into the cavern. There Jim laid, sound asleep on the ground. I roused him out and says:

“Git up and hump yourself, Jim! There ain’t a minute to lose. They’re after us!”

Jim never asked no questions, he never said a word; but the way he worked for the next half an hour showed about how he was scared. By that time every thing we had in the world was on our raft and she was ready to be shoved out from the willow cove where she was hid. We put out the camp "re at the cavern the "rst thing, and didn’t show a candle outside after that.

I took the canoe out from shore a little piece and took a look, but if there was a boat around I couldn’t see it, for stars and shadows ain’t good to see by. Then we got out the raft and slipped along down in the shade, past the foot of the island dead still, never saying a word.

Chapter XII

It must a been close onto one o’clock when we got below the island at last, and the raft did seem to go mighty slow. If a boat was to come along, we was going to take to the canoe and break for the Illinois shore; and it was well a boat didn’t come, for we hadn’t ever thought to put the gun into the canoe, or a "shing- line or anything to eat. We was in ruther too much of a sweat to think of so many things. It warn’t good judgment to put every thing on the raft.

If the men went to the island, I just expect they found the camp "re I built, and watched it all night for Jim to come. Anyways, they stayed away from us, and if my building the "re never fooled them it warn’t no fault of mine. I played it as low- down on them as I could.

When the "rst streak of day begun to show, we tied up to a tow- head in a big bend on the Illinois side, and hacked off cotton- wood branches with the hatchet and covered up the raft with them so she looked like there had been a cave-in in the bank there. A tow- head is a sand- bar that has cotton- woods on it as thick as harrow- teeth.

We had mountains on the Missouri shore and heavy timber on the Illi- nois side, and the channel was down the Missouri shore at that place, so we warn’t afraid of anybody running across us. We laid there all day and watched the rafts and steamboats spin down the Missouri shore, and up- bound steam- boats "ght the big river in the middle. I told Jim all about the time I had jabbering with that woman; and Jim said she was a smart one, and if she was to start after us herself she wouldn’t set down and watch a camp "re— no, sir, she’d fetch a dog. Well, then, I said, why couldn’t she tell her hus- band to fetch a dog? Jim said he bet she did think of it by the time the men was ready to start, and he believed they must a gone up town to get a dog and so they lost all that time, or else we wouldn’t be here on a tow- head six- teen or seventeen mile below the village—no, indeedy, we would be in that same old town again. So I said I didn’t care what was the reason they didn’t get us, as long as they didn’t.

When it was beginning to come on dark, we poked our heads out of the cottonwood thicket and looked up, and down, and across; nothing in sight; so Jim took up some of the top planks of the raft and built a snug wigwam to get under in blazing weather and rainy, and to keep the things dry. Jim made a `oor for the wigwam, and raised it a foot or more above the level of the raft, so now the blankets and all the traps was out of the reach of steam- boat waves. Right in the middle of the wigwam we made a layer of dirt about "ve or six inches deep with a frame around it for to hold it to its place; this was to build a "re on in sloppy weather or chilly; the wigwam would keep it from being seen. We made an extra steering oar, too, because one of the others might get broke, on a snag or something. We "xed up a short forked stick to hang the old lantern on; because we must always light the lantern whenever we see a steamboat coming down stream, to keep from getting run over; but we wouldn’t have to light it up for upstream boats unless we see we was in what they call “crossing;” for the river was pretty high yet, very low banks being still a little under water; so up- bound boats didn’t always run the channel, but hunted easy water.

This second night we run between seven and eight hours, with a current that was making over four mile an hour. We catched "sh, and talked, and

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2. St.  Louis is 170 miles down the Mississippi from Hannibal.

3. Wire used to steady the chimney stacks.

we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn’t ever feel like talking loud, and it warn’t often that we laughed, only a little kind of a low chuckle. We had mighty good weather, as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us at all, that night, nor the next, nor the next.

Every night we passed towns, some of them away up on black hillsides, nothing but just a shiny bed of lights, not a house could you see. The "fth night we passed St. Louis, and it was like the whole world lit up. In St. Peters- burg they used to say there was twenty or thirty thousand people in St. Louis,2 but I never believed it till I see that wonderful spread of lights at two o’clock that still night. There warn’t a sound there; every body was asleep.

Every night now, I used to slip ashore, towards ten o’clock, at some little village, and buy ten or "fteen cents’ worth of meal or bacon or other stuff to eat; and sometimes I lifted a chicken that warn’t roosting comfortable, and took him along. Pap always said, take a chicken when you get a chance, because if you don’t want him yourself you can easy "nd somebody that does, and a good deed ain’t ever forgot. I never see pap when he didn’t want the chicken himself, but that is what he used to say, anyway.

Mornings, before daylight, I slipped into corn "elds and borrowed a water- melon, or a mushmelon, or a punkin, or some new corn, or things of that kind. Pap always said it warn’t no harm to borrow things, if you was mean- ing to pay them back, sometime; but the widow said it warn’t anything but a soft name for stealing, and no decent body would do it. Jim said he reck- oned the widow was partly right and pap was partly right; so the best way would be for us to pick out two or three things from the list and say we wouldn’t borrow them any more— then he reckoned it wouldn’t be no harm to borrow the others. So we talked it over all one night, drifting along down the river, trying to make up our minds whether to drop the watermel- ons, or the cantelopes, or the mushmelons, or what. But towards daylight we got it all settled satisfactory, and concluded to drop crabapples and p’simmons. We warn’t feeling just right, before that, but it was all comfort- able now. I was glad the way it come out, too, because crabapples ain’t ever good, and the p’simmons wouldn’t be ripe for two or three months yet.

We shot a water- fowl, now and then, that got up too early in the morning or didn’t go to bed early enough in the eve ning. Take it all around, we lived pretty high.

The "fth night below St. Louis we had a big storm after midnight, with a power of thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in a solid sheet. We stayed in the wigwam and let the raft take care of itself. When the light- ning glared out we could see a big straight river ahead, and high rocky bluffs on both sides. By- and-by says I, “Hel- lo Jim, looky yonder!” It was a steam- boat that had killed herself on a rock. We was drifting straight down for her. The lightning showed her very distinct. She was leaning over, with part of her upper deck above water, and you could see every little chimbly- guy3 clean and clear, and a chair by the big bell, with an old slouch hat hanging on the back of it when the `ashes come.

4. The large cabin on the top deck located just behind or beneath the pi lot house; it serves as

of"cers’ quarters. 5. Boom for lifting cargo.

Well, it being away in the night, and stormy, and all so mysterious- like, I felt just the way any other boy would a felt when I see that wreck laying there so mournful and lonesome in the middle of the river. I wanted to get aboard of her and slink around a little, and see what there was there. So I says:

“Le’s land on her, Jim.” But Jim was dead against it, at "rst. He says: “I doan’ want to go fool’n ’long er no wrack. We’s doin’ blame’ well, en we

better let blame’ well alone, as de good book says. Like as not dey’s a watch- man on dat wrack.”

“Watchman your grand mother,” I says; “ there ain’t nothing to watch but the texas4 and the pilot- house; and do you reckon anybody’s going to resk his life for a texas and a pilot- house such a night as this, when it’s likely to break up and wash off down the river any minute?” Jim couldn’t say nothing to that, so he didn’t try. “And besides,” I says, “we might borrow something worth having, out of the captain’s stateroom. Seegars, I bet you— and cost "ve cents apiece, solid cash. Steamboat captains is always rich, and get sixty dollars a month, and they don’t care a cent what a thing costs, you know, long as they want it. Stick a candle in your pocket; I can’t rest, Jim, till we give her a rummaging. Do you reckon Tom Sawyer would ever go by this thing? Not for pie, he wouldn’t. He’d call it an adventure— that’s what he’d call it; and he’d land on that wreck if it was his last act. And wouldn’t he throw style into it?— wouldn’t he spread himself, nor nothing? Why, you’d think it was Christopher C’lumbus discovering Kingdom- Come. I wish Tom Sawyer was here.”

Jim he grumbled a little, but give in. He said we mustn’t talk any more than we could help, and then talk mighty low. The lightning showed us the wreck again, just in time, and we fetched the starboard derrick,5 and made fast there.

The deck was high out, here. We went sneaking down the slope of it to lab- board, in the dark, towards the texas, feeling our way slow with our feet, and spreading our hands out to fend off the guys, for it was so dark we couldn’t see no sign of them. Pretty soon we struck the forward end of the skylight, and clumb onto it; and the next step fetched us in front of the captain’s door, which was open, and by Jimminy, away down through the texas- hall we see a light! and all in the same second we seem to hear low voices in yonder!

Jim whispered and said he was feeling power ful sick, and told me to come along. I says, all right; and was going to start for the raft; but just then I heard a voice wail out and say:

“Oh, please don’t, boys; I swear I won’t ever tell!” Another voice said, pretty loud: “It’s a lie, Jim Turner. You’ve acted this way before. You always want more’n

your share of the truck and you’ve always got it, too, because you’ve swore ’t if you didn’t you’d tell. But this time you’ve said it jest one time too many. You’re the meanest, treacherousest hound in this country.”

By this time Jim was gone for the raft. I was just a- biling with curiosity; and I says to myself, Tom Sawyer wouldn’t back out now, and so I won’t

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6. Crept backward on all fours. 7. Hangman’s noose.

either; I’m agoing to see what’s going on here. So I dropped on my hands and knees, in the little passage, and crept aft in the dark, till there warn’t but about one stateroom betwixt me and the cross- hall of the texas. Then, in there I see a man stretched on the `oor and tied hand and foot, and two men standing over him, and one of them had a dim lantern in his hand, and the other one had a pistol. This one kept pointing the pistol at the man’s head on the `oor and saying—

“I’d like to! And I orter, too, a mean skunk!” The man on the `oor would shrivel up, and say: “Oh, please don’t, Bill— I

hain’t ever goin’ to tell.” And every time he said that, the man with the lantern would laugh and say: “ ’Deed you ain’t! You never said no truer thing ’n that, you bet you.” And

once he said, “Hear him beg! and yit if we hadn’t got the best of him and tied him, he’d a killed us both. And what for? Jist for noth’n. Jist because we stood on our rights— that’s what for. But I lay you ain’t agoin’ to threaten nobody any more, Jim Turner. Put up that pistol, Bill.”

Bill says: “I don’t want to, Jake Packard. I’m for killin’ him— and didn’t he kill old

Hat"eld jist the same way— and don’t he deserve it?” “But I don’t want him killed, and I’ve got my reasons for it.” “Bless yo’ heart for them words, Jake Packard! I’ll never forgit you, long’s

I live!” says the man on the `oor, sort of blubbering. Packard didn’t take no notice of that, but hung up his lantern on a nail,

and started towards where I was, there in the dark, and motioned Bill to come. I craw"shed6 as fast as I could, about two yards, but the boat slanted so that I couldn’t make very good time; so to keep from getting run over and catched I crawled into a stateroom on the upper side. The man come a- pawing along in the dark, and when Packard got to my stateroom, he says:

“ Here— come in here.” And in he come, and Bill after him. But before they got in, I was up in the

upper berth, cornered, and sorry I come. Then they stood there, with their hands on the ledge of the berth, and talked. I couldn’t see them, but I could tell where they was, by the whiskey they’d been having. I was glad I didn’t drink whiskey; but it wouldn’t made much difference, anyway, because most of the time they couldn’t a treed me because I didn’t breathe. I was too scared. And besides, a body couldn’t breathe, and hear such talk. They talked low and earnest. Bill wanted to kill Turner. He says:

“He’s said he’ll tell, and he will. If we was to give both our shares to him now, it wouldn’t make no difference after the row, and the way we’ve served him. Shore’s you’re born, he’ll turn State’s evidence; now you hear me. I’m for putting him out of his trou bles.”

“So’m I,” says Packard, very quiet. “Blame it, I’d sorter begun to think you wasn’t. Well, then, that’s all right.

Les’ go and do it.” “Hold on a minute; I hain’t had my say yit. You listen to me. Shooting’s

good, but there’s quieter ways if the thing’s got to be done. But what I say, is this; it ain’t good sense to go court’n around after a halter,7 if you can git at

what you’re up to in some way that’s jist as good and at the same time don’t bring you into no resks. Ain’t that so?”

“You bet it is. But how you goin’ to manage it this time?” “Well, my idea is this: we’ll rustle around and gether up what ever pickins

we’ve overlooked in the staterooms, and shove for shore and hide the truck. Then we’ll wait. Now I say it ain’t agoin’ to be more ’n two hours befo’ this wrack breaks up and washes off down the river. See? He’ll be drownded, and won’t have nobody to blame for it but his own self. I reckon that’s a con- siderble sight better’n killin’ of him. I’m unfavorable to killin’ a man as long as you can git around it; it ain’t good sense, it ain’t good morals. Ain’t I right?”

“Yes— I reck’n you are. But s’pose she don’t break up and wash off?” “Well, we can wait the two hours, anyway, and see, can’t we?” “All right, then; come along.” So they started, and I lit out, all in a cold sweat, and scrambled forward.

It was dark as pitch there; but I said in a kind of a coarse whisper, “Jim!” and he answered up, right at my elbow, with a sort of a moan, and I says:

“Quick, Jim, it ain’t no time for fooling around and moaning; there’s a gang of murderers in yonder, and if we don’t hunt up their boat and set her drift- ing down the river so these fellows can’t get away from the wreck, there’s one of ’em going to be in a bad "x. But if we "nd their boat we can put all of ’em in a bad "x— for the Sheriff ’ll get ’em. Quick— hurry! I’ll hunt the lab- board side, you hunt the stabboard. You start at the raft, and—”

“Oh, my lordy, lordy! Raf’? Dey ain’ no raf’ no mo’, she done broke loose en gone!—’en here we is!”

Chapter XIII

Well, I catched my breath and most fainted. Shut up on a wreck with such a gang as that! But it warn’t no time to be sentimentering. We’d got to "nd that boat, now— had to have it for ourselves. So we went a- quaking and down the stabboard side, and slow work it was, too— seemed a week before we got to the stern. No sign of a boat. Jim said he didn’t believe he could go any further—so scared he hadn’t hardly any strength left, he said. But I said come on, if we get left on this wreck, we are in a "x, sure. So on we prowled, again. We struck for the stern of the texas, and found it, and then scrabbled along forwards on the skylight, hanging on from shutter to shutter, for the edge of the skylight was in the water. When we got pretty close to the cross- hall door there was the skiff, sure enough! I could just barely see her. I felt ever so thankful. In another second I would a been aboard of her; but just then the door opened. One of the men stuck his head out, only about a couple of foot from me, and I thought I was gone; but he jerked it in again, and says:

“Heave that blame lantern out o’ sight, Bill!” He `ung a bag of something into the boat, and then got in himself, and

set down. It was Packard. Then Bill he come out and got in. Packard says, in a low voice:

“All ready— shove off!” I couldn’t hardly hang onto the shutters, I was so weak. But Bill says: “Hold on—’d you go through him?” “No. Didn’t you?”

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8. Vertical wooden posts to which cables can be secured.

“No. So he’s got his share o’ the cash, yet.” “Well, then, come along—no use to take truck and leave money.” “Say— won’t he suspicion what we’re up to?” “Maybe he won’t. But we got to have it anyway. Come along.” So they got

out and went in. The door slammed to, because it was on the careened side; and in a half

second I was in the boat, and Jim come a tumbling after me. I out with my knife and cut the rope, and away we went!

We didn’t touch an oar, and we didn’t speak nor whisper, nor hardly even breathe. We went gliding swift along, dead silent, past the tip of the paddle- box, and past the stern; then in a second or two more we was a hundred yards below the wreck, and the darkness soaked her up, every last sign of her, and we was safe, and knowed it.

When we was three or four hundred yards down stream, we see the lan- tern show like a little spark at the texas door, for a second, and we knowed by that that the rascals had missed their boat, and was beginning to under- stand that they was in just as much trou ble, now, as Jim Turner was.

Then Jim manned the oars, and we took out after our raft. Now was the "rst time that I begun to worry about the men— I reckon I hadn’t had time to before. I begun to think how dreadful it was, even for murderers, to be in such a "x. I says to myself, there ain’t no telling but I might come to be a murderer myself, yet, and then how would I like it? So says I to Jim:

“The "rst light we see, we’ll land a hundred yards below it or above it, in a place where it’s a good hiding- place for you and the skiff, and then I’ll go and "x up some kind of a yarn, and get somebody to go for that gang and get them out of their scrape, so they can be hung when their time comes.”

But that idea was a failure; for pretty soon it begun to storm again, and this time worse than ever. The rain poured down, and never a light showed; every body in bed, I reckon. We boomed along down the river, watching for lights and watching for our raft. After a long time the rain let up, but the clouds staid, and the lightning kept whimpering, and by- and-by a `ash showed us a black thing ahead, `oating, and we made for it.

It was the raft, and mighty glad was we to get aboard of it again. We seen a light, now, away down to the right, on shore. So I said I would go for it. The skiff was half full of plunder which that gang had stole, there on the wreck. We hustled it onto the raft in a pile, and I told Jim to `oat along down, and show a light when he judged he had gone about two mile, and keep it burning till I come; then I manned my oars and shoved for the light. As I got down towards it, three or four more showed—up on a hillside. It was a village. I closed in above the shore- light, and laid on my oars and `oated. As I went by, I see it was a lantern hanging on the jackstaff of a double- hull ferry- boat. I skimmed around for the watchman, a- wondering whereabouts he slept; and by- and-by I found him roosting on the bitts,8 forward, with his head down between his knees. I give his shoulder two or three little shoves, and begun to cry.

He stirred up, in a kind of startlish way; but when he see it was only me, he took a good gap and stretch, and then he says:

“Hello, what’s up? Don’t cry, bub. What’s the trou ble?”

9. Money (slang). 1. Twain blamed the feudalistic fantasies of the pre– Civil War South on the romantic novels of Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832). He expressed him- self most vividly on this subject in Life on the

Mississippi (ch. 46), where he observes: “Sir Walter had so large a hand in making Southern charac- ter, as it existed before the war, that he is in great mea sure responsible for the war.” 2. Broken and doubled around the wreck.

I says: “Pap, and mam, and sis, and—” Then I broke down. He says: “Oh, dang it, now, don’t take on so, we all has to have our trou bles and

this’n ’ll come out all right. What’s the matter with ’em?” “ They’re— they’re— are you the watchman of the boat?” “Yes,” he says, kind of pretty- well- satis"ed like. “I’m the captain and the

owner, and the mate, and the pi lot, and watchman, and head deck- hand; and sometimes I’m the freight and passengers. I ain’t as rich as old Jim Horn- back, and I can’t be so blame’ generous and good to Tom, Dick and Harry as what he is, and slam around money the way he does; but I’ve told him a many a time ’t I wouldn’t trade places with him; for, says I, a sailor’s life’s the life for me, and I’m derned if I’d live two mile out o’ town, where there ain’t nothing ever goin’ on, not for all his spondulicks9 and as much more on top of it. Says I—”

I broke in and says: “ They’re in an awful peck of trou ble, and—” “Who is?” “Why, pap, and mam, and sis, and Miss Hooker; and if you’d take your

ferry- boat and go up there—” “Up where? Where are they?” “On the wreck.” “What wreck?” “Why, there ain’t but one.” “What, you don’t mean the Walter Scott?”1 “Yes.” “Good land! what are they doin’ there, for gracious sakes?” “Well, they didn’t go there a- purpose.” “I bet they didn’t! Why, great goodness, there ain’t no chance for ’em if

they don’t git off mighty quick! Why, how in the nation did they ever git into such a scrape?”

“Easy enough. Miss Hooker was a- visiting, up there to the town—” “Yes, Booth’s Landing—go on.” “She was a- visiting, there at Booth’s Landing, and just in the edge of the

eve ning she started over with her nigger woman in the horse- ferry, to stay all night at her friend’s house, Miss What- you- may- call her, I disremember her name, and they lost their steering- oar, and swung around and went a- ̀ oating down, stern- "rst, about two mile, and saddle- baggsed2 on the wreck, and the ferry man and the nigger woman and the horses was all lost, but Miss Hooker she made a grab and got aboard the wreck. Well, about an hour after dark, we come along down in our trading- scow, and it was so dark we didn’t notice the wreck till we was right on it; and so we saddle- baggsed; but all of us was saved but Bill Whipple— and oh, he was the best cretur!— I most wish’t it had been me, I do.”

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“My George! It’s the beatenest thing I ever struck. And then what did you all do?”

“Well, we hollered and took on, but it’s so wide there, we couldn’t make nobody hear. So pap said somebody got to get ashore and get help somehow. I was the only one that could swim, so I made a dash for it, and Miss Hooker she said if I didn’t strike help sooner, come here and hunt up her uncle, and he’d "x the thing. I made the land about a mile below, and been fooling along ever since, trying to get people to do something, but they said, ‘What, in such a night and such a current? there ain’t no sense in it; go for the steam- ferry.’ Now if you’ll go, and—”

“By Jackson, I’d like to, and blame it I don’t know but I will; but who in the dingnation’s agoin’ to pay for it? Do you reckon your pap—”

“Why that’s all right. Miss Hooker she told me, par tic u lar, that her uncle Hornback—”

“ Great guns! is he her uncle? Look here, you break for that light over yonder- way, and turn out west when you git there, and about a quarter of a mile out you’ll come to the tavern; tell ’em to dart you out to Jim Hornback’s and he’ll foot the bill. And don’t you fool around any, because he’ll want to know the news. Tell him I’ll have his niece all safe before he can get to town. Hump yourself, now; I’m agoing up around the corner here, to roust out my engineer.”

I struck for the light, but as soon as he turned the corner I went back and got into my skiff and bailed her out and then pulled up shore in the easy water about six hundred yards, and tucked myself in among some woodboats; for I couldn’t rest easy till I could see the ferry- boat start. But take it all around, I was feeling ruther comfortable on accounts of taking all this trou- ble for that gang, for not many would a done it. I wished the widow knowed about it. I judged she would be proud of me for helping these rapscallions, because rapscallions and dead beats is the kind the widow and good people takes the most interest in.

Well, before long, here comes the wreck, dim and dusky, sliding along down! A kind of cold shiver went through me, and then I struck out for her. She was very deep, and I see in a minute there warn’t much chance for anybody being alive in her. I pulled all around her and hollered a little, but there wasn’t any answer; all dead still. I felt a little bit heavy- hearted about the gang, but not much, for I reckoned if they could stand it, I could.

Then here comes the ferry- boat; so I shoved for the middle of the river on a long down- stream slant; and when I judged I was out of eye- reach, I laid on my oars, and looked back and see her go and smell around the wreck for Miss Hooker’s remainders, because the captain would know her uncle Hornback would want them; and then pretty soon the ferry- boat give it up and went for shore, and I laid into my work and went a- booming down the river.

It did seem a power ful long time before Jim’s light showed up; and when it did show, it looked like it was a thousand mile off. By the time I got there the sky was beginning to get a little gray in the east; so we struck for an island, and hid the raft, and sunk the skiff, and turned in and slept like dead people.

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Chapter XIV

By- and-by, when we got up, we turned over the truck the gang had stole off of the wreck, and found boots, and blankets, and clothes, and all sorts of other things, and a lot of books, and a spyglass, and three boxes of seegars. We hadn’t ever been this rich before, in neither of our lives. The seegars was prime. We laid off all the after noon in the woods talking, and me read- ing the books, and having a general good time. I told Jim all about what hap- pened inside the wreck, and at the ferry- boat; and I said these kinds of things was adventures; but he said he didn’t want no more adventures. He said that when I went in the texas and he crawled back to get on the raft and found her gone, he nearly died; because he judged it was all up with him, anyway it could be "xed; for if he didn’t get saved he would get drownded; and if he did get saved, whoever saved him would send him back home so as to get the reward, and then Miss Watson would sell him South, sure. Well, he was right; he was most always right; he had an uncommon level head, for a nigger.

I read considerable to Jim about kings, and dukes, and earls, and such, and how gaudy they dressed, and how much style they put on, and called each other your majesty, and your grace, and your lordship, and so on, ’stead of mister; and Jim’s eyes bugged out, and he was interested. He says:

“I didn’t know dey was so many un um. I hain’t hearn ’bout none un um, skasely, but ole King Sollermun, onless you counts dem kings dat’s in a pack er k’yards. How much do a king git?”

“Get?” I says; “why, they get a thousand dollars a month if they want it; they can have just as much as they want; every thing belongs to them.”

“Ain’ dat gay? En what dey got to do, Huck?” “They don’t do nothing! Why how you talk. They just set around.” “No—is dat so?” “Of course it is. They just set around. Except maybe when there ’s a war;

then they go to the war. But other times they just lazy around; or go hawking— just hawking and sp— Sh!— d’ you hear a noise?”

“We turned in and slept.” E. W. Kemble illustration from the "rst edition (1884).

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3. In 1 Kings 3.16–28. When two women appeared before him claiming to be the mother of the same infant, Solomon ordered the child cut in two, expecting the real mother to object. The

real mother pleaded with him to save the baby and to give it to the other woman, who had mali- ciously agreed to Solomon’s original plan.

We skipped out and looked; but it warn’t nothing but the `utter of a steamboat’s wheel, away down coming around the point; so we come back.

“Yes,” says I, “and other times, when things is dull, they fuss with the parly- ment; and if every body don’t go just so he whacks their heads off. But mostly they hang round the harem.”

“Roun’ de which?” “Harem.” “What’s de harem?” “The place where he keep his wives. Don’t you know about the harem?

Solomon had one; he had about a million wives.” “Why, yes, dat’s so; I— I’d done forgot it. A harem’s a bo’d’n- house, I reck’n.

Mos’ likely dey has rackety times in de nussery. En I reck’n de wives quar- rels considable; en dat ’crease de racket. Yit dey say Sollermun de wises’ man dat ever live.’ I doan’ take no stock in dat. Bekase why: would a wise man want to live in de mids’ er sich a blimblammin’ all de time? No—’deed he wouldn’t. A wise man ’ud take en buil’ a biler- factry; en den he could shet down de biler- factry when he want to res’.”

“Well, but he was the wisest man, anyway; because the widow she told me so, her own self.”

“I doan k’yer what de widder say, he warn’ no wise man, nuther. He had some er de dad- fetchedes’ ways I ever see. Does you know ’bout dat chile dat he ’uz gwyne to chop in two?”3

“Yes, the widow told me all about it.” “Well, den! Warn’ dat de beatenes’ notion in de worl’? You jes’ take en

look at it a minute. Dah’s de stump, dah— dat’s one er de women; heah’s you— dat’s de yuther one; I’s Sollermun; en dish- yer dollar bill’s de chile. Bofe un you claims it. What does I do? Does I shin aroun’ mongs’ de neigh- bors en "ne out which un you de bill do b’long to, en han’ it over to de right one, all safe en soun’, de way dat anybody dat had any gumption would? No— I take en whack de bill in two, en give half un it to you, en de yuther half to de yuther woman. Dat’s de way Sollermun was gwyne to do wid de chile. Now I want to ask you: what’s de use er dat half a bill?— can’t buy noth’n wid it. En what use is a half a chile? I wouldn’ give a dern for a mil- lion un um.”

“But hang it, Jim, you’ve clean missed the point— blame it, you’ve missed it a thousand mile.”

“Who? Me? Go ’long. Doan’ talk to me ’bout yo’ pints. I reck’n I knows sense when I sees it; en dey ain’ no sense in sich doin’s as dat. De ’spute warn’t ’bout a half a chile, de ’spute was ’bout a whole chile; en de man dat think he kin settle a ’spute ’bout a whole chile wid a half a chile, doan’ know enough to come in out’n de rain. Doan’ talk to me ’bout Sollermun, Huck, I knows him by de back.”

“But I tell you you don’t get the point.” “Blame de pint! I reck’n I knows what I knows. En mine you, de real

pint is down furder— it’s down deeper. It lays in de way Sollermun was

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raised. You take a man dat’s got on’y one er two children; is dat man gwyne to be waseful o’ chillen? No, he ain’t; he can’t ’ford it. He know how to value ’em. But you take a man dat’s got ’bout "ve million chillen runnin’ roun’ de house, en it’s diffunt. He as soon chop a chile in two as a cat. Dey’s plenty mo’. A chile er two, mo’ er less, warn’t no consekens to Sollermun, dad fetch him!”

I never see such a nigger. If he got a notion in his head once, there warn’t no getting it out again. He was the most down on Solomon of any nigger I ever see. So I went to talking about other kings, and let Solomon slide. I told about Louis Sixteenth that got his head cut off in France long time ago; and about his little boy the dolphin,4 that would a been a king, but they took and shut him up in jail, and some say he died there.

“Po’ little chap.” “But some says he got out and got away, and come to Amer i ca.” “Dat’s good! But he’ll be pooty lonesome— dey ain’ no kings here, is dey,

Huck?” “No.” “Den he cain’t git no situation. What he gwyne to do?” “Well, I don’t know. Some of them gets on the police, and some of them

learns people how to talk French.” “Why, Huck, doan’ de French people talk de same way we does?” “No, Jim; you couldn’t understand a word they said— not a single word.” “Well now, I be ding- busted! How do dat come?” “I don’t know; but it’s so. I got some of their jabber out of a book. Spose a

man was to come to you and say Polly- voo- franzy— what would you think?” “I wouldn’ think nuff’n; I’d take en bust him over de head. Dat is, if he

warn’t white. I wouldn’t ’low no nigger to call me dat.” “Shucks, it ain’t calling you anything. It’s only saying do you know how to

talk French?” “Well, den, why couldn’t he say it?” “Why, he is a- saying it. That’s a Frenchman’s way of saying it.” “Well, it’s a blame’ ridicklous way, en I doan’ want to hear no mo’ ’bout it.

Dey ain’ no sense in it.” “Looky here, Jim; does a cat talk like we do?” “No, a cat don’t.” “Well, does a cow?” “No, a cow don’t, nuther.” “Does a cat talk like a cow, or a cow talk like a cat?” “No, dey don’t.” “It’s natu ral and right for ’em to talk dif fer ent from each other, ain’t it?” “ ’Course.” “And ain’t it natu ral and right for a cat and a cow to talk dif fer ent from us?” “Why, mos’ sholy it is.” “Well, then, why ain’t it natu ral and right for a Frenchman to talk dif fer-

ent from us? You answer me that.”

4. The Dauphin, Louis Charles, next in line of the succession to the throne, was eight years old when his father, Louis XVI, was beheaded (1793). Though the boy died in prison, prob ably in 1795,

legends of his escape to Amer i ca (and elsewhere) persisted, and Twain owned a book on the subject by Horace  W. Fuller: Imposters and Adventurers, Noted French Trials (1882).

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5. Pronounced CAY- ro, the town is 364 miles from Hannibal, 194 miles from St. Louis. 6. Southern Illinois was proslavery in senti- ment. The state, moreover, had a system of indentured labor, not unlike slavery, to which a black person without proof of free status might

be subjected. Although even in the “ free” states there were similar dangers for Jim, the chances of his making his way to freedom and safety in Canada from Ohio or Pennsylvania would be much greater.

“Is a cat a man, Huck?” “No.” “Well, den, dey ain’t no sense in a cat talkin’ like a man. Is a cow a man?—

er is a cow a cat?” “No, she ain’t either of them.” “Well, den, she ain’ got no business to talk like either one er the yuther of

’em. Is a Frenchman a man?” “Yes.” “Well, den! Dad blame it, why doan’ he talk like a man? You answer me dat!” I see it warn’t no use wasting words— you can’t learn a nigger to argue.

So I quit.

Chapter XV

We judged that three nights more would fetch us to Cairo,5 at the bottom of Illinois, where the Ohio River comes in, and that was what we was after. We would sell the raft and get on a steamboat and go way up the Ohio amongst the free States, and then be out of trou ble.6

Well, the second night a fog begun to come on, and we made for a tow- head to tie to, for it wouldn’t do to try to run in fog; but when I paddled ahead in the canoe, with the line, to make fast, there warn’t anything but little saplings to tie to. I passed the line around one of them right on the edge of the cut bank, but there was a stiff current, and the raft come boom- ing down so lively she tore it out by the roots and away she went. I see the fog closing down, and it made me so sick and scared I couldn’t budge for most a half a minute it seemed to me— and then there warn’t no raft in sight; you couldn’t see twenty yards. I jumped into the canoe and run back to the stern and grabbed the paddle and set her back a stroke. But she didn’t come. I was in such a hurry I hadn’t untied her. I got up and tried to untie her, but I was so excited my hands shook so I couldn’t hardly do any- thing with them.

As soon as I got started I took out after the raft, hot and heavy, right down the tow- head. That was all right as far as it went, but the tow- head warn’t sixty yards long, and the minute I ̀ ew by the foot of it I shot out into the solid white fog, and hadn’t no more idea which way I was going than a dead man.

Thinks I, it won’t do to paddle; "rst I know I’ll run into the bank or a tow- head or something; I got to set still and `oat, and yet it’s mighty "dg- ety business to have to hold your hands still at such a time. I whooped and listened. Away down there, somewheres, I hears a small whoop, and up comes my spirits. I went tearing after it, listening sharp to hear it again. The next time it come, I see I warn’t heading for it but heading away to the right of it. And the next time, I was heading away to the left of it— and not gaining on it much, either, for I was `ying around, this way and that and ’tother, but it was going straight ahead all the time.

I did wish the fool would think to beat a tin pan, and beat it all the time, but he never did, and it was the still places between the whoops that was making the trou ble for me. Well, I fought along, and directly I hears the whoops behind me. I was tangled good, now. That was some- body’s else’s whoop, or else I was turned around.

I throwed the paddle down. I heard the whoop again; it was behind me yet, but in a dif fer ent place; it kept coming, and kept changing its place, and I kept answering, till by- and-by it was in front of me again and I knowed the current had swung the canoe’s head down stream and I was all right, if that was Jim and not some other raftsman hollering. I couldn’t tell nothing about voices in a fog, for nothing don’t look natu ral nor sound natu ral in a fog.

The whooping went on, and in about a minute I come a booming down on a cut bank7 with smoky ghosts of big trees on it, and the current throwed me off to the left and shot by, amongst a lot of snags that fairly roared, the current was tearing by them so swift.

In another second or two it was solid white and still again. I set perfectly still, then, listening to my heart thump, and I reckon I didn’t draw a breath while it thumped a hundred.

I just give up, then. I knowed what the matter was. That cut bank was an island, and Jim had gone down ’tother side of it. It warn’t no tow- head, that you could `oat by in ten minutes. It had the big timber of a regular island; it might be "ve or six mile long and more than a half a mile wide.

I kept quiet, with my ears cocked, about "fteen minutes, I reckon. I was `oating along, of course, four or "ve mile an hour; but you don’t ever think of that. No, you feel like you are laying dead still on the water; and if a little glimpse of a snag slips by, you don’t think to yourself how fast you’re going, but you catch your breath and think, my! how that snag’s tearing along. If you think it ain’t dismal and lonesome out in a fog that way, by yourself, in the night, you try it once— you’ll see.

Next, for about a half an hour, I whoops now and then; at last I hears the answer a long ways off, and tries to follow it, but I couldn’t do it, and directly I judged I’d got into a nest of tow- heads, for I had little dim glimpses of them on both sides of me, sometimes just a narrow channel between; and some that I couldn’t see, I knowed was there, because I’d hear the wash of the current against the old dead brush and trash that hung over the banks. Well, I warn’t long losing the whoops, down amongst the tow- heads; and I only tried to chase them a little while, anyway, because it was worse than chas- ing a Jack- o- lantern. You never knowed a sound dodge around so, and swap places so quick and so much.

I had to claw away from the bank pretty lively, four or "ve times, to keep from knocking the islands out of the river; and so I judged the raft must be butting into the bank every now and then, or else it would get further ahead and clear out of hearing—it was `oating a little faster than what I was.

Well, I seemed to be in the open river again, by- and-by, but I couldn’t hear no sign of a whoop nowheres. I reckoned Jim had fetched up on a snag, maybe, and it was all up with him. I was good and tired, so I laid down in

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7. Steep bank carved out by the force of the current.

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the canoe and said I wouldn’t bother no more. I didn’t want to go to sleep, of course; but I was so sleepy I couldn’t help it; so I thought I would take just one little cat- nap.

But I reckon it was more than a cat- nap, for when I waked up the stars was shining bright, the fog was all gone, and I was spinning down a big bend stern "rst. First I didn’t know where I was; I thought I was dreaming; and when things begun to come back to me, they seemed to come up dim out of last week.

It was a monstrous big river here, with the tallest and the thickest kind of timber on both banks; just a solid wall, as well as I could see, by the stars. I looked away down stream, and seen a black speck on the water. I took out after it; but when I got to it it warn’t nothing but a couple of saw- logs made fast together. Then I see another speck, and chased that; then another, and this time I was right. It was the raft.

When I got to it Jim was setting there with his head down between his knees, asleep, with his right arm hanging over the steering oar. The other oar was smashed off, and the raft was littered up with leaves and branches and dirt. So she’d had a rough time.

I made fast and laid down under Jim’s nose on the raft, and begun to gap, and stretch my "sts out against Jim, and says:

“Hello, Jim, have I been asleep? Why didn’t you stir me up?” “Goodness gracious, is dat you, Huck? En you ain’ dead— you ain’

drownded— you’s back agin? It’s too good for true, honey, it’s too good for true. Lemme look at you, chile, lemme feel o’ you. No, you ain’ dead? you’s back agin, ’live en soun’, jis de same ole Huck—de same ole Huck, thanks to goodness!”

“What’s the matter with you, Jim? You been a drinking?” “Drinkin’? Has I ben a drinkin’? Has I had a chance to be a drinkin’?” “Well, then, what makes you talk so wild?” “How does I talk wild?” “How? why, haint you been talking about my coming back, and all that

stuff, as if I’d been gone away?” “Huck— Huck Finn, you look me in de eye; look me in de eye. Hain’t you

ben gone away?” “Gone away? Why, what in the nation do you mean? I hain’t been gone

anywhere. Where would I go to?” “Well, looky here, boss, dey’s sumf’n wrong, dey is. Is I me, or who is I? Is

I heah, or whah is I? Now dat’s what I wants to know?” “Well, I think you’re here, plain enough, but I think you’re a tangle- headed

old fool, Jim.” “I is, is I? Well you answer me dis. Didn’t you tote out de line in de canoe,

fer to make fas’ to de tow- head?” “No, I didn’t. What tow- head? I hain’t seen no tow- head.” “You hain’t seen no tow- head? Looky here— didn’t de line pull loose en de

raf’ go a hummin’ down de river, en leave you en de canoe behine in de fog?” “What fog?” “Why de fog. De fog dat’s ben aroun’ all night. En didn’t you whoop, en

didn’t I whoop, tell we got mix’ up in de islands en one un us got ’los’ en ’tother one was jis’ as good as los’, ’kase he didn’ know whah he wuz? En didn’t I bust up agin a lot er dem islands en have a turrible time en mos’ git drownded? Now ain’ dat so, boss— ain’t it so? You answer me dat.”

“Well, this is too many for me, Jim. I hain’t seen no fog, nor no islands, nor no trou bles, nor nothing. I been setting here talking with you all night till you went to sleep about ten minutes ago, and I reckon I done the same. You couldn’t a got drunk in that time, so of course you’ve been dreaming.”

“Dad fetch it, how is I gwyne to dream all dat in ten minutes?” “Well, hang it all, you did dream it, because there didn’t any of it happen.” “But Huck, it’s all jis’ as plain to me as—” “It don’t make no difference how plain it is, there ain’t nothing in it. I

know, because I’ve been here all the time.” Jim didn’t say nothing for about "ve minutes, but set there studying over

it. Then he says: “Well, den, I reck’n I did dream it, Huck; but dog my cats ef it ain’t de

powerfullest dream I ever see. En I hain’t ever had no dream b’fo’ dat’s tired me like dis one.”

“Oh, well, that’s all right, because a dream does tire a body like every thing, sometimes. But this one was a staving8 dream— tell me all about it, Jim.”

So Jim went to work and told me the whole thing right through, just as it happened, only he painted it up considerable. Then he said he must start in and “ ’terpret” it, because it was sent for a warning. He said the "rst tow- head stood for a man that would try to do us some good, but the current was another man that would get us away from him. The whoops was warn- ings that would come to us every now and then, and if we didn’t try hard to make out to understand them they’d just take us into bad luck, ’stead of keep- ing us out of it. The lot of tow- heads was trou bles we was going to get into with quarrelsome people and all kinds of mean folks, but if we minded our business and didn’t talk back and aggravate them, we would pull through and get out of the fog and into the big clear river, which was the free States, and wouldn’t have no more trou ble.

It had clouded up pretty dark just after I got onto the raft, but it was clear- ing up again, now.

“Oh, well, that’s all interpreted well enough, as far as it goes, Jim,” I says; “but what does these things stand for?”

It was the leaves and rubbish on the raft, and the smashed oar. You could see them "rst rate, now.

Jim looked at the trash, and then looked at me, and back at the trash again. He had got the dream "xed so strong in his head that he couldn’t seem to shake it loose and get the facts back into its place again, right away. But when he did get the thing straightened around, he looked at me steady, without ever smiling, and says:

“What do dey stan’ for? I’s gwyne to tell you. When I got all wore out wid work, en wid de callin’ for you, en went to sleep, my heart wuz mos’ broke bekase you wuz los’, en I didn’ k’yer no mo’ what become er me en de raf’. En when I wake up en "ne you back agin’, all safe en soun’, de tears come en I could a got down on my knees en kiss’ yo’ foot I’s so thankful. En all you wuz thinkin’ ’bout wuz how you could make a fool uv ole Jim wid a lie. Dat truck dah is trash; en trash is what people is dat puts dirt on de head er dey fren’s en makes ’em ashamed.”

8. Vivid, compelling.

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Then he got up slow, and walked to the wigwam, and went in there, with- out saying anything but that. But that was enough. It made me feel so mean I could almost kissed his foot to get him to take it back.

It was "fteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger— but I done it, and I warn’t ever sorry for it afterwards, neither. I didn’t do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn’t done that one if I’d a knowed it would make him feel that way.

Chapter XVI

We slept most all day, and started out at night, a little ways behind a mon- strous long raft that was as long going by as a pro cession. She had four long sweeps9 at each end, so we judged she carried as many as thirty men, likely. She had "ve big wigwams aboard, wide apart, and an open camp "re in the middle, and a tall `agpole at each end. There was a power of style about her. It amounted to something being a raftsman on such a craft as that.

We went drifting down into a big bend, and the night clouded up and got hot. The river was very wide, and was walled with solid timber on both sides; you couldn’t see a break in it hardly ever, or a light. We talked about Cairo, and wondered whether we would know it when we got to it. I said likely we wouldn’t, because I had heard say there warn’t but about a dozen houses there, and if they didn’t happen to have them lit up, how was we going to know we was passing a town? Jim said if the two big rivers joined together there, that would show. But I said maybe we might think we was passing the foot of an island and coming into the same old river again. That disturbed Jim— and me too. So the question was, what to do? I said, paddle ashore the "rst time a light showed, and tell them pap was behind, coming along with a trading- scow, and was a green hand at the business, and wanted to know how far it was to Cairo. Jim thought it was a good idea, so we took a smoke on it and waited.

There warn’t nothing to do, now, but to look out sharp for the town, and not pass it without seeing it. He said he’d be mighty sure to see it, because he’d be a free man the minute he seen it, but if he missed it he’d be in the slave country again and no more show for freedom. Every little while he jumps up and says:

“Dah she is!” But it warn’t. It was Jack- o- lanterns, or lightning- bugs; so he set down again,

and went to watching, same as before. Jim said it made him all over trembly and feverish to be so close to freedom. Well, I can tell you it made me all over trembly and feverish, too, to hear him, because I begun to get it through my head that he was most free— and who was to blame for it? Why, me. I couldn’t get that out of my conscience, no how nor no way. It got to troubling me so I couldn’t rest; I couldn’t stay still in one place. It hadn’t ever come home to me before, what this thing was that I was doing. But now it did; and it staid with me, and scorched me more and more. I tried to make out to myself that I warn’t to blame, because I didn’t run Jim off from his rightful own er; but it warn’t no use, conscience up and says, every time, “But you knowed he was running for

9. Long oars used chie`y for steering.

his freedom, and you could a paddled ashore and told somebody.” That was so— I couldn’t get around that, noway. That was where it pinched. Conscience says to me, “What had poor Miss Watson done to you, that you could see her nigger go off right under your eyes and never say one single word? What did that poor old woman do to you, that you could treat her so mean? Why, she tried to learn you your book, she tried to learn you your manners, she tried to be good to you every way she knowed how. That’s what she done.”

I got to feeling so mean and so miserable I most wished I was dead. I "dgeted up and down the raft, abusing myself to myself, and Jim was "dg- eting up and down past me. We neither of us could keep still. Every time he danced around and says, “Dah’s Cairo!” it went through me like a shot, and I thought if it was Cairo I reckoned I would die of miserableness.

Jim talked out loud all the time while I was talking to myself. He was say- ing how the "rst thing he would do when he got to a free State he would go to saving up money and never spend a single cent, and when he got enough he would buy his wife, which was owned on a farm close to where Miss Wat- son lived; and then they would both work to buy the two children, and if their master wouldn’t sell them, they’d get an Ab’litionist to go and steal them.

It most froze me to hear such talk. He wouldn’t ever dared to talk such talk in his life before. Just see what a difference it made in him the minute he judged he was about free. It was according to the old saying, “give a nigger an inch and he’ll take an ell.” Thinks I, this is what comes of my not thinking. Here was this nigger which I had as good as helped to run away, coming right out `at- footed and saying he would steal his children— children that belonged to a man I didn’t even know; a man that hadn’t ever done me no harm.

I was sorry to hear Jim say that, it was such a lowering of him. My con- science got to stirring me up hotter than ever, until at last I says to it, “Let up on me—it ain’t too late, yet— I’ll paddle ashore at the "rst light, and tell.” I felt easy, and happy, and light as a feather, right off. All my trou bles was gone. I went to looking out sharp for a light, and sort of singing to myself. By- and-by one showed. Jim sings out:

“We’s safe, Huck, we’s safe! Jump up and crack yo’ heels, dat’s de good ole Cairo at las’, I jis knows it!”

I says: “I’ll take the canoe and go see, Jim. It mightn’t be, you know.” He jumped and got the canoe ready, and put his old coat in the bottom

for me to set on, and give me the paddle; and as I shoved off, he says: “Pooty soon I’ll be a- shout’n for joy, en I’ll say, it’s all on accounts o’ Huck;

I’s a free man, en I couldn’t ever ben free ef it hadn’ ben for Huck; Huck done it. Jim won’t ever forgit you, Huck; you’s de bes’ fren’ Jim’s ever had; en you’s de only fren’ ole Jim’s got now.”

I was paddling off, all in a sweat to tell on him; but when he says this, it seemed to kind of take the tuck all out of me. I went along slow then, and I warn’t right down certain whether I was glad I started or whether I warn’t. When I was "fty yards off, Jim says:

“Dah you goes, de ole true Huck; de on’y white genlman dat ever kep’ his promise to ole Jim.”

Well, I just felt sick. But I says, I got to do it— I can’t get out of it. Right then, along comes a skiff with two men in it, with guns, and they stopped and I stopped. One of them says:

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1. I.e., leeward, or downwind. 2. A highly infectious, often fatal disease.

“What’s that, yonder?” “A piece of raft,” I says. “Do you belong on it?” “Yes, sir.” “Any men on it?” “Only one, sir.” “Well, there’s "ve niggers run off to- night, up yonder above the head of

the bend. Is your man white or black?” I didn’t answer up prompt. I tried to, but the words wouldn’t come. I tried,

for a second or two, to brace up and out with it, but I warn’t man enough— hadn’t the spunk of a rabbit. I see I was weakening; so I just give up trying, and up and says—

“He’s white.” “I reckon we’ll go and see for ourselves.” “I wish you would,” says I, “ because it’s pap that’s there, and maybe you’d

help me tow the raft ashore where the light is. He’s sick— and so is mam and Mary Ann.”

“Oh, the dev il! we’re in a hurry, boy. But I s’pose we’ve got to. Come— buckle to your paddle, and let’s get along.”

I buckled to my paddle and they laid to their oars. When we had made a stroke or two, I says:

“Pap’ll be mighty much obleeged to you, I can tell you. Every body goes away when I want them to help me tow the raft ashore, and I can’t do it myself.”

“Well, that’s infernal mean. Odd, too. Say, boy, what’s the matter with your father?”

“It’s the— a— the— well, it ain’t anything, much.” They stopped pulling. It warn’t but a mighty little ways to the raft, now.

One says: “Boy, that’s a lie. What is the matter with your pap? Answer up square,

now, and it’ll be the better for you.” “I will, sir, I will, honest— but don’t leave us, please. It’s the— the—

gentlemen, if you’ll only pull ahead, and let me heave you the head- line you won’t have to come a- near the raft— please do.”

“Set her back, John, set her back!” says one. They backed water. “Keep away, boy— keep to looard.1 Confound it, I just expect the wind has blowed it to us. Your pap’s got the small- pox,2 and you know it precious well. Why didn’t you come out and say so? Do you want to spread it all over?”

“Well,” says I, a- blubbering, “I’ve told every body before, and then they just went away and left us.”

“Poor devil, there’s something in that. We are right down sorry for you, but we— well, hang it, we don’t want the small- pox, you see. Look here, I’ll tell you what to do. Don’t you try to land by yourself, or you’ll smash every thing to pieces. You `oat along down about twenty miles and you’ll come to a town on the left- hand side of the river. It will be long after sun- up, then, and when you ask for help, you tell them your folks are all down with chills and fever. Don’t be a fool again, and let people guess what is the

matter. Now we’re trying to do you a kindness; so you just put twenty miles between us, that’s a good boy. It wouldn’t do any good to land yonder where the light is— it’s only a wood- yard. Say— I reckon your father’s poor, and I’m bound to say he’s in pretty hard luck. Here— I’ll put a twenty dollar gold piece on this board, and you get it when it `oats by. I feel mighty mean to leave you, but my kingdom! it won’t do to fool with small- pox, don’t you see?”

“Hold on, Parker,” says the other man, “ here’s a twenty to put on the board for me. Good- bye boy, you do as Mr. Parker told you, and you’ll be all right.”

“That’s so, my boy— good- bye, good- bye. If you see any runaway niggers, you get help and nab them, and you can make some money by it.”

“Good- bye, sir,” says I, “I won’t let no runaway niggers get by me if I can help it.”

They went off, and I got aboard the raft, feeling bad and low, because I knowed very well I had done wrong, and I see it warn’t no use for me to try to learn to do right; a body that don’t get started right when he’s little, ain’t got no show— when the pinch comes there ain’t nothing to back him up and keep him to his work, and so he gets beat. Then I thought a minute, and says to myself, hold on,— s’pose you’d a done right and give Jim up; would you felt better than what you do now? No, says I, I’d feel bad— I’d feel just the same way I do now. Well, then, says I, what’s the use you learn- ing to do right, when it’s troublesome to do right and ain’t no trou ble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same? I was stuck. I couldn’t answer that. So I reckoned I wouldn’t bother no more about it, but after this always do whichever come handiest at the time.

I went into the wigwam; Jim warn’t there. I looked all around; he warn’t anywhere. I says:

“Jim!” “ Here I is, Huck. Is dey out o’ sight yit? Don’t talk loud.” He was in the river, under the stern oar, with just his nose out. I told him

they was out of sight, so he come aboard. He says: “I was a- listenin’ to all de talk, en I slips into de river en was gwyne to shove

for sho’ if dey come aboard. Den I was gwyne to swim to de raf’ agin when dey was gone. But lawsy, how you did fool ’em, Huck! Dat wuz de smartes’ dodge! I tell you, chile, I ’speck it save’ ole Jim— ole Jim ain’ gwyne to forgit you for dat, honey.”

Then we talked about the money. It was a pretty good raise, twenty dollars apiece. Jim said we could take deck passage on a steamboat now, and the money would last us as far as we wanted to go in the free States. He said twenty mile more warn’t far for the raft to go, but he wished we was already there.

Towards daybreak we tied up, and Jim was mighty par tic u lar about hid- ing the raft good. Then he worked all day "xing things in bundles, and get- ting all ready to quit rafting.

That night about ten we hove in sight of the lights of a town away down in a left- hand bend.

I went off in the canoe, to ask about it. Pretty soon I found a man out in the river with a skiff, setting a trot- line. I ranged up and says:

“Mister, is that town Cairo?”

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3. The “Muddy” here refers to the sediment car- ried by the Mississippi River. Cairo is located at the con`uence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Therefore, this combination of clear (Ohio) and muddy (Mississippi) water tells Huck and Jim that they have passed Cairo and lost the opportunity to sell the raft and travel up the Ohio by steamboat to freedom. 4. Twain was “stuck” at this point in the writing of the novel and put the 400- page manuscript

aside for approximately three years. In the winter of 1879–80 he added the two chapters dealing with the feud (XVII and XVIII) and then the three chapters (XIX– XXI) in which the king and duke enter the story and for a time dominate the action. The novel was not completed until 1883, when Twain wrote the last half of it in a few months of concentrated work. As late as 1882, he was not con"dent he would ever complete the book.

“Cairo? no. You must be a blame’ fool.” “What town is it, mister?” “If you want to know, go and "nd out. If you stay here botherin’ around

me for about a half a minute longer, you’ll get something you won’t want.” I paddled to the raft. Jim was awful disappointed, but I said never mind,

Cairo would be the next place, I reckoned. We passed another town before daylight, and I was going out again; but it

was high ground, so I didn’t go. No high ground about Cairo, Jim said. I had forgot it. We laid up for the day, on a tow- head tolerable close to the left- hand bank. I begun to suspicion something. So did Jim. I says:

“Maybe we went by Cairo in the fog that night.” He says: “Doan’ less’ talk about it, Huck. Po’ niggers can’t have no luck. I awluz

’spected dat rattle- snake skin warn’t done wid it’s work.” “I wish I’d never seen that snake- skin, Jim— I do wish I’d never laid eyes

on it.” “It ain’t yo’ fault, Huck; you didn’t know. Don’t you blame yo’sef ’bout it.” When it was daylight, here was the clear Ohio water in shore, sure enough,

and outside was the old regular Muddy! So it was all up with Cairo.3 We talked it all over. It wouldn’t do to take to the shore; we couldn’t take

the raft up the stream, of course. There warn’t no way but to wait for dark, and start back in the canoe and take the chances. So we slept all day amongst the cotton- wood thicket, so as to be fresh for the work, and when we went back to the raft about dark the canoe was gone!

We didn’t say a word for a good while. There warn’t anything to say. We both knowed well enough it was some more work of the rattle- snake skin; so what was the use to talk about it? It would only look like we was "nding fault, and that would be bound to fetch more bad luck— and keep on fetch- ing it, too, till we knowed enough to keep still.

By- and-by we talked about what we better do, and found there warn’t no way but just to go along down with the raft till we got a chance to buy a canoe to go back in. We warn’t going to borrow it when there warn’t any- body around, the way pap would do, for that might set people after us.

So we shoved out, after dark, on the raft.4 Anybody that don’t believe yet, that it’s foolishness to handle a snake- skin,

after all that that snake- skin done for us, will believe it now, if they read on and see what more it done for us.

The place to buy canoes is off of rafts laying up at shore. But we didn’t see no rafts laying up; so we went along during three hours and more. Well, the night got gray, and ruther thick, which is the next meanest thing to fog. You can’t tell the shape of the river, and you can’t see no distance. It got to be very

5. Kentucky, where the feud in chapters XVII and XVIII is set.

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late and still, and then along comes a steamboat up the river. We lit the lan- tern, and judged she would see it. Up- stream boats didn’t generly come close to us; they go out and follow the bars and hunt for easy water under the reefs; but nights like this they bull right up the channel against the whole river.

We could hear her pounding along, but we didn’t see her good till she was close. She aimed right for us. Often they do that and try to see how close they can come without touching; sometimes the wheel bites off a sweep, and then the pi lot sticks his head out and laughs, and thinks he’s mighty smart. Well, here she comes, and we said she was going to try to shave us; but she didn’t seem to be sheering off a bit. She was a big one, and she was coming in a hurry, too, looking like a black cloud with rows of glow- worms around it; but all of a sudden she bulged out, big and scary, with a long row of wide- open furnace doors shining like red- hot teeth, and her monstrous bows and guards hanging right over us. There was a yell at us, and a jingling of bells to stop the engines, a pow- wow of cussing, and whistling of steam— and as Jim went overboard on one side and I on the other, she come smashing straight through the raft.

I dived— and I aimed to "nd the bottom, too, for a thirty- foot wheel had got to go over me, and I wanted it to have plenty of room. I could always stay under water a minute; this time I reckon I staid under water a minute and a half. Then I bounced for the top in a hurry, for I was nearly busting. I popped out to my arm- pits and blowed the water out of my nose, and puffed a bit. Of course there was a booming current; and of course that boat started her engines again ten seconds after she stopped them, for they never cared much for raftsmen; so now she was churning along up the river, out of sight in the thick weather, though I could hear her.

I sung out for Jim about a dozen times, but I didn’t get any answer; so I grabbed a plank that touched me while I was “treading water,” and struck out for shore, shoving it ahead of me. But I made out to see that the drift of the current was towards the left- hand shore,5 which meant that I was in a crossing; so I changed off and went that way.

It was one of these long, slanting, two- mile crossings; so I was a good long time in getting over. I made a safe landing, and clum up the bank. I couldn’t see but a little ways, but I went poking along over rough ground for a quar- ter of a mile or more, and then I run across a big old- fashioned double log house before I noticed it. I was going to rush by and get away, but a lot of dogs jumped out and went to howling and barking at me, and I knowed bet- ter than to move another peg.

Chapter XVII

In about half a minute somebody spoke out of a win dow, without putting his head out, and says:

“Be done, boys! Who’s there?” I says: “It’s me.” “Who’s me?”

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“George Jackson, sir.” “What do you want?” “I don’t want nothing, sir. I only want to go along by, but the dogs won’t

let me.” “What are you prowling around here this time of night, for— hey?” “I warn’t prowling around, sir; I fell overboard off of the steamboat.” “Oh, you did, did you? Strike a light there, somebody. What did you say

your name was?” “George Jackson, sir. I’m only a boy.” “Look here; if you’re telling the truth, you needn’t be afraid— nobody’ll

hurt you. But don’t try to budge; stand right where you are. Rouse our Bob and Tom, some of you, and fetch the guns. George Jackson, is there anybody with you?”

“No, sir, nobody.” I heard the people stirring around in the house, now, and see a light. The

man sung out: “Snatch that light away, Betsy, you old fool— ain’t you got any sense? Put

it on the `oor behind the front door. Bob, if you and Tom are ready, take your places.”

“All ready.” “Now, George Jackson, do you know the Shepherdsons?” “No, sir— I never heard of them.” “Well, that may be so, and it mayn’t. Now, all ready. Step forward, George

Jackson. And mind, don’t you hurry— come mighty slow. If there’s anybody with you, let him keep back—if he shows himself he’ll be shot. Come along, now. Come slow; push the door open, yourself— just enough to squeeze in, d’ you hear?”

I didn’t hurry, I couldn’t if I’d a wanted to. I took one slow step at a time, and there warn’t a sound, only I thought I could hear my heart. The dogs were as still as the humans, but they followed a little behind me. When I got to the three log door- steps, I heard them unlocking and unbarring and unbolting. I put my hand on the door and pushed it a little and a little more, till somebody said, “ There, that’s enough— put your head in.” I done it, but I judged they would take it off.

The candle was on the `oor, and there they all was, looking at me, and me at them, for about a quarter of a minute. Three big men with guns pointed at me, which made me wince, I tell you; the oldest, gray and about sixty, the other two thirty or more— all of them "ne and handsome— and the sweet- est old gray- headed lady, and back of her two young women which I couldn’t see right well. The old gentleman says:

“ There— I reckon it’s all right. Come in.” As soon as I was in, the old gentleman he locked the door and barred it

and bolted it, and told the young men to come in with their guns, and they all went in a big parlor that had a new rag carpet on the ̀ oor, and got together in a corner that was out of range of the front win dows— there warn’t none on the side. They held the candle, and took a good look at me, and all said, “Why he ain’t a Shepherdson—no, there ain’t any Shepherdson about him.” Then the old man said he hoped I wouldn’t mind being searched for arms, because he didn’t mean no harm by it—it was only to make sure. So he didn’t pry into my pockets, but only felt outside with his hands, and said it was all

6. In a notebook entry, Twain identi"es Huck as “a boy of 14.”

7. Short, close- "tting jacket.

right. He told me to make myself easy and at home, and tell all about myself; but the old lady says:

“Why bless you, Saul, the poor thing’s as wet as he can be; and don’t you reckon it may be he’s hungry?”

“True for you, Rachel— I forgot.” So the old lady says: “Betsy” (this was a nigger woman), “you `y around and get him something

to eat, as quick as you can, poor thing; and one of you girls go and wake up Buck and tell him— Oh, here he is himself. Buck, take this little stranger and get the wet clothes off from him and dress him up in some of yours that’s dry.”

Buck looked about as old as me— thirteen or fourteen6 or along there, though he was a little bigger than me. He hadn’t on anything but a shirt, and he was very frowsy- headed. He come in gaping and digging one "st into his eyes, and he was dragging a gun along with the other one. He says:

“ Ain’t they no Shepherdsons around?” They said, no, ’twas a false alarm. “Well,” he says, “if they’d a ben some, I reckon I’d a got one.” They all laughed, and Bob says: “Why, Buck, they might have scalped us all, you’ve been so slow in coming.” “Well, nobody come after me, and it ain’t right. I’m always kep’ down; I

don’t get no show.” “Never mind, Buck, my boy,” says the old man, “you’ll have show enough,

all in good time, don’t you fret about that. Go ’long with you now, and do as your mother told you.”

When we got up stairs to his room, he got me a coarse shirt and a round- about7 and pants of his, and I put them on. While I was at it he asked me what my name was, but before I could tell him, he started to telling me about a blue jay and a young rabbit he had catched in the woods day before yester- day, and he asked me where Moses was when the candle went out. I said I didn’t know; I hadn’t heard about it before, no way.

“Well, guess,” he says. “How’m I going to guess,” says I, “when I never heard tell about it before?” “But you can guess, can’t you? It’s just as easy.” “Which candle?” I says. “Why, any candle,” he says. “I don’t know where he was,” says I; “where was he?” “Why he was in the dark! That’s where he was!” “Well, if you knowed where he was, what did you ask me for?” “Why, blame it, it’s a riddle, don’t you see? Say, how long are you going to

stay here? You got to stay always. We can just have booming times— they don’t have no school now. Do you own a dog? I’ve got a dog— and he’ll go in the river and bring out chips that you throw in. Do you like to comb up, Sundays, and all that kind of foolishness? You bet I don’t, but ma she makes me. Confound these ole britches, I reckon I’d better put ’em on, but I’d ruther not, it’s so warm. Are you all ready? All right— come along, old hoss.”

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8. A log large enough to be sawed into planks.

Cold corn- pone, cold corn- beef, butter and butter- milk— that is what they had for me down there, and there ain’t nothing better that ever I’ve come across yet. Buck and his ma and all of them smoked cob pipes, except the nigger woman, which was gone, and the two young women. They all smoked and talked, and I eat and talked. The young women had quilts around them, and their hair down their backs. They all asked me questions, and I told them how pap and me and all the family was living on a little farm down at the bottom of Arkansaw, and my sister Mary Ann run off and got married and never was heard of no more, and Bill went to hunt them and he warn’t heard of no more, and Tom and Mort died, and then there warn’t nobody but just me and pap left, and he was just trimmed down to nothing, on account of his trou bles; so when he died I took what there was left, because the farm didn’t belong to us, and started up the river, deck passage, and fell overboard; and that was how I come to be here. So they said I could have a home there as long as I wanted it. Then it was most daylight, and every body went to bed, and I went to bed with Buck, and when I waked up in the morning, drat it all, I had forgot what my name was. So I laid there about an hour trying to think and when Buck waked up, I says:

“Can you spell, Buck?” “Yes,” he says. “I bet you can’t spell my name,” says I. “I bet you what you dare I can,” says he. “All right,” says I, “go ahead.” “G- o- r- g- e J- a- x- o- n— there now,” he says. “Well,” says I, “you done it, but I didn’t think you could. It ain’t no slouch

of a name to spell— right off without studying.” I set it down, private, because somebody might want me to spell it, next,

and so I wanted to be handy with it and rattle it off like I was used to it. It was a mighty nice family, and a mighty nice house, too. I hadn’t seen

no house out in the country before that was so nice and had so much style. It didn’t have an iron latch on the front door, nor a wooden one with a buck- skin string, but a brass knob to turn, the same as houses in a town. There warn’t no bed in the parlor, not a sign of a bed; but heaps of parlors in towns has beds in them. There was a big "replace that was bricked on the bottom, and the bricks was kept clean and red by pouring water on them and scrub- bing them with another brick; sometimes they washed them over with red water- paint that they call Spanish- brown, same as they do in town. They had big brass dog- irons that could hold up a saw- log.8 There was a clock on the middle of the mantel- piece, with a picture of a town painted on the bottom half of the glass front, and a round place in the middle of it for the sun, and you could see the pendulum swing behind it. It was beautiful to hear that clock tick; and sometimes when one of these peddlers had been along and scoured her up and got her in good shape, she would start in and strike a hundred and "fty before she got tuckered out. They wouldn’t took any money for her.

Well, there was a big outlandish parrot on each side of the clock, made out of something like chalk, and painted up gaudy. By one of the parrots was a cat made of crockery, and a crockery dog by the other; and when you

9. The neatly stacked, unread books are meant to de"ne the values and tastes of the time and place. The Bible, John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Pro gress (1678), and the hymn book establish Calvinistic piety; the speeches of the Kentucky politician Henry Clay (1777–1852) convey po liti cal ortho- doxy; Gunn’s Domestic Medicine (1830) suggests popu lar notions of science and medical practice. Friendship’s Offering was a popu lar gift book.

1. Painting in the  U.S. Capitol Rotunda by John Trumbull (1756–1843), completed in 1819 and widely reproduced during the antebellum period. “Highland Mary” depicts the Scottish poet Robert Burns’s "rst love, who died a few months after they met. He memorialized her in several poems, especially “To Mary in Heaven” (1792).

pressed down on them they squeaked, but didn’t open their mouths nor look dif fer ent nor interested. They squeaked through under neath. There was a couple of big wild- turkey- wing fans spread out behind those things. On a table in the middle of the room was a kind of a lovely crockery basket that had apples and oranges and peaches and grapes piled up in it which was much redder and yellower and prettier than real ones is, but they warn’t real because you could see where pieces had got chipped off and showed the white chalk or what ever it was, under neath.

This table had a cover made out of beautiful oil- cloth, with a red and blue spread- eagle painted on it, and a painted border all around. It come all the way from Philadelphia, they said. There was some books too, piled up per- fectly exact, on each corner of the table. One was a big family Bible, full of pictures. One was “Pilgrim’s Pro gress,” about a man that left his family it didn’t say why. I read considerable in it now and then. The statements was in ter est ing, but tough. Another was “Friendship’s Offering,” full of beauti- ful stuff and poetry; but I didn’t read the poetry. Another was Henry Clay’s Speeches, and another was Dr. Gunn’s Family Medicine, which told you all about what to do if a body was sick or dead. There was a Hymn Book, and a lot of other books.9 And there was nice split- bottom chairs, and per- fectly sound, too— not bagged down in the middle and busted, like an old basket.

They had pictures hung on the walls— mainly Washingtons and Lafay- ettes, and battles, and Highland Marys, and one called “Signing the Decla- ration.”1 There was some that they called crayons, which one of the daughters which was dead made her own self when she was only "fteen years old. They was dif fer ent from any pictures I ever see before; blacker, mostly, than is common. One was a woman in a slim black dress, belted small under the armpits, with bulges like a cabbage in the middle of the sleeves, and a large black scoop- shovel bonnet with a black veil, and white slim ankles crossed about with black tape, and very wee black slippers, like a chisel, and she was leaning pensive on a tombstone on her right elbow, under a weeping willow, and her other hand hanging down her side holding a white handkerchief and a reticule, and under neath the picture it said “ Shall I Never See Thee More Alas.” Another one was a young lady with her hair all combed up straight to the top of her head, and knotted there in front of a comb like a chair- back, and she was crying into a handkerchief and had a dead bird laying on its back in her other hand with its heels up, and under neath the picture it said “I Shall Never Hear Thy Sweet Chirrup More Alas.” There was one where a young lady was at a win dow looking up at the moon, and tears running down her cheeks; and she had an open letter in one hand with black sealing- wax showing on one edge of it, and she was mashing a locket with a chain to it against her mouth, and under neath the picture it said “And Art Thou Gone

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2. This parody derives in par tic u lar from two poems by “The Sweet Singer of Michigan,” Julia A. Moore (1847–1920), whose sentimental poetry was popu lar at the time Twain was writing Huck Finn. In one of the two poems, “ Little Lib-

bie,” the heroine “was choken on a piece of beef.” The graveyard and obituary (or “sadful”) schools of popu lar poetry are much older and more wide- spread.

Yes Thou Art Gone Alas.” These was all nice pictures, I reckon, but I didn’t somehow seem to take to them, because if ever I was down a little, they always give me the fan- tods. Every body was sorry she died, because she had laid out a lot more of these pictures to do, and a body could see by what she had done what they had lost. But I reckoned, that with her disposition, she was having a better time in the graveyard. She was at work on what they said was her greatest picture when she took sick, and every day and every night it was her prayer to be allowed to live till she got it done, but she never got the chance. It was a picture of a young woman in a long white gown, standing on the rail of a bridge all ready to jump off, with her hair all down her back, and looking up to the moon, with the tears running down her face, and she had two arms folded across her breast, and two arms stretched out in front, and two more reaching up towards the moon— and the idea was, to see which pair would look best and then scratch out all the other arms; but, as I was saying, she died before she got her mind made up, and now they kept this picture over the head of the bed in her room, and every time her birthday come they hung `owers on it. Other times it was hid with a little curtain. The young woman in the picture had a kind of a nice sweet face, but there was so many arms it made her look too spidery, seemed to me.

This young girl kept a scrap- book when she was alive, and used to paste obituaries and accidents and cases of patient suffering in it out of the Pres- byterian Observer, and write poetry after them out of her own head. It was very good poetry.2 This is what she wrote about a boy by the name of Ste- phen Dowling Bots that fell down a well and was drownded:

ode to stephen dowling bots, dec’d

And did young Stephen sicken, And did young Stephen die? And did the sad hearts thicken, And did the mourners cry?

No; such was not the fate of Young Stephen Dowling Bots; Though sad hearts round him thickened, ’Twas not from sickness’ shots.

No whooping- cough did rack his frame, Nor measles drear, with spots; Not these impaired the sacred name Of Stephen Dowling Bots.

Despised love struck not with woe That head of curly knots, Nor stomach trou bles laid him low, Young Stephen Dowling Bots.

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3. Was delayed by, or “hung up.” The term comes from an unexpected delay between the trigger of a "rearm and its "ring— a more com- mon prob lem in older "rearms. 4. A bloody story told in clichéd style, written by

the Czech composer Franz Kotswara (1750– 1791) in about 1788; Twain "rst heard it in 1878. William Clifton’s The Last Link Is Broken was published about 1840.

O no. Then list with tearful eye, Whilst I his fate do tell. His soul did from this cold world `y, By falling down a well.

They got him out and emptied him; Alas it was too late; His spirit was gone for to sport aloft In the realms of the good and great.

If Emmeline Grangerford could make poetry like that before she was four- teen, there ain’t no telling what she could a done by- and-by. Buck said she could rattle off poetry like nothing. She didn’t ever have to stop to think. He said she would slap down a line, and if she couldn’t "nd anything to rhyme with it she would just scratch it out and slap down another one, and go ahead. She warn’t par tic u lar, she could write about anything you choose to give her to write about, just so it was sadful. Every time a man died, or a woman died, or a child died, she would be on hand with her “tribute” before he was cold. She called them tributes. The neighbors said it was the doctor "rst, then Emme- line, then the undertaker— the undertaker never got in ahead of Emmeline but once, and then she hung "re3 on a rhyme for the dead person’s name, which was Whistler. She warn’t ever the same, after that; she never com- plained, but she kind of pined away and did not live long. Poor thing, many’s the time I made myself go up to the little room that used to be hers and get out her poor old scrapbook and read in it when her pictures had been aggravating me and I had soured on her a little. I liked all the family, dead ones and all, and warn’t going to let anything come between us. Poor Emmeline made poetry about all the dead people when she was alive, and it didn’t seem right that there warn’t nobody to make some about her, now she was gone; so I tried to sweat out a verse or two myself, but I couldn’t seem to make it go, somehow. They kept Emmeline’s room trim and nice and all the things "xed in it just the way she liked to have them when she was alive, and nobody ever slept there. The old lady took care of the room herself, though there was plenty of niggers, and she sewed there a good deal and read her Bible there, mostly.

Well, as I was saying about the parlor, there was beautiful curtains on the win dows: white, with pictures painted on them, of castles with vines all down the walls, and cattle coming down to drink. There was a little old piano, too, that had tin pans in it, I reckon, and nothing was ever so lovely as to hear the young ladies sing, “The Last Link is Broken” and play “The Battle of Prague”4 on it. The walls of all the rooms was plastered, and most had carpets on the `oors, and the whole house was whitewashed on the outside.

It was a double house, and the big open place betwixt them was roofed and `oored, and sometimes the table was set there in the middle of the day, and it was a cool, comfortable place. Nothing couldn’t be better. And warn’t the cooking good, and just bushels of it too!

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5. General term for a number of species of cat"sh; in this context the lowliest and least esteemed. 6. A tall pole, like a `agpole, on which an ensign

or “liberty cap” might be raised as a signal. 7. A brimmed straw hat, originally made in Ec ua- dor and shipped through the Panama isthmus.

Chapter XVIII

Col. Grangerford was a gentleman, you see. He was a gentleman all over; and so was his family. He was well born, as the saying is, and that’s worth as much in a man as it is in a horse, so the Widow Douglas said, and nobody ever denied that she was of the "rst aristocracy in our town; and pap he always said it, too, though he warn’t no more quality than a mudcat,5 him- self. Col. Grangerford was very tall and very slim, and had a darkish- paly complexion, not a sign of red in it anywheres; he was clean- shaved every morning, all over his thin face, and he had the thinnest kind of lips, and the thinnest kind of nostrils, and a high nose, and heavy eyebrows, and the black- est kind of eyes, sunk so deep back that they seemed like they was looking out of caverns at you, as you may say. His forehead was high, and his hair was black and straight, and hung to his shoulders. His hands was long and thin, and every day of his life he put on a clean shirt and a full suit from head to foot made out of linen so white it hurt your eyes to look at it; and on Sundays he wore a blue tail- coat with brass buttons on it. He carried a mahogany cane with a silver head to it. There warn’t no frivolishness about him, not a bit, and he warn’t ever loud. He was as kind as he could be— you could feel that, you know, and so you had con"dence. Sometimes he smiled, and it was good to see; but when he straightened himself up like a liberty- pole,6 and the lightning begun to `icker out from under his eye- brows you wanted to climb a tree "rst, and "nd out what the matter was afterwards. He didn’t ever have to tell anybody to mind their manners— every body was always good mannered where he was. Every body loved to have him around, too; he was sunshine most always— I mean he made it seem like good weather. When he turned into a cloud- bank it was awful dark for a half a minute and that was enough; there wouldn’t nothing go wrong again for a week.

When him and the old lady come down in the morning, all the family got up out of their chairs and give them good- day, and didn’t set down again till they had set down. Then Tom and Bob went to the sideboard where the decanters was, and mixed a glass of bitters and handed it to him, and he held it in his hand and waited till Tom’s and Bob’s was mixed, and then they bowed and said “Our duty to you, sir, and madam;” and they bowed the least bit in the world and said thank you, and so they drank, all three, and Bob and Tom poured a spoonful of water on the sugar and the mite of whiskey or apple brandy in the bottom of their tumblers, and give it to me and Buck, and we drank to the old people too.

Bob was the oldest, and Tom next. Tall, beautiful men with very broad shoulders and brown faces, and long black hair and black eyes. They dressed in white linen from head to foot, like the old gentleman, and wore broad Panama hats.7

Then there was Miss Charlotte, she was twenty- "ve, and tall and proud and grand, but as good as she could be, when she warn’t stirred up; but when

she was, she had a look that would make you wilt in your tracks, like her father. She was beautiful.

So was her sister, Miss Sophia, but it was a dif fer ent kind. She was gentle and sweet, like a dove, and she was only twenty.

Each person had their own nigger to wait on them— Buck, too. My nigger had a monstrous easy time, because I warn’t used to having anybody do any- thing for me, but Buck’s was on the jump most of the time.

This was all there was of the family, now; but there used to be more— three sons; they got killed; and Emmeline that died.

The old gentleman owned a lot of farms, and over a hundred niggers. Sometimes a stack of people would come there, horse back, from ten or "f- teen miles around, and stay "ve or six days, and have such junketings round about and on the river, and dances and picnics in the woods, day- times, and balls at the house, nights. These people was mostly kin- folks of the family. The men brought their guns with them. It was a handsome lot of quality, I tell you.

There was another clan of aristocracy around there— "ve or six families— mostly of the name of Shepherdson. They was as high- toned, and well born, and rich and grand, as the tribe of Grangerfords. The Shepherdsons and the Grangerfords used the same steamboat landing, which was about two mile above our house; so sometimes when I went up there with a lot of our folks I used to see a lot of Shepherdsons there, on their "ne horses.

One day Buck and me was away out in the woods, hunting, and heard a horse coming. We was crossing the road. Buck says:

“Quick! Jump for the woods!” We done it, and then peeped down the woods through the leaves. Pretty

soon a splendid young man come galloping down the road, setting his horse easy and looking like a soldier. He had his gun across his pommel. I had seen him before. It was young Harney Shepherdson. I heard Buck’s gun go off at my ear, and Harney’s hat tumbled off from his head. He grabbed his gun and rode straight to the place where we was hid. But we didn’t wait. We started through the woods on a run. The woods warn’t thick, so I looked over my shoulder, to dodge the bullet, and twice I seen Harney cover Buck with his gun; and then he rode away the way he come—to get his hat, I reckon, but I couldn’t see. We never stopped running till we got home. The old gentleman’s eyes blazed a minute—’twas plea sure, mainly, I judged— then his face sort of smoothed down, and he says, kind of gentle:

“I don’t like that shooting from behind a bush. Why didn’t you step into the road, my boy?”

“The Shepherdsons don’t, father. They always take advantage.” Miss Charlotte she held her head up like a queen while Buck was telling

his tale, and her nostrils spread and her eyes snapped. The two young men looked dark, but never said nothing. Miss Sophia she turned pale, but the color come back when she found the man warn’t hurt.

Soon as I could get Buck down by the corn- cribs under the trees by our- selves, I says:

“Did you want to kill him, Buck?” “Well, I bet I did.” “What did he do to you?” “Him? He never done nothing to me.”

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“Well, then, what did you want to kill him for?” “Why nothing— only it’s on account of the feud.” “What’s a feud?” “Why, where was you raised? Don’t you know what a feud is?” “Never heard of it before— tell me about it.” “Well,” says Buck, “a feud is this way. A man has a quarrel with another

man, and kills him; then that other man’s brother kills him; then the other brothers, on both sides, goes for one another; then the cousins chip in— and by- and-by every body’s killed off, and there ain’t no more feud. But it’s kind of slow, and takes a long time.”

“Has this one been going on long, Buck?” “Well I should reckon! it started thirty year ago, or som’ers along there.

There was trou ble ’bout something and then a lawsuit to settle it; and the suit went agin one of the men, and so he up and shot the man that won the suit— which he would naturally do, of course. Anybody would.”

“What was the trou ble about, Buck?— land?” “I reckon maybe— I don’t know.” “Well, who done the shooting?— was it a Grangerford or a Shepherdson?” “Laws, how do I know? it was so long ago.” “ Don’t anybody know?” “Oh, yes, pa knows, I reckon, and some of the other old folks; but they

don’t know, now, what the row was about in the "rst place.” “Has there been many killed, Buck?” “Yes— right smart chance of funerals. But they don’t always kill. Pa’s got

a few buck- shot in him; but he don’t mind it ’cuz he don’t weigh much any- way. Bob’s been carved up some with a bowie, and Tom’s been hurt once or twice.”

“Has anybody been killed this year, Buck?” “Yes, we got one and they got one. ’Bout three months ago, my cousin Bud,

fourteen year old, was riding through the woods, on t’other side of the river, and didn’t have no weapon with him, which was blame’ foolishness, and in a lonesome place he hears a horse a- coming behind him, and sees old Baldy Shepherdson a- linkin’ after him with his gun in his hand and his white hair a- ̀ ying in the wind; and ’stead of jumping off and taking to the brush, Bud ’lowed he could outrun him; so they had it, nip and tuck, for "ve mile or more, the old man a- gaining all the time; so at last Bud seen it warn’t any use, so he stopped and faced around so as to have the bullet holes in front, you know, and the old man he rode up and shot him down. But he didn’t git much chance to enjoy his luck, for inside of a week our folks laid him out.”

“I reckon that old man was a coward, Buck.” “I reckon he warn’t a coward. Not by a blame’ sight. There ain’t a coward

amongst them Shepherdsons— not a one. And there ain’t no cowards amongst the Grangerfords, either. Why, that old man kep’ up his end in a "ght one day, for a half an hour, against three Grangerfords, and come out winner. They was all a- horseback; he lit off of his horse and got behind a little wood- pile, and kep’ his horse before him to stop the bullets; but the Grangerfords staid on their horses and capered around the old man, and peppered away at him, and he peppered away at them. Him and his horse both went home pretty leaky and crippled, but the Grangerfords had to be fetched home— and one of ’em was dead, and another died the next day. No, sir, if a body’s

8. Huck combines the closely related Presbyte- rian terms predestination and foreordination. 9. A crude `oor made from log slabs in which

the `at side is turned up and the rounded side is set in the dirt. 1. Block printing.

out hunting for cowards, he don’t want to fool away any time amongst them Shepherdsons, becuz they don’t breed any of that kind.”

Next Sunday we all went to church, about three mile, every body a- horseback. The men took their guns along, so did Buck, and kept them between their knees or stood them handy against the wall. The Shepherdsons done the same. It was pretty ornery preaching— all about brotherly love, and such- like tiresomeness; but every body said it was a good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such a power ful lot to say about faith, and good works, and free grace, and preforeordestination,8 and I don’t know what all, that it did seem to me to be one of the roughest Sundays I had run across yet.

About an hour after dinner every body was dozing around, some in their chairs and some in their rooms, and it got to be pretty dull. Buck and a dog was stretched out on the grass in the sun, sound asleep. I went up to our room, and judged I would take a nap myself. I found that sweet Miss Sophia standing in her door, which was next to ours, and she took me in her room and shut the door very soft, and asked me if I liked her, and I said I did; and she asked me if I would do something for her and not tell anybody, and I said I would. Then she said she’d forgot her Testament, and left it in the seat at church, between two other books and would I slip out quiet and go there and fetch it to her, and not say nothing to nobody. I said I would. So I slid out and slipped off up the road, and there warn’t anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn’t any lock on the door, and hogs like a puncheon `oor9 in summer- time because it’s cool. If you notice, most folks don’t go to church only when they’ve got to; but a hog is dif fer ent.

Says I to myself something’s up—it ain’t natu ral for a girl to be in such a sweat about a Testament; so I give it a shake, and out drops a little piece of paper with “Half- past two” wrote on it with a pencil. I ransacked it, but couldn’t "nd anything else. I couldn’t make anything out of that, so I put the paper in the book again, and when I got home and up stairs, there was Miss Sophia in her door waiting for me. She pulled me in and shut the door; then she looked in the Testament till she found the paper, and as soon as she read it she looked glad; and before a body could think, she grabbed me and give me a squeeze, and said I was the best boy in the world, and not to tell anybody. She was mighty red in the face, for a minute, and her eyes lighted up and it made her power ful pretty. I was a good deal astonished, but when I got my breath I asked her what the paper was about, and she asked me if I had read it, and I said no, and she asked me if I could read writing, and I told her “no, only coarse- hand,”1 and then she said the paper warn’t anything but a book- mark to keep her place, and I might go and play now.

I went off down to the river, studying over this thing, and pretty soon I noticed that my nigger was following along behind. When we was out of sight of the house, he looked back and around a second, and then comes a- running, and says:

“Mars Jawge, if you’ll come down into de swamp, I’ll show you a whole stack o’ water- moccasins.”

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Thinks I, that’s mighty curious; he said that yesterday. He oughter know a body don’t love water- moccasins enough to go around hunting for them. What is he up to anyway? So I says—

“All right, trot ahead.” I followed a half a mile, then he struck out over the swamp and waded

ankle deep as much as another half mile. We come to a little `at piece of land which was dry and very thick with trees and bushes and vines, and he says—

“You shove right in dah, jist a few steps, Mars Jawge, dah’s whah dey is. I’s seed ’m befo’, I don’t k’yer to see ’em no mo’.”

Then he slopped right along and went away, and pretty soon the trees hid him. I poked into the place a- ways, and come to a little open patch as big as a bedroom, all hung around with vines, and found a man laying there asleep— and by jings it was my old Jim!

I waked him up, and I reckoned it was going to be a grand surprise to him to see me again, but it warn’t. He nearly cried, he was so glad, but he warn’t surprised. Said he swum along behind me, that night, and heard me yell every time, but dasn’t answer, because he didn’t want nobody to pick him up, and take him into slavery again. Says he—

“I got hurt a little, en couldn’t swim fas’, so I wuz a considable ways behine you, towards de las’; when you landed I reck’ned I could ketch up wid you on de lan’ ’dout havin’ to shout at you, but when I see dat house I begin to go slow. I ’uz off too fur to hear what dey say to you— I wuz ’fraid o’ de dogs— but when it ’uz all quiet again, I knowed you’s in de house, so I struck out for de woods to wait for day. Early in de mawnin’ some er de niggers come along, gwyne to de "elds, en dey tuck me en showed me dis place, whah de dogs can’t track me on accounts o’ de water, en dey brings me truck to eat every night, en tells me how you’s a gitt’n along.”

“Why didn’t you tell my Jack to fetch me here sooner, Jim?” “Well, ’twarn’t no use to ’sturb you, Huck, tell we could do sumfn— but

we’s all right, now. I ben a- buyin’ pots en pans en vittles, as I got a chanst, en a patchin’ up de raf’, nights, when—”

“What raft, Jim?” “Our ole raf’.” “You mean to say our old raft warn’t smashed all to `inders?” “No, she warn’t. She was tore up a good deal— one en’ of her was— but dey

warn’t no great harm done, on’y our traps was mos’ all los’. Ef we hadn’ dive’ so deep en swum so fur under water, en de night hadn’ ben so dark, en we warn’t so sk’yerd, en ben sich punkin- heads, as de sayin’ is, we’d a seed de raf’. But it’s jis’ as well we didn’t, ’kase now she’s all "xed up agin mos’ as good as new, en we’s got a new lot o’ stuff, too, in de place o’ what ’uz los’.”

“Why, how did you get hold of the raft again, Jim— did you catch her?” “How I gwyne to ketch her, en I out in de woods? No, some er de niggers

foun’ her ketched on a snag, along heah in de ben’, en dey hid her in a crick, ’mongst de willows, en dey wuz so much jawin’ ’bout which un ’um she b’long to de mos’, dat I come to heah ’bout it pooty soon, so I ups en settles de trou ble by tellin’ um she don’t b’long to none uv um, but to you en me; en I ast ’m if dey gwyne to grab a young white genlman’s propaty, en git a hid’n for it? Den I gin ’m ten cents apiece, en dey ’uz mighty well satis"ed, en wisht some mo’ raf’s ’ud come along en make ’m rich agin. Dey’s mighty good to

2. Half a cord of stacked "rewood.

me, dese niggers is, en what ever I wants ’m to do fur me, I doan’ have to ast ’m twice, honey. Dat Jack’s a good nigger, en pooty smart.”

“Yes, he is. He ain’t ever told me you was here; told me to come, and he’d show me a lot of water- moccasins. If anything happens, he ain’t mixed up in it. He can say he never seen us together, and it’ll be the truth.”

I don’t want to talk much about the next day. I reckon I’ll cut it pretty short. I waked up about dawn, and was agoing to turn over and go to sleep again, when I noticed how still it was— didn’t seem to be anybody stirring. That warn’t usual. Next I noticed that Buck was up and gone. Well, I gets up, a- wondering, and goes down stairs— nobody around; every thing as still as a mouse. Just the same outside; thinks I, what does it mean? Down by the wood- pile I comes across my Jack, and says:

“What’s it all about?” Says he: “ Don’t you know, Mars Jawge?” “No,” says I, “I don’t.” “Well, den, Miss Sophia’s run off! ’deed she has. She run off in de night,

sometime— nobody don’t know jis’ when— run off to git married to dat young Harney Shepherdson, you know— leastways, so dey ’spec. De fambly foun’ it out, ’bout half an hour ago— maybe a little mo’—en’ I tell you dey warn’t no time los’. Sich another hurryin’ up guns en hosses you never see! De women folks has gone for to stir up de relations, en ole Mars Saul en de boys tuck dey guns en rode up de river road for to try to ketch dat young man en kill him ’fo’ he kin git acrost de river wid Miss Sophia. I reck’n dey’s gwyne to be mighty rough times.”

“Buck went off ’thout waking me up.” “Well I reck’n he did! Dey warn’t gwyne to mix you up in it. Mars Buck he

loaded up his gun en ’lowed he’s gwyne to fetch home a Shepherdson or bust. Well, dey’ll be plenty un ’m dah, I reck’n, en you bet you he’ll fetch one ef he gits a chanst.”

I took up the river road as hard as I could put. By- and-by I begin to hear guns a good ways off. When I come in sight of the log store and the wood- pile where the steamboats land, I worked along under the trees and brush till I got to a good place, and then I clumb up into the forks of a cotton- wood that was out of reach, and watched. There was a wood- rank four foot high,2 a little ways in front of the tree, and "rst I was going to hide behind that; but maybe it was luckier I didn’t.

There was four or "ve men cavorting around on their horses in the open place before the log store, cussing and yelling, and trying to get at a couple of young chaps that was behind the wood- rank alongside of the steamboat landing— but they couldn’t come it. Every time one of them showed himself on the river side of the wood- pile he got shot at. The two boys was squatting back to back behind the pile, so they could watch both ways.

By- and-by the men stopped cavorting around and yelling. They started rid- ing towards the store; then up gets one of the boys, draws a steady bead over the wood- rank, and drops one of them out of his saddle. All the men jumped off of their horses and grabbed the hurt one and started to carry

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him to the store; and that minute the two boys started on the run. They got half- way to the tree I was in before the men noticed. Then the men see them, and jumped on their horses and took out after them. They gained on the boys, but it didn’t do no good, the boys had too good a start; they got to the wood- pile that was in front of my tree, and slipped in behind it, and so they had the bulge3 on the men again. One of the boys was Buck, and the other was a slim young chap about nineteen years old.

The men ripped around awhile, and then rode away. As soon as they was out of sight, I sung out to Buck and told him. He didn’t know what to make of my voice coming out of the tree, at "rst. He was awful surprised. He told me to watch out sharp and let him know when the men come in sight again; said they was up to some dev ilment or other— wouldn’t be gone long. I wished I was out of that tree, but I dasn’t come down. Buck began to cry and rip, and ’lowed that him and his cousin Joe (that was the other young chap) would make up for this day, yet. He said his father and his two brothers was killed, and two or three of the enemy. Said the Shepherdsons laid for them, in ambush. Buck said his father and brothers ought to waited for their relations— the Shepherdsons was too strong for them. I asked him what was become of young Harney and Miss Sophia. He said they’d got across the river and was safe. I was glad of that; but the way Buck did take on because he didn’t manage to kill Harney that day he shot at him— I hain’t ever heard anything like it.

All of a sudden, bang! bang! bang! goes three or four guns— the men had slipped around through the woods and come in from behind without their horses! The boys jumped for the river— both of them hurt— and as they swum down the current the men run along the bank shooting at them and singing out, “Kill them, kill them!” It made me so sick I most fell out of the tree. I ain’t agoing to tell all that happened!—it would make me sick again if I was to do that. I wished I hadn’t ever come ashore that night, to see such things. I ain’t ever going to get shut of them— lots of times I dream about them.

I staid in the tree till it begun to get dark, afraid to come down. Some- times I heard guns away off in the woods; and twice I seen little gangs of men gallop past the log store with guns; so I reckoned the trou ble was still agoing on. I was mighty downhearted; so I made up my mind I wouldn’t ever go anear that house again, because I reckoned I was to blame, somehow. I judged that that piece of paper meant that Miss Sophia was to meet Harney somewheres at half- past two and run off; and I judged I ought to told her father about that paper and the curious way she acted, and then maybe he would a locked her up and this awful mess wouldn’t ever happened.

When I got down out of the tree, I crept along down the river bank a piece, and found the two bodies laying in the edge of the water, and tugged at them till I got them ashore; then I covered up their faces, and got away as quick as I could. I cried a little when I was covering up Buck’s face, for he was mighty good to me.

It was just dark, now. I never went near the house, but struck through the woods and made for the swamp. Jim warn’t on his island, so I tramped off in a hurry for the crick, and crowded through the willows, red- hot to jump aboard and get out of that awful country— the raft was gone! My souls, but

3. Upper hand.

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4. Hard cornmeal rolls or cakes.

I was scared! I couldn’t get my breath for most a minute. Then I raised a yell. A voice not twenty- "ve foot from me, says—

“Good lan’! is dat you, honey? Doan’ make no noise.” It was Jim’s voice— nothing ever sounded so good before. I run along the

bank a piece and got aboard, and Jim he grabbed me and hugged me, he was so glad to see me. He says—

“Laws bless you, chile, I ’uz right down sho’ you’s dead agin. Jack’s been heah, he say he reck’n you’s ben shot, kase you didn’ come home no mo’; so I’s jes’ dis minute a startin’ de raf’ down towards de mouf er de crick, so’s to be all ready for to shove out en leave soon as Jack comes agin en tells me for certain you is dead. Lawsy, I’s mighty glad to git you back agin, honey.”

I says— “All right— that’s mighty good; they won’t "nd me, and they’ll think I’ve

been killed, and `oated down the river— there’s something up there that’ll help them to think so—so don’t you lose no time, Jim, but just shove off for the big water as fast as ever you can.”

I never felt easy till the raft was two mile below there and out in the middle of the Mississippi. Then we hung up our signal lantern, and judged that we was free and safe once more. I hadn’t had a bite to eat since yesterday; so Jim he got out some corn- dodgers4 and buttermilk, and pork and cabbage, and greens— there ain’t nothing in the world so good, when it’s cooked right— and whilst I eat my supper we talked, and had a good time. I was power ful glad to get away from the feuds, and so was Jim to get away from the swamp. We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.

Chapter XIX

Two or three days and nights went by; I reckon I might say they swum by, they slid along so quiet and smooth and lovely. Here is the way we put in the time. It was a monstrous big river down there— sometimes a mile and a half wide; we run nights, and laid up and hid day- times; soon as night was most gone, we stopped navigating and tied up— nearly always in the dead water under a tow- head; and then cut young cottonwoods and willows and hid the raft with them. Then we set out the lines. Next we slid into the river and had a swim, so as to freshen up and cool off; then we set down on the sandy bottom where the water was about knee deep, and watched the daylight come. Not a sound, anywheres— perfectly still— just like the whole world was asleep, only sometimes the bull- frogs a- cluttering, maybe. The "rst thing to see, looking away over the water, was a kind of dull line— that was the woods on t’other side— you couldn’t make nothing else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more paleness, spreading around; then the river softened up, away off, and warn’t black any more, but gray; you could see little dark spots drifting along, ever so far away— trading scows, and such things; and long black streaks— rafts; sometimes you could hear a sweep screaking; or jumbled up voices, it was so still, and sounds come so far; and by- and-by you could see a streak on the water which you know by the look of the streak

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5. Stacks of wood in this yard were sold by their volume, gaps and holes included.

6. Awkward, ungainly person (slang).

that there’s a snag there in a swift current which breaks on it and makes that streak look that way; and you see the mist curl up off of the water, and the east reddens up, and the river, and you make out a log cabin in the edge of the woods, away on the bank on t’other side of the river, being a wood- yard, likely, and piled by them cheats so you can throw a dog through it any- wheres;5 then the nice breeze springs up, and comes fanning you from over there, so cool and fresh, and sweet to smell, on account of the woods and the `owers; but sometimes not that way, because they’ve left dead "sh laying around, gars, and such, and they do get pretty rank; and next you’ve got the full day, and every thing smiling in the sun, and the song- birds just going it!

A little smoke couldn’t be noticed, now, so we would take some "sh off of the lines, and cook up a hot breakfast. And afterwards we would watch the lonesomeness of the river, and kind of lazy along, and by- and-by lazy off to sleep. Wake up, by- and-by, and look to see what done it, and maybe see a steamboat coughing along up stream, so far off towards the other side you couldn’t tell nothing about her only whether she was stern- wheel or side- wheel; then for about an hour there wouldn’t be nothing to hear nor noth- ing to see— just solid lonesomeness. Next you’d see a raft sliding by, away off yonder, and maybe a galoot6 on it chopping, because they’re almost always doing it on a raft; you’d see the ax `ash, and come down— you don’t hear nothing; you see that ax go up again, and by the time it’s above the man’s head, then you hear the k’chunk!—it had took all that time to come over the water. So we would put in the day, lazying around, listening to the stillness. Once there was a thick fog, and the rafts and things that went by was beat- ing tin pans so the steamboats wouldn’t run over them. A scow or a raft went by so close we could hear them talking and cussing and laughing— heard them plain; but we couldn’t see no sign of them; it made you feel crawly, it was like spirits carry ing on that way in the air. Jim said he believed it was spirits; but I says:

“No, spirits wouldn’t say, ‘dern the dern fog.’ ” Soon as it was night, out we shoved; when we got her out to about the

middle, we let her alone, and let her `oat wherever the current wanted her to; then we lit the pipes, and dangled our legs in the water and talked about all kinds of things—we was always naked, day and night, whenever the mos- quitoes would let us— the new clothes Buck’s folks made for me was too good to be comfortable, and besides I didn’t go much on clothes, nohow.

Sometimes we’d have that whole river all to ourselves for the longest time. Yonder was the banks and the islands, across the water; and maybe a spark— which was a candle in a cabin win dow— and sometimes on the water you could see a spark or two—on a raft or a scow, you know; and maybe you could hear a "ddle or a song coming over from one of them crafts. It’s lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky, up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made, or only just happened— Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to make so many. Jim said the moon could a laid them; well, that looked kind of rea- sonable, so I didn’t say nothing against it, because I’ve seen a frog lay most

7. A narrow channel with swift- ̀ owing water. 8. Suspenders.

as many, so of course it could be done. We used to watch the stars that fell, too, and see them streak down. Jim allowed they’d got spoiled and was hove out of the nest.

Once or twice of a night we would see a steamboat slipping along in the dark, and now and then she would belch a whole world of sparks up out of her chimbleys, and they would rain down in the river and look awful pretty; then she would turn a corner and her lights would wink out and her pow- wow shut off and leave the river still again; and by- and-by her waves would get to us, a long time after she was gone, and joggle the raft a bit, and after that you wouldn’t hear nothing for you couldn’t tell how long, except maybe frogs or something.

After midnight the people on shore went to bed, and then for two or three hours the shores was black—no more sparks in the cabin win dows. These sparks was our clock— the "rst one that showed again meant morning was coming, so we hunted a place to hide and tie up, right away.

One morning about day- break, I found a canoe and crossed over a chute7 to the main shore—it was only two hundred yards— and paddled about a mile up a crick amongst the cypress woods, to see if I couldn’t get some berries. Just as I was passing a place where a kind of a cow- path crossed the crick, here comes a couple of men tearing up the path as tight as they could foot it. I thought I was a goner, for whenever anybody was after anybody I judged it was me—or maybe Jim. I was about to dig out from there in a hurry, but they was pretty close to me then, and sung out and begged me to save their lives— said they hadn’t been doing nothing, and was being chased for it— said there was men and dogs a- coming. They wanted to jump right in, but I says—

“ Don’t you do it. I don’t hear the dogs and horses yet; you’ve got time to crowd through the brush and get up the crick a little ways; then you take to the water and wade down to me and get in— that’ll throw the dogs off the scent.”

They done it, and soon as they was aboard I lit out for our tow- head, and in about "ve or ten minutes we heard the dogs and the men away off, shout- ing. We heard them come along towards the crick, but couldn’t see them; they seemed to stop and fool around a while; then, as we got further and further away all the time, we couldn’t hardly hear them at all; by the time we had left a mile of woods behind us and struck the river, every thing was quiet, and we paddled over to the tow- head and hid in the cotton- woods and was safe.

One of these fellows was about seventy, or upwards, and had a bald head and very gray whis kers. He had an old battered-up slouch hat on, and a greasy blue woolen shirt, and ragged old blue jeans britches stuffed into his boot tops, and home- knit galluses8—no, he only had one. He had an old long- tailed blue jeans coat with slick brass buttons, `ung over his arm, and both of them had big fat ratty- looking carpet- bags.

The other fellow was about thirty and dressed about as ornery. After break- fast we all laid off and talked, and the "rst thing that come out was that these chaps didn’t know one another.

“What got you into trou ble?” says the baldhead to t’other chap.

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9. A religious gathering aimed at producing com- mitment to a life without alcoholic beverages. 1. A journeyman printer (not yet a salaried master- printer), who worked by the day. 2. The study of the shape of the skull as an indi- cator of intelligence and character. “Mesmer-

ism”: a form of hypnotism. 3. Chants or rhymes that allowed the singers to memorize geographic facts such as rivers, capi- tals, mountains, etc. 4. Work, in the sense here of hustle or scheme. 5. Faith healing.

“Well, I’d been selling an article to take the tartar off the teeth— and it does take it off, too, and generly the enamel along with it— but I staid about one night longer than I ought to, and was just in the act of sliding out when I ran across you on the trail this side of town, and you told me they were coming, and begged me to help you to get off. So I told you I was expecting trou ble myself and would scatter out with you. That’s the whole yarn— what’s yourn?”

“Well, I’d ben a- runnin’ a little temperance revival9 thar, ’bout a week, and was the pet of the women- folks, big and little, for I was makin’ it mighty warm for the rummies, I tell you, and takin’ as much as "ve or six dollars a night— ten cents a head, children and niggers free— and business a growin’ all the time; when somehow or another a little report got around, last night, that I had a way of puttin’ in my time with a private jug, on the sly. A nigger rousted me out this mornin’, and told me the people was getherin’ on the quiet, with their dogs and horses, and they’d be along pretty soon and give me ’bout half an hour’s start, and then run me down, if they could; and if they got me they’d tar and feather me and ride me on a rail, sure. I didn’t wait for no breakfast— I warn’t hungry.”

“Old man,” says the young one, “I reckon we might double- team it together; what do you think?”

“I ain’t undisposed. What’s your line— mainly?” “Jour printer,1 by trade; do a little in patent medicines; theatre- actor—

tragedy, you know; take a turn at mesmerism and phrenology,2 when there’s a chance; teach singing- geography3 school for a change; sling a lecture, sometimes—oh, I do lots of things— most anything that comes handy, so it ain’t work. What’s your lay?”4

“I’ve done considerable in the doctoring way in my time. Layin’ on o’ hands5 is my best holt— for cancer, and paralysis, and sich things; and I k’n tell a for- tune pretty good, when I’ve got somebody along to "nd out the facts for me. Preachin’s my line, too; and workin’ camp- meetin’s; and missionaryin’ around.”

Nobody never said anything for a while; then the young man hove a sigh and says—

“Alas!” “What ’re you alassin’ about?” says the baldhead. “To think I should have lived to be leading such a life, and be degraded

down into such com pany.” And he begun to wipe the corner of his eye with a rag.

“Dern your skin, ain’t the com pany good enough for you?” says the bald- head, pretty pert and uppish.

“Yes, it is good enough for me; it’s as good as I deserve; for who fetched me so low, when I was so high? I did myself. I don’t blame you, gentlemen— far from it; I don’t blame anybody. I deserve it all. Let the cold world do its worst; one thing I know— there’s a grave somewhere for me. The world may go on just as its always done, and take every thing from me— loved

6. This corruption of “Bridgewater” refers to the water that collects at the bottom of a boat, the bilge.

ones, property, every thing— but it can’t take that. Some day I’ll lie down in it and forget it all, and my poor broken heart will be at rest.” He went on a- wiping.

“Drot your pore broken heart,” says the baldhead; “what are you heaving your pore broken heart at us f’r? We hain’t done nothing.”

“No, I know you haven’t. I ain’t blaming you, gentlemen. I brought myself down— yes, I did it myself. It’s right I should suffer— perfectly right— I don’t make any moan.”

“Brought you down from whar? Whar was you brought down from?” “Ah, you would not believe me; the world never believes— let it pass—’tis

no matter. The secret of my birth—” “The secret of your birth? Do you mean to say—” “Gentlemen,” says the young man, very solemn, “I will reveal it to you, for

I feel I may have con"dence in you. By rights I am a duke!” Jim’s eyes bugged out when he heard that; and I reckon mine did, too.

Then the baldhead says: “No! you can’t mean it?” “Yes. My great- grand father, eldest son of the Duke of Bridgewater, `ed to

this country about the end of the last century, to breathe the pure air of free- dom; married here, and died, leaving a son, his own father dying about the same time. The second son of the late duke seized the title and estates— the infant real duke was ignored. I am the lineal descendant of that infant— I am the rightful Duke of Bridgewater; and here am I, forlorn, torn from my high estate, hunted of men, despised by the cold world, ragged, worn, heart- broken, and degraded to the companionship of felons on a raft!”

Jim pitied him ever so much, and so did I. We tried to comfort him, but he said it warn’t much use, he couldn’t be much comforted; said if we was a mind to acknowledge him, that would do him more good than most anything else; so we said we would, if he would tell us how. He said we ought to bow, when we spoke to him, and say “Your Grace,” or “My Lord,” or “Your Lordship”— and he wouldn’t mind it if we called him plain “Bridgewater,” which he said was a title, anyway, and not a name; and one of us ought to wait on him at dinner, and do any little thing for him he wanted done.

Well, that was all easy, so we done it. All through dinner Jim stood around and waited on him, and says, “ Will yo’ Grace have some o’ dis, or some o’ dat?” and so on, and a body could see it was mighty pleasing to him.

But the old man got pretty silent, by- and- by— didn’t have much to say, and didn’t look pretty comfortable over all that petting that was going on around that duke. He seemed to have something on his mind. So, along in the after- noon, he says:

“Looky here, Bilgewater,”6 he says, “I’m nation sorry for you, but you ain’t the only person that’s had trou bles like that.”

“No?” “No, you ain’t. You ain’t the only person that’s ben snaked down wrong-

fully out’n a high place.” “Alas!” “No, you ain’t the only person that’s had a secret of his birth.” And by jings,

he begins to cry. “Hold! What do you mean?”

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“Bilgewater, kin I trust you?” says the old man, still sort of sobbing. “To the bitter death!” He took the old man by the hand and squeezed it,

and says, “The secret of your being: speak!” “Bilgewater, I am the late Dauphin!”7 You bet you Jim and me stared, this time. Then the duke says: “You are what?” “Yes, my friend, it is too true— your eyes is lookin’ at this very moment on

the pore dis appeared Dauphin, Looy the Seventeen, son of Looy the Sixteen and Marry Antonette.”

“You! At your age! No! You mean you’re the late Charlemagne;8 you must be six or seven hundred years old, at the very least.”

“Trou ble has done it, Bilgewater, trou ble has done it; trou ble has brung these gray hairs and this premature balditude. Yes, gentlemen, you see before you, in blue jeans and misery, the wanderin’, exiled, trampled-on and suf- ferin’ rightful King of France.”

Well, he cried and took on so, that me and Jim didn’t know hardly what to do, we was so sorry— and so glad and proud we’d got him with us, too. So we set in, like we done before with the duke, and tried to comfort him. But he said it warn’t no use, nothing but to be dead and done with it all could do him any good; though he said it often made him feel easier and better for a while if people treated him according to his rights, and got down on one knee to speak to him, and always called him “Your Majesty,” and waited on him "rst at meals, and didn’t set down in his presence till he asked them. So Jim and me set to majestying him, and doing this and that and t’other for him, and standing up till he told us we might set down. This done him heaps of good, and so he got cheerful and comfortable. But the duke kind of soured on him, and didn’t look a bit satis"ed with the way things was going; still, the king acted real friendly towards him, and said the duke’s great- grand father and all the other Dukes of Bilgewater was a good deal thought of by his father and was allowed to come to the palace considerable; but the duke staid huffy a good while, till by- and-by the king says:

“Like as not we got to be together a blamed long time, on this h- yer raft, Bilgewater, and so what’s the use o’ your bein’ sour? It’ll only make things oncomfortable. It ain’t my fault I warn’t born a duke, it ain’t your fault you warn’t born a king—so what’s the use to worry? Make the best o’ things the way you "nd ’em, says I— that’s my motto. This ain’t no bad thing that we’ve struck here— plenty grub and an easy life— come, give us your hand, Duke, and less all be friends.”

The duke done it, and Jim and me was pretty glad to see it. It took away all the uncomfortableness, and we felt mighty good over it, because it would a been a miserable business to have any unfriendliness on the raft; for what you want, above all things, on a raft, is for every body to be satis"ed, and feel right and kind towards the others.

It didn’t take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn’t no kings nor dukes, at all, but just low- down humbugs and frauds. But I never said nothing, never let on; kept it to myself; it’s the best way; then you don’t have no quarrels, and don’t get into no trou ble. If they wanted us to call them

7. The Dauphin, born in 1785, would have been in his mid- "fties or sixties had he survived.

8. Charlemagne (742–814), emperor of the West (800–814).

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9. Mattress.

kings and dukes, I hadn’t no objections, ’long as it would keep peace in the family; and it warn’t no use to tell Jim, so I didn’t tell him. If I never learnt nothing else out of pap, I learnt that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them have their own way.

Chapter XX

They asked us considerable many questions; wanted to know what we cov- ered up the raft that way for, and laid by in the daytime instead of running— was Jim a runaway nigger? Says I—

“Goodness sakes, would a runaway nigger run south?” No, they allowed he wouldn’t. I had to account for things some way, so I

says: “My folks was living in Pike County, in Missouri, where I was born, and

they all died off but me and pa and my brother Ike. Pa, he ’lowed he’d break up and go down and live with Uncle Ben, who’s got a little one- horse place on the river, forty- four mile below Orleans. Pa was pretty poor, and had some debts; so when he’d squared up there warn’t nothing left but sixteen dollars and our nigger, Jim. That warn’t enough to take us fourteen hundred mile, deck passage nor no other way. Well, when the river rose, pa had a streak of luck one day; he ketched this piece of a raft; so we reckoned we’d go down to Orleans on it. Pa’s luck didn’t hold out; a steamboat run over the forrard corner of the raft, one night, and we all went overboard and dove under the wheel; Jim and me come up, all right, but pa was drunk, and Ike was only four years old, so they never come up no more. Well, for the next day or two we had considerable trou ble, because people was always coming out in skiffs and trying to take Jim away from me, saying they believed he was a runaway nigger. We don’t run day- times no more, now; nights they don’t bother us.”

The duke says— “Leave me alone to cipher out a way so we can run in the daytime if we

want to. I’ll think the thing over— I’ll invent a plan that’ll "x it. We’ll let it alone for to- day, because of course we don’t want to go by that town yonder in daylight—it mightn’t be healthy.”

Towards night it begun to darken up and look like rain; the heat lightning was squirting around, low down in the sky, and the leaves was beginning to shiver—it was going to be pretty ugly, it was easy to see that. So the duke and the king went to overhauling our wigwam, to see what the beds was like. My bed was a straw tick9— better than Jim’s, which was a corn- shuck tick; there’s always cobs around about in a shuck tick, and they poke into you and hurt; and when you roll over, the dry shucks sound like you was rolling over in a pile of dead leaves; it makes such a rustling that you wake up. Well, the duke allowed he would take my bed; but the king allowed he wouldn’t. He says—

“I should a reckoned the difference in rank would a sejested to you that a corn- shuck bed warn’t just "tten for me to sleep on. Your Grace’ll take the shuck bed yourself.”

Jim and me was in a sweat again, for a minute, being afraid there was going to be some more trou ble amongst them; so we was pretty glad when the duke says—

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1. Something exceptionally strong or climactic (slang).

“ ’Tis my fate to be always ground into the mire under the iron heel of oppression. Misfortune has broken my once haughty spirit; I yield, I sub- mit; ’tis my fate. I am alone in the world— let me suffer; I can bear it.”

We got away as soon as it was good and dark. The king told us to stand well out towards the middle of the river, and not show a light till we got a long ways below the town. We come in sight of the little bunch of lights by- and- by— that was the town, you know— and slid by, about a half a mile out, all right. When we was three- quarters of a mile below, we hoisted up our signal lantern; and about ten o’clock it come on to rain and blow and thunder and lighten like every thing; so the king told us to both stay on watch till the weather got better; then him and the duke crawled into the wigwam and turned in for the night. It was my watch below, till twelve, but I wouldn’t a turned in, anyway, if I’d had a bed; because a body don’t see such a storm as that every day in the week, not by a long sight. My souls, how the wind did scream along! And every second or two there’d come a glare that lit up the white- caps for a half a mile around, and you’d see the islands looking dusty through the rain, and the trees thrashing around in the wind; then comes a h- wack!— bum! bum! bumble- umble- um- bum- bum- bum- bum— and the thunder would go rumbling and grumbling away, and quit— and then rip comes another `ash and another sock- dolager.1 The waves most washed me off the raft, sometimes, but I hadn’t any clothes on, and didn’t mind. We didn’t have no trou ble about snags; the lightning was glaring and `ittering around so constant that we could see them plenty soon enough to throw her head this way or that and miss them.

I had the middle watch, you know, but I was pretty sleepy by that time, so Jim he said he would stand the "rst half of it for me; he was always mighty good, that way, Jim was. I crawled into the wigwam, but the king and the duke had their legs sprawled around so there warn’t no show for me; so I laid outside— I didn’t mind the rain, because it was warm, and the waves warn’t running so high, now. About two they come up again, though, and Jim was going to call me, but he changed his mind because he reckoned they warn’t high enough yet to do any harm; but he was mistaken about that, for pretty soon all of a sudden along comes a regular ripper, and washed me overboard. It most killed Jim a- laughing. He was the easiest nigger to laugh that ever was, anyway.

I took the watch, and Jim he laid down and snored away; and by- and-by the storm let up for good and all; and the "rst cabin- light that showed, I rousted him out and we slid the raft into hiding- quarters for the day.

The king got out an old ratty deck of cards, after breakfast, and him and the duke played seven-up a while, "ve cents a game. Then they got tired of it, and allowed they would “lay out a campaign,” as they called it. The duke went down into his carpet- bag and fetched up a lot of little printed bills, and read them out loud. One bill said “The celebrated Dr. Armand de Montal- ban of Paris,” would “lecture on the Science of Phrenology” at such and such a place, on the blank day of blank, at ten cents admission, and “furnish charts of character at twenty- "ve cents apiece.” The duke said that was him. In another bill he was the “world renowned Shaksperean tragedian, Garrick

2. David Garrick (1717–1779) was a famous tra- gedian at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, Lon- don.

3. Notoriously easy pickings for con"dence men, camp meetings are extended outdoor evangelical meetings.

the Younger,2 of Drury Lane, London.” In other bills he had a lot of other names and done other wonderful things, like "nding water and gold with a “divining rod,” “dissipating witch- spells,” and so on. By- and-by he says—

“But the histrionic muse is the darling. Have you ever trod the boards, Royalty?”

“No,” says the king. “You shall, then, before you’re three days older, Fallen Grandeur,” says the

duke. “The "rst good town we come to, we’ll hire a hall and do the sword- "ght in Richard III. and the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet. How does that strike you?”

“I’m in, up to the hub, for anything that will pay, Bilgewater, but you see I don’t know nothing about play- actn’, and hain’t ever seen much of it. I was too small when pap used to have ’em at the palace. Do you reckon you can learn me?”

“Easy!” “All right. I’m jist a- freezn’ for something fresh, anyway. Less commence,

right away.” So the duke he told him all about who Romeo was, and who Juliet was,

and said he was used to being Romeo, so the king could be Juliet. “But if Juliet’s such a young gal, Duke, my peeled head and my white

whis kers is goin’ to look oncommon odd on her, maybe.” “No, don’t you worry— these country jakes won’t ever think of that. Besides,

you know, you’ll be in costume, and that makes all the difference in the world; Juliet’s in a balcony, enjoying the moonlight before she goes to bed, and she’s got on her night- gown and her ruf`ed night- cap. Here are the cos- tumes for the parts.”

He got out two or three curtain- calico suits, which he said was meedyevil armor for Richard III. and t’other chap, and a long white cotton night- shirt and a ruf`ed night- cap to match. The king was satis"ed; so the duke got out his book and read the parts over in the most splendid spread- eagle way, prancing around and acting at the same time, to show how it had got to be done; then he give the book to the king and told him to get his part by heart.

There was a little one- horse town about three mile down the bend, and after dinner the duke said he had ciphered out his idea about how to run in daylight without it being dangersome for Jim; so he allowed he would go down to the town and "x that thing. The king allowed he would go too, and see if he couldn’t strike something. We was out of coffee, so Jim said I bet- ter go along with them in the canoe and get some.

When we got there, there warn’t nobody stirring; streets empty, and per- fectly dead and still, like Sunday. We found a sick nigger sunning himself in a back yard, and he said every body that warn’t too young or too sick or too old, was gone to camp- meeting, about two mile back in the woods. The king got the directions, and allowed he’d go and work that camp- meeting for all it was worth, and I might go, too.3

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4. Coarse linen cloth. “Linsey- woolsey”: cheap, often homespun, unpatterned cloth composed of wool and `ax. “Gingham” and “calico” are inex-

pensive, store- bought printed cotton. 5. Front- row pews "lled by penitents.

The duke said what he was after was a printing of"ce. We found it; a little bit of a concern, up over a carpenter shop— carpenters and print- ers all gone to the meeting, and no doors locked. It was a dirty, littered- up place, and had ink marks, and handbills with pictures of horses and runaway niggers on them, all over the walls. The duke shed his coat and said he was all right, now. So me and the king lit out for the camp- meeting.

We got there in about a half an hour, fairly dripping, for it was a most awful hot day. There was as much as a thousand people there, from twenty mile around. The woods was full of teams and wagons, hitched everywheres, feeding out of the wagon troughs and stomping to keep off the `ies. There was sheds made out of poles and roofed over with branches, where they had lemonade and gingerbread to sell, and piles of watermelons and green corn and such- like truck.

The preaching was going on under the same kinds of sheds, only they was bigger and held crowds of people. The benches was made out of outside slabs of logs, with holes bored in the round side to drive sticks into for legs. They didn’t have no backs. The preachers had high platforms to stand on, at one end of the sheds. The women had on sunbonnets; and some had linsey- woolsey frocks, some gingham ones, and a few of the young ones had on calico. Some of the young men was barefooted, and some of the children didn’t have on any clothes but just a tow- linen4 shirt. Some of the old women was knitting, and some of the young folks was courting on the sly.

The "rst shed we come to, the preacher was lining out a hymn. He lined out two lines, every body sung it, and it was kind of grand to hear it, there was so many of them and they done it in such a rousing way; then he lined out two more for them to sing— and so on. The people woke up more and more, and sung louder and louder; and towards the end, some begun to groan, and some begun to shout. Then the preacher begun to preach; and begun in earnest, too; and went weaving "rst to one side of the platform and then the other, and then a leaning down over the front of it, with his arms and his body going all the time, and shouting his words out with all his might; and every now and then he would hold up his Bible and spread it open, and kind of pass it around this way and that, shouting, “It’s the brazen serpent in the wilderness! Look upon it and live!” And people would shout out, “Glory!— A- a- men!” And so he went on, and the people groaning and crying and saying amen:

“Oh, come to the mourners’ bench!5 come, black with sin! (amen!) come, sick and sore! (amen!) come, lame and halt, and blind! (amen!) come, pore and needy, sunk in shame! (a- a- men!) come all that’s worn, and soiled, and suffering!— come with a broken spirit! come with a contrite heart! come in your rags and sin and dirt! the waters that cleanse is free, the door of heaven stands open—oh, enter in and be at rest!” (a- a- men! glory, glory hallelujah!)

And so on. You couldn’t make out what the preacher said, any more, on account of the shouting and crying. Folks got up, everywheres in the crowd, and worked their way, just by main strength, to the mourners’ bench,

with the tears running down their faces; and when all the mourners had got up there to the front benches in a crowd, they sung, and shouted, and `ung themselves down on the straw, just crazy and wild.

Well, the "rst I knowed, the king got agoing; and you could hear him over every body; and next he went a- charging up on to the platform and the preacher he begged him to speak to the people, and he done it. He told them he was a pirate— been a pirate for thirty years, out in the Indian Ocean, and his crew was thinned out considerable, last spring, in a "ght, and he was home now, to take out some fresh men, and thanks to goodness he’d been robbed last night, and put ashore off of a steamboat without a cent, and he was glad of it, it was the blessedest thing that ever happened to him, because he was a changed man now, and happy for the "rst time in his life; and poor as he was, he was going to start right off and work his way back to the Indian Ocean and put in the rest of his life trying to turn the pirates into the true path; for he could do it better than anybody else, being acquainted with all the pirate crews in that ocean; and though it would take him a long time to get there, without money, he would get there anyway, and every time he convinced a pirate he would say to him, “ Don’t you thank me, don’t you give me no credit, it all belongs to them dear people in Pokeville camp- meeting, natu ral brothers and benefactors of the race— and that dear preacher there, the truest friend a pirate ever had!”

And then he busted into tears, and so did every body. Then somebody sings out, “Take up a collection for him, take up a collection!” Well, a half a dozen made a jump to do it, but somebody sings out, “Let him pass the hat around!” Then every body said it, the preacher too.

So the king went all through the crowd with his hat, swabbing his eyes, and blessing the people and praising them and thanking them for being so good to the poor pirates away off there; and every little while the prettiest kind of girls, with the tears running down their cheeks, would up and ask him would he let them kiss him, for to remember him by; and he always done it; and some of them he hugged and kissed as many as "ve or six times— and he was invited to stay a week; and every body wanted him to live in their houses, and said they’d think it was an honor; but he said as this was the last day of the camp- meeting he couldn’t do no good, and besides he was in a sweat to get to the Indian Ocean right off and go to work on the pirates.

When we got back to the raft and he come to count up, he found he had collected eighty- seven dollars and seventy- "ve cents. And then he had fetched away a three- gallon jug of whiskey, too, that he found under a wagon when we was starting home through the woods. The king said, take it all around, it laid over any day he’d ever put in in the missionarying line. He said it warn’t no use talking, heathens don’t amount to shucks, alongside of pirates, to work a camp- meeting with.

The duke was thinking he’d been doing pretty well, till the king come to show up, but after that he didn’t think so so much. He had set up and printed off two little jobs for farmers, in that printing of"ce— horse bills— and took the money, four dollars. And he had got in ten dollars worth of advertisements for the paper, which he said he would put in for four dollars if they would pay in advance—so they done it. The price of the paper was two dollars a year, but he took in three subscriptions for half a dollar apiece on condition of them paying him in advance; they were going to pay in cord- wood and

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6. Of time, place, and action in classical drama; here the duke is using the term to mean “consistent with the rest of our story.”

onions, as usual, but he said he had just bought the concern and knocked down the price as low as he could afford it, and was going to run it for cash. He set up a little piece of poetry, which he made, himself, out of his own head— three verses— kind of sweet and saddish— the name of it was, “Yes, crush, cold world, this breaking heart”— and he left that all set up and ready to print in the paper and didn’t charge nothing for it. Well, he took in nine dollars and a half, and said he’d done a pretty square day’s work for it.

Then he showed us another little job he’d printed and hadn’t charged for, because it was for us. It had a picture of a runaway nigger, with a bundle on a stick, over his shoulder, and “$200 reward” under it. The reading was all about Jim, and just described him to a dot. It said he run away from St. Jacques’ plantation, forty mile below New Orleans, last winter, and likely went north, and whoever would catch him and send him back, he could have the reward and expenses.

“Now,” says the duke, “ after to- night we can run in the daytime if we want to. Whenever we see anybody coming, we can tie Jim hand and foot with a rope, and lay him in the wigwam and show this handbill and say we captured him up the river, and were too poor to travel on a steamboat, so we got this little raft on credit from our friends and are going down to get the reward. Handcuffs and chains would look still better on Jim, but it wouldn’t go well with the story of us being so poor. Too much like jewelry. Ropes are the correct thing—we must preserve the unities,6 as we say on the boards.”

We all said the duke was pretty smart, and there couldn’t be no trou ble about running daytimes. We judged we could make miles enough that night to get out of the reach of the pow- wow we reckoned the duke’s work in the printing of"ce was going to make in that little town— then we could boom right along, if we wanted to.

We laid low and kept still, and never shoved out till nearly ten o’clock; then we slid by, pretty wide away from the town, and didn’t hoist our lan- tern till we was clear out of sight of it.

When Jim called me to take the watch at four in the morning, he says— “Huck, does you reck’n we gwyne to run acrost any mo’ kings on dis trip?” “No,” I says, “I reckon not.” “Well,” says he, “dat’s all right, den. I doan’ mine one er two kings, but dat’s

enough. Dis one’s power ful drunk, en de duke ain’ much better.” I found Jim had been trying to get him to talk French, so he could hear

what it was like; but he said he had been in this country so long, and had so much trou ble, he’d forgot it.

Chapter XXI

It was after sun-up, now, but we went right on, and didn’t tie up. The king and the duke turned out, by- and-by, looking pretty rusty; but after they’d jumped overboard and took a swim, it chippered them up a good deal. After breakfast the king he took a seat on a corner of the raft, and pulled off his boots and rolled up his britches, and let his legs dangle in the water, so as

7. The family name of Louis XVI, who was guil- lotined in 1793. 8. The comical garbling of Shakespeare was another stock- in- trade of the southwestern

humorists in whose tradition Twain follows. The soliloquy is composed chie`y of phrases from Hamlet and Macbeth, but Twain also draws on sev- eral other plays.

to be comfortable, and lit his pipe, and went to getting his Romeo and Juliet by heart. When he had got it pretty good, him and the duke begun to prac- tice it together. The duke had to learn him over and over again, how to say every speech; and he made him sigh, and put his hand on his heart, and after while he said he done it pretty well; “only,” he says, “you mustn’t bel- low out Romeo! that way, like a bull— you must say it soft, and sick, and lan- guishy, so— R- o- o- meo! that is the idea; for Juliet’s a dear sweet mere child of a girl, you know, and she don’t bray like a jackass.”

Well, next they got out a couple of long swords that the duke made out of oak laths, and begun to practice the sword- "ght— the duke called himself Richard III.; and the way they laid on, and pranced around the raft was grand to see. But by- and-by the king tripped and fell overboard, and after that they took a rest, and had a talk about all kinds of adventures they’d had in other times along the river.

After dinner, the duke says: “Well, Capet,7 we’ll want to make this a "rst- class show, you know, so I

guess we’ll add a little more to it. We want a little something to answer encores with, anyway.”

“What’s onkores, Bilgewater?” The duke told him, and then says: “I’ll answer by doing the Highland `ing or the sailor’s hornpipe; and you—

well, let me see—oh, I’ve got it— you can do Hamlet’s soliloquy.” “Hamlet’s which?” “Hamlet’s soliloquy, you know; the most celebrated thing in Shakespeare.

Ah, it’s sublime, sublime! Always fetches the house. I haven’t got it in the book— I’ve only got one volume— but I reckon I can piece it out from mem- ory. I’ll just walk up and down a minute, and see if I can call it back from recollection’s vaults.”

So he went to marching up and down, thinking, and frowning horrible every now and then; then he would hoist up his eyebrows; next he would squeeze his hand on his forehead and stagger back and kind of moan; next he would sigh, and next he’d let on to drop a tear. It was beautiful to see him. By- and-by he got it. He told us to give attention. Then he strikes a most noble attitude, with one leg shoved forwards, and his arms stretched away up, and his head tilted back, looking up at the sky; and then he begins to rip and rave and grit his teeth; and after that, all through his speech he howled, and spread around, and swelled up his chest, and just knocked the spots out of any acting ever I see before. This is the speech— I learned it, easy enough, while he was learning it to the king:8

To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin That makes calamity of so long life; For who would fardels bear, till Birnam Wood do come to Dunsinane, But that the fear of something after death Murders the innocent sleep, Great nature’s second course,

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9. Here, as elsewhere, the duke garbles the facts. Garrick, Edmund Kean (1787–1833), and Charles John Kean (1811–1868) were all famous tragedians at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, London.

And makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune Than `y to others that we know not of. There’s the res pect must give us pause: Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, The law’s delay, and the quietus which his pangs might take, In the dead waste and middle of the night, when churchyards yawn In customary suits of solemn black, But that the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns, Breathes forth contagion on the world, And thus the native hue of resolution, like the poor cat i’ the adage, Is sicklied o’er with care, And all the clouds that lowered o’er our house tops, With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. ’Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. But soft you, the fair Ophelia: Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws, But get thee to a nunnery— go!

Well, the old man he liked that speech, and he mighty soon got it so he could do it "rst rate. It seemed like he was just born for it; and when he had his hand in and was excited, it was perfectly lovely the way he would rip and tear and rair up behind when he was getting it off.

The "rst chance we got, the duke he had some show bills printed; and after that, for two or three days as we `oated along, the raft was a most uncommon lively place, for there warn’t nothing but sword- "ghting and rehearsing—as the duke called it— going on all the time. One morning, when we was pretty well down the State of Arkansaw, we come in sight of a little one- horse town in a big bend; so we tied up about three- quarters of a mile above it, in the mouth of a crick which was shut in like a tunnel by the cypress trees, and all of us but Jim took the canoe and went down there to see if there was any chance in that place for our show.

We struck it mighty lucky; there was going to be a circus there that after- noon, and the country people was already beginning to come in, in all kinds of old shackly wagons, and on horses. The circus would leave before night, so our show would have a pretty good chance. The duke he hired the court house, and we went around and stuck up our bills. They read like this:

Shaksperean Revival!!! Wonderful Attraction! For One Night Only!

The world renowned tragedians, David Garrick the younger, of Drury Lane Theatre, London,

and Edmund Kean the elder,9 of the Royal Haymarket Theatre, White-

chapel, Pudding Lane, Piccadilly, London, and the

1. Awnings made from canvas.

Royal Continental Theatres, in their sublime Shaksperean Spectacle entitled

The Balcony Scene in

Romeo and Juliet!!! Romeo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mr. Garrick. Juliet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mr. Kean.

Assisted by the whole strength of the com pany! New costumes, new scenery, new appointments!

Also: The thrilling, masterly, and blood- curdling

Broad- sword con`ict In Richard III.!!!

Richard III . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mr. Garrick. Richmond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mr. Kean.

also: (by special request,)

Hamlet’s Immortal Soliloquy!! By the Illustrious Kean!

Done by him 300 consecutive nights in Paris! For One Night Only,

On account of imperative Eu ro pean engagements! Admission 25 cents; children and servants, 10 cents.

Then we went loa"ng around the town. The stores and houses was most all old shackly dried-up frame concerns that hadn’t ever been painted; they was set up three or four foot above ground on stilts, so as to be out of reach of the water when the river was over`owed. The houses had little gardens around them, but they didn’t seem to raise hardly anything in them but jimp- son weeds, and sun`owers, and ash- piles, and old curled-up boots and shoes, and pieces of bottles, and rags, and played- out tin- ware. The fences was made of dif fer ent kinds of boards, nailed on at dif fer ent times; and they leaned every which- way, and had gates that didn’t generly have but one hinge— a leather one. Some of the fences had been whitewashed, some time or another, but the duke said it was in Clumbus’s time, like enough. There was generly hogs in the garden, and people driving them out.

All the stores was along one street. They had white- domestic awnings1 in front, and the country people hitched their horses to the awning- posts. There was empty dry- goods boxes under the awnings, and loafers roosting on them all day long, whittling them with their Barlow knives; and chawing tobacco, and gaping and yawning and stretching— a mighty ornery lot. They generly had on yellow straw hats most as wide as an umbrella, but didn’t wear no coats nor waistcoats; they called one another Bill, and Buck, and Hank, and Joe, and Andy, and talked lazy and drawly, and used considerable many cuss- words. There was as many as one loafer leaning up against every awning- post, and he most always had his hands in his britches pockets, except when he fetched them out to lend a chaw of tobacco or scratch. What a body was hearing amongst them, all the time was—

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2. This racist term describes an inferior form of tobacco.

“Gimme a chaw ’v tobacker, Hank.” “Cain’t— I hain’t got but one chaw left. Ask Bill.” Maybe Bill he gives him a chaw; maybe he lies and says he ain’t got none.

Some of them kinds of loafers never has a cent in the world, nor a chaw of tobacco of their own. They get all their chawing by borrowing— they say to a fellow, “I wisht you’d len’ me a chaw, Jack, I jist this minute give Ben Thompson the last chaw I had”— which is a lie, pretty much every time; it don’t fool anybody but a stranger; but Jack ain’t no stranger, so he says—

“You give him a chaw, did you? so did your sister’s cat’s grand mother. You pay me back the chaws you’ve awready borry’d off’n me, Lafe Buckner, then I’ll loan you one or two ton of it, and won’t charge you no back intrust, nuther.”

“Well, I did pay you back some of it wunst.” “Yes, you did—’bout six chaws. You borry’d store tobacker and paid back

nigger- head.”2 Store tobacco is `at black plug, but these fellows mostly chaws the natu-

ral leaf twisted. When they borrow a chaw, they don’t generly cut it off with a knife, but they set the plug in between their teeth, and gnaw with their teeth and tug at the plug with their hands till they get it in two— then some- times the one that owns the tobacco looks mournful at it when it’s handed back, and says, sarcastic—

“ Here, gimme the chaw, and you take the plug.” All the streets and lanes was just mud, they warn’t nothing else but mud—

as black as tar, and nigh about a foot deep in some places; and two or three inches deep in all the places. The hogs loafed and grunted around, every- wheres. You’d see a muddy sow and a litter of pigs come lazying along the street and whollop herself right down in the way, where folks had to walk around her, and she’d stretch out, and shut her eyes, and wave her ears, whilst the pigs was milking her, and look as happy as if she was on salary. And pretty soon you’d hear a loafer sing out, “Hi! so boy! sick him, Tige!” and away the sow would go, squealing most horrible, with a dog or two swinging to each ear, and three or four dozen more a- coming; and then you would see all the loafers get up and watch the thing out of sight, and laugh at the fun and look grateful for the noise. Then they’d settle back again till there was a dog- "ght. There couldn’t anything wake them up all over, and make them happy all over, like a dog- "ght— unless it might be putting turpentine on a stray dog and setting "re to him, or tying a tin pan to his tail and see him run himself to death.

On the river front some of the houses was sticking out over the bank, and they was bowed and bent, and about ready to tumble in. The people had moved out of them. The bank was caved away under one corner of some others, and that corner was hanging over. People lived in them yet, but it was dangersome, because sometimes a strip of land as wide as a house caves in at a time. Sometimes a belt of land a quarter of a mile deep will start in and cave along and cave along till it all caves into the river in one summer. Such a town as that has to be always moving back, and back, and back, because the river’s always gnawing at it.

The nearer it got to noon that day, the thicker and thicker was the wag- ons and horses in the streets, and more coming all the time. Families fetched

their dinners with them, from the country, and eat them in the wagons. There was considerable whiskey drinking going on, and I seen three "ghts. By- and-by somebody sings out—

“ Here comes old Boggs!—in from the country for his little old monthly drunk— here he comes, boys!”

All the loafers looked glad— I reckoned they was used to having fun out of Boggs. One of them says—

“Won der who he’s a gwyne to chaw up this time. If he’d a chawed up all the men he’s ben a gwyne to chaw up in the last twenty year, he’d have con- siderable ruputation, now.”

Another one says, “I wisht old Boggs’d threaten me, ’cuz then I’d know I warn’t gwyne to die for a thousan’ year.”

Boggs comes a- tearing along on his horse, whooping and yelling like an Injun, and singing out—

“Cler the track, thar. I’m on the war- path, and the price uv cof"ns is a gwyne to raise.”

He was drunk, and weaving about in his saddle; he was over "fty year old, and had a very red face. Every body yelled at him, and laughed at him, and sassed him, and he sassed back, and said he’d attend to them and lay them out in their regular turns, but he couldn’t wait now, because he’d come to town to kill old Col o nel Sherburn, and his motto was, “meat "rst, and spoon vittles to top off on.”

He see me, and rode up and says— “Whar’d you come f’m, boy? You prepared to die?” Then he rode on. I was scared; but a man says— “He don’t mean nothing; he’s always a carryin’ on like that, when he’s

drunk. He’s the best- naturedest old fool in Arkansaw— never hurt nobody, drunk nor sober.”

Boggs rode up before the biggest store in town and bent his head down so he could see under the curtain of the awning, and yells—

“Come out here, Sherburn! Come out and meet the man you’ve swindled. You’re the houn’ I’m after, and I’m a gwyne to have you, too!”

And so he went on, calling Sherburn every thing he could lay his tongue to, and the whole street packed with people listening and laughing and going on. By- and-by a proud- looking man about "fty- "ve— and he was a heap the best dressed man in that town, too— steps out of the store, and the crowd drops back on each side to let him come. He says to Boggs, mighty ca’m and slow—he says:

“I’m tired of this; but I’ll endure it till one o’clock. Till one o’clock, mind— no longer. If you open your mouth against me only once, after that time, you can’t travel so far but I will "nd you.”

Then he turns and goes in. The crowd looked mighty sober; nobody stirred, and there warn’t no more laughing. Boggs rode off blackguarding Sherburn as loud as he could yell, all down the street; and pretty soon back he comes and stops before the store, still keeping it up. Some men crowded around him and tried to get him to shut up, but he wouldn’t; they told him it would be one o’clock in about "fteen minutes, and so he must go home—he must go right away. But it didn’t do no good. He cussed away, with all his might, and throwed his hat down in the mud and rode over it, and pretty soon away he went a- raging down the street again, with his gray hair a- ̀ ying. Every body

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3. Twain had witnessed a shooting very much like this one when he was ten years old. His father was the presiding judge at the trial, which ended in acquittal.

that could get a chance at him tried their best to coax him off of his horse so they could lock him up and get him sober; but it warn’t no use—up the street he would tear again, and give Sherburn another cussing. By- and-by some- body says—

“Go for his daughter!— quick, go for his daughter; sometimes he’ll listen to her. If anybody can persuade him, she can.”

So somebody started on a run. I walked down street a ways, and stopped. In about "ve or ten minutes, here comes Boggs again— but not on his horse. He was a- reeling across the street towards me, bareheaded, with a friend on both sides of him aholt of his arms and hurrying him along. He was quiet, and looked uneasy; and he warn’t hanging back any, but was doing some of the hurrying himself. Somebody sings out—

“Boggs!” I looked over there to see who said it, and it was that Col o nel Sherburn.

He was standing perfectly still, in the street, and had a pistol raised in his right hand— not aiming it, but holding it out with the barrel tilted up towards the sky. The same second I see a young girl coming on the run, and two men with her. Boggs and the men turned round, to see who called him, and when they see the pistol the men jumped to one side, and the pistol barrel come down slow and steady to a level— both barrels cocked. Boggs throws up both of his hands, and says, “O Lord, don’t shoot!” Bang! goes the "rst shot, and he staggers back clawing at the air— bang! goes the second one, and he tumbles backwards onto the ground, heavy and solid, with his arms spread out. That young girl screamed out, and comes rushing, and down she throws herself on her father, crying, and saying, “Oh, he’s killed him, he’s killed him!” The crowd closed up around them, and shouldered and jammed one another, with their necks stretched, trying to see, and people on the inside trying to shove them back, and shouting, “Back, back! give him air, give him air!”

Col o nel Sherburn he tossed his pistol onto the ground, and turned around on his heels and walked off.

They took Boggs to a little drug store, the crowd pressing around, just the same, and the whole town following, and I rushed and got a good place at the win dow, where I was close to him and could see in. They laid him on the `oor, and put one large Bible under his head, and opened another one and spread it on his breast— but they tore open his shirt "rst, and I seen where one of the bullets went in. He made about a dozen long gasps, his breast lift- ing the Bible up when he drawed in his breath, and letting it down again when he breathed it out— and after that he laid still; he was dead.3 Then they pulled his daughter away from him, screaming and crying, and took her off. She was about sixteen, and very sweet and gentle- looking, but awful pale and scared.

Well, pretty soon the whole town was there, squirming and scrouging and pushing and shoving to get at the win dow and have a look, but people that had the places wouldn’t give them up, and folks behind them was saying all the time, “Say, now, you’ve looked enough, you fellows; ’taint right and ’taint fair, for you to stay thar all the time, and never give nobody a chance; other folks has their rights as well as you.”

There was considerable jawing back, so I slid out, thinking maybe there was going to be trou ble. The streets was full, and every body was excited. Every body that seen the shooting was telling how it happened, and there was a big crowd packed around each one of these fellows, stretching their necks and listening. One long lanky man, with long hair and a big white fur stove- pipe hat on the back of his head, and a crooked- handled cane, marked out the places on the ground where Boggs stood, and where Sherburn stood, and the people following him around from one place to t’other and watch- ing every thing he done, and bobbing their heads to show they understood, and stooping a little and resting their hands on their thighs to watch him mark the places on the ground with his cane; and then he stood up straight and stiff where Sherburn had stood, frowning and having his hat- brim down over his eyes, and sung out, “Boggs!” and then fetched his cane down slow to a level, and says “Bang!” staggered backwards, says “Bang!” again, and fell down `at on his back. The people that had seen the thing said he done it perfect; said it was just exactly the way it all happened. Then as much as a dozen people got out their bottles and treated him.

Well, by- and-by somebody said Sherburn ought to be lynched. In about a minute every body was saying it; so away they went, mad and yelling, and snatching down every clothes- line they come to, to do the hanging with.

Chapter XXII

They swarmed up the street towards Sherburn’s house, a- whooping and yell- ing and raging like Injuns, and every thing had to clear the way or get run over and tromped to mush, and it was awful to see. Children was heeling it ahead of the mob, screaming and trying to get out of the way; and every win- dow along the road was full of women’s heads, and there was nigger boys in every tree, and bucks and wenches looking over every fence; and as soon as the mob would get nearly to them they would break and skaddle back out of reach. Lots of the women and girls was crying and taking on, scared most to death.

They swarmed up in front of Sherburn’s palings as thick as they could jam together, and you couldn’t hear yourself think for the noise. It was a little twenty- foot yard. Some sung out “Tear down the fence! tear down the fence!” Then there was a racket of ripping and tearing and smashing, and down she goes, and the front wall of the crowd begins to roll in like a wave.

Just then Sherburn steps out on to the roof of his little front porch, with a double- barrel gun in his hand, and takes his stand, perfectly ca’m and delib- erate, not saying a word. The racket stopped, and the wave sucked back.

Sherburn never said a word— just stood there, looking down. The still- ness was awful creepy and uncomfortable. Sherburn run his eye slow along the crowd; and wherever it struck, the people tried a little to outgaze him, but they couldn’t; they dropped their eyes and looked sneaky. Then pretty soon Sherburn sort of laughed; not the pleasant kind, but the kind that makes you feel like when you are eating bread that’s got sand in it.

Then he says, slow and scornful: “The idea of you lynching anybody! It’s amusing. The idea of you think-

ing you had pluck enough to lynch a man! Because you’re brave enough to tar and feather poor friendless cast- out women that come along here, did

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that make you think you had grit enough to lay your hands on a man? Why, a man’s safe in the hands of ten thousand of your kind—as long as it’s day- time and you’re not behind him.

“Do I know you? I know you clear through. I was born and raised in the South, and I’ve lived in the North; so I know the average all around. The average man’s a coward. In the North he lets anybody walk over him that wants to, and goes home and prays for a humble spirit to bear it. In the South one man, all by himself, has stopped a stage full of men, in the day- time, and robbed the lot. Your newspapers call you a brave people so much that you think you are braver than any other people— whereas you’re just as brave, and no braver. Why don’t your juries hang murderers? Because they’re afraid the man’s friends will shoot them in the back, in the dark— and it’s just what they would do.

“So they always acquit; and then a man goes in the night, with a hundred masked cowards at his back, and lynches the rascal. Your mistake is, that you didn’t bring a man with you; that’s one mistake, and the other is that you didn’t come in the dark, and fetch your masks. You brought part of a man— Buck Harkness, there— and if you hadn’t had him to start you, you’d a taken it out in blowing.

“You didn’t want to come. The average man don’t like trou ble and danger. You don’t like trou ble and danger. But if only half a man— like Buck Hark- ness, there— shouts ‘Lynch him, lynch him!’ you’re afraid to back down— afraid you’ll be found out to be what you are— cowards— and so you raise a yell, and hang yourselves onto that half- a- man’s coat tail, and come raging up here, swearing what big things you’re going to do. The pitifulest thing out is a mob; that’s what an army is— a mob; they don’t "ght with courage that’s born in them, but with courage that’s borrowed from their mass, and from their of"cers. But a mob without any man at the head of it, is beneath pitifulness. Now the thing for you to do, is to droop your tails and go home and crawl in a hole. If any real lynching’s going to be done, it will be done in the dark, Southern fashion; and when they come they’ll bring their masks, and fetch a man along. Now leave— and take your half- a- man with you”— tossing his gun up across his left arm and cocking it, when he says this.

The crowd washed back sudden, and then broke all apart and went tear- ing off every which way, and Buck Harkness he heeled it after them, look- ing tolerable cheap. I could a staid, if I’d a wanted to, but I didn’t want to.

I went to the circus, and loafed around the back side till the watchman went by, and then dived in under the tent. I had my twenty- dollar gold piece and some other money, but I reckoned I better save it, because there ain’t no telling how soon you are going to need it, away from home and amongst strangers, that way. You can’t be too careful. I ain’t opposed to spending money on circuses, when there ain’t no other way, but there ain’t no use in wasting it on them.

It was a real bully circus. It was the splendidest sight that ever was, when they all come riding in, two and two, a gentleman and lady, side by side, the men just in their drawers and under- shirts, and no shoes nor stirrups, and resting their hands on their thighs, easy and comfortable— there must a’ been twenty of them— and every lady with a lovely complexion, and perfectly beautiful, and looking just like a gang of real sure- enough queens, and

dressed in clothes that cost millions of dollars, and just littered with dia- monds. It was a power ful "ne sight; I never see anything so lovely. And then one by one they got up and stood, and went a- weaving around the ring so gentle and wavy and graceful, the men looking ever so tall and airy and straight, with their heads bobbing and skimming along, away up there under the tent- roof, and every lady’s rose- leafy dress `apping soft and silky around her hips, and she looking like the most loveliest parasol.

And then faster and faster they went, all of them dancing, "rst one foot stuck out in the air and then the other, the horses leaning more and more, and the ring- master going round and round the centre- pole, cracking his whip and shouting “hi!— hi!” and the clown cracking jokes behind him; and by- and-by all hands dropped the reins, and every lady put her knuckles on her hips and every gentlemen folded his arms, and then how the horses did lean over and hump themselves! And so, one after the other they all skipped off into the ring, and made the sweetest bow I ever see, and then scampered out, and every body clapped their hands and went just about wild.

Well, all through the circus they done the most astonishing things; and all the time that clown carried on so it most killed the people. The ring- master couldn’t ever say a word to him but he was back at him quick as a wink with the funniest things a body ever said; and how he ever could think of so many of them, and so sudden and so pat, was what I couldn’t noway understand. Why, I couldn’t a thought of them in a year. And by- and-by a drunk man tried to get into the ring— said he wanted to ride; said he could ride as well as anybody that ever was. They argued and tried to keep him out, but he wouldn’t listen, and the whole show come to a standstill. Then the people begun to holler at him and make fun of him, and that made him mad, and he begun to rip and tear; so that stirred up the people, and a lot of men began to pile down off of the benches and swarm towards the ring, saying “Knock him down! throw him out!” and one or two women begun to scream. So, then, the ring- master he made a little speech, and said he hoped there wouldn’t be no disturbance, and if the man would promise he wouldn’t make no more trou ble, he would let him ride, if he thought he could stay on the horse. So every body laughed and said all right, and the man got on. The minute he was on, the horse begun to rip and tear and jump and cavort around, with two circus men hanging onto his bridle trying to hold him, and the drunk man hanging onto his neck, and his heels `ying in the air every jump, and the whole crowd of people standing up shouting and laughing till the tears rolled down. And at last, sure enough, all the circus men could do, the horse broke loose, and away he went like the very nation, round and round the ring, with that sot laying down on him and hanging to his neck, with "rst one leg hanging most to the ground on one side, and then t’other one on t’other side, and the people just crazy. It warn’t funny to me, though; I was all of a tremble to see his danger. But pretty soon he strug gled up astraddle and grabbed the bridle, a- reeling this way and that; and the next minute he sprung up and dropped the bridle and stood! and the horse ago- ing like a house a"re too. He just stood up there, a- sailing around as easy and comfortable as if he warn’t ever drunk in his life— and then he begun to pull off his clothes and sling them. He shed them so thick they kind of clogged up the air, and altogether he shed seventeen suits. And then, there he was, slim and handsome, and dressed the gaudiest and prettiest you ever

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4. An archaic name for a giraffe, but also describes a legendary spotted beast the size of a camel.

saw, and he lit into that horse with his whip and made him fairly hum— and " nally skipped off, and made his bow and danced off to the dressing- room, and every body just a- howling with plea sure and astonishment.

Then the ring- master he see how he had been fooled, and he was the sick- est ring- master you ever see, I reckon. Why, it was one of his own men! He had got up that joke all out of his own head, and never let on to nobody. Well, I felt sheepish enough, to be took in so, but I wouldn’t a been in that ring- master’s place, not for a thousand dollars. I don’t know; there may be bullier circuses than what that one was, but I never struck them yet. Any- ways it was plenty good enough for me; and wherever I run across it, it can have all of my custom, everytime.

Well, that night we had our show; but there warn’t only about twelve people there; just enough to pay expenses. And they laughed all the time, and that made the duke mad; and every body left, anyway, before the show was over, but one boy which was asleep. So the duke said these Arkansaw lunkheads couldn’t come up to Shakspeare; what they wanted was low comedy— and may be something ruther worse than low comedy, he reckoned. He said he could size their style. So next morning he got some big sheets of wrapping- paper and some black paint, and drawed off some handbills and stuck them up all over the village. The bills said:

AT THE COURT HOUSE!

for 3 nights only! The World- Renowned Tragedians

DAVID GARRICK THE YOUNGER and

EDMUND KEAN THE ELDER! Of the London and Continental

Theatres, In their Thrilling Tragedy of

THE KING’S CAMELOPARD4 or

THE ROYAL NONESUCH!!! Admission 50 cents.

Then at the bottom was the biggest line of all— which said:

LADIES AND CHILDREN NOT ADMITTED.

“ There,” says he, “if that line don’t fetch them, I don’t know Arkansaw!”

Chapter XXIII

Well, all day him and the king was hard at it, rigging up a stage, and a cur- tain, and a row of candles for footlights; and that night the house was jam full of men in no time. When the place couldn’t hold no more, the duke he quit tending door and went around the back way and come onto the stage and stood up before the curtain, and made a little speech, and praised up this tragedy, and said it was the most thrillingest one that ever was; and so

5. Cheated.

he went on a- bragging about the tragedy and about Edmund Kean the Elder, which was to play the main principal part in it; and at last when he’d got every body’s expectations up high enough, he rolled up the curtain, and the next minute the king come a- prancing out on all fours, naked; and he was painted all over, ring- streaked- and- striped, all sorts of colors, as splendid as a rainbow. And— but never mind the rest of his out"t, it was just wild, but it was awful funny. The people most killed themselves laughing; and when the king got done capering, and capered off behind the scenes, they roared and clapped and stormed and haw- hawed till he come back and done it over again; and after that, they made him do it another time. Well, it would a made a cow laugh to see the shines that old idiot cut.

Then the duke he lets the curtain down, and bows to the people, and says the great tragedy will be performed only two nights more, on accounts of pressing London engagements, where the seats is all sold aready for it in Drury Lane; and then he makes them another bow, and says if he has suc- ceeded in pleasing them and instructing them, he will be deeply obleeged if they will mention it to their friends and get them to come and see it.

Twenty people sings out: “What, is it over? Is that all?” The duke says yes. Then there was a "ne time. Every body sings out “sold,”5

and rose up mad, and was agoing for that stage and them tragedians. But a big "ne- looking man jumps up on a bench, and shouts:

“Hold on! Just a word, gentlemen.” They stopped to listen. “We are sold— mighty badly sold. But we don’t want to be the laughing- stock of this whole town, I reckon, and never hear the last of this thing as long as we live. No. What we want, is to go out of here quiet, and talk this show up, and sell the rest of the town! Then we’ll all be in the same boat. Ain’t that sensible?” (“You bet it is!— the jedge is right!” every body sings out.) “All right, then— not a word about any sell. Go along home, and advise every body to come and see the tragedy.”

Next day you couldn’t hear nothing around that town but how splendid that show was. House was jammed again, that night, and we sold this crowd the same way. When me and the king and the duke got home to the raft, we all had a supper; and by- and-by, about midnight, they made Jim and me back her out and `oat her down the middle of the river and fetch her in and hide her about two mile below town.

The third night the house was crammed again— and they warn’t new- comers, this time, but people that was at the show the other two nights. I stood by the duke at the door, and I see that every man that went in had his pockets bulging, or something muf`ed up under his coat— and I see it warn’t no perfumery neither, not by a long sight. I smelt sickly eggs by the barrel, and rotten cabbages, and such things; and if I know the signs of a dead cat being around, and I bet I do, there was sixty- four of them went in. I shoved in there for a minute, but it was too vari ous for me, I couldn’t stand it. Well, when the place couldn’t hold no more people, the duke he give a fellow a quarter and told him to tend door for him a minute, and then he started around for the stage door, I after him; but the minute we turned the corner and was in the dark, he says:

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“Walk fast, now, till you get away from the houses, and then shin for the raft like the dickens was after you!”

I done it, and he done the same. We struck the raft at the same time, and in less than two seconds we was gliding down stream, all dark and still, and edging towards the middle of the river, nobody saying a word. I reckoned the poor king was in for a gaudy time of it with the audience; but nothing of the sort; pretty soon he crawls out from under the wigwam, and says:

“Well, how’d the old thing pan out this time, Duke?” He hadn’t been up town at all. We never showed a light till we was about ten mile below that village. Then

we lit up and had a supper, and the king and the duke fairly laughed their bones loose over the way they’d served them people. The duke says:

“Greenhorns, `atheads! I knew the "rst house would keep mum and let the rest of the town get roped in; and I knew they’d lay for us the third night, and consider it was their turn now. Well, it is their turn, and I’d give some- thing to know how much they’d take for it. I would just like to know how they’re putting in their opportunity. They can turn it into a picnic, if they want to— they brought plenty provisions.”

Them rapscallions took in four hundred and sixty- "ve dollars in that three nights. I never see money hauled in by the wagon- load like that, before.

By- and-by, when they was asleep and snoring, Jim says: “ Don’t it ’sprise you, de way dem kings carries on, Huck?” “No,” I says, “it don’t.” “Why don’t it, Huck?” “Well, it don’t, because it’s in the breed. I reckon they’re all alike.” “But, Huck, dese kings o’ ourn is reglar rapscallions; dat’s jist what dey is;

dey’s reglar rapscallions.” “Well, that’s what I’m a- saying; all kings is mostly rapscallions, as fur as I

can make out.” “Is dat so?” “You read about them once— you’ll see. Look at Henry the Eight; this’n ’s

a Sunday- School Superintendent to him. And look at Charles Second, and Louis Fourteen, and Louis Fifteen, and James Second, and Edward Second, and Richard Third, and forty more; besides all them Saxon heptarchies that used to rip around so in old times and raise Cain. My, you ought to seen old Henry the Eight when he was in bloom. He was a blossom. He used to marry a new wife every day, and chop off her head next morning. And he would do it just as indifferent as if he was ordering up eggs. ‘Fetch up Nell Gwynn,’ he says. They fetch her up. Next morning, ‘Chop off her head!’ And they chop it off. ‘Fetch up Jane Shore,’ he says; and up she comes. Next morning ‘Chop off her head’— and they chop it off. ‘Ring up Fair Rosamun.’ Fair Rosa- mun answers the bell. Next morning, ‘Chop off her head.’ And he made every one of them tell him a tale every night; and he kept that up till he had hogged a thousand and one tales that way, and then he put them all in a book, and called it Domesday Book— which was a good name and stated the case. You don’t know kings, Jim, but I know them; and this old rip of ourn is one of the cleanest I’ve struck in history. Well, Henry he takes a notion he wants to get up some trou ble with this country. How does he go at it— give notice?— give the country a show? No. All of sudden he heaves all the tea in Boston Harbor overboard, and whacks out a declaration of in de pen-

6. Huck’s “history” of kingly be hav ior is a hodgepodge of fact and "ction, drawn from En glish and Ameri- can history.

dence, and dares them to come on. That was his style—he never give any- body a chance. He had suspicions of his father, the Duke of Wellington. Well, what did he do?— ask him to show up? No— drownded him in a butt of mamsey, like a cat. Spose people left money laying around where he was— what did he do? He collared it. Spose he contracted to do a thing; and you paid him, and didn’t set down there and see that he done it— what did he do? He always done the other thing. Spose he opened his mouth— what then? If he didn’t shut it up power ful quick, he’d lose a lie, every time. That’s the kind of a bug Henry was; and if we’d a had him along ’stead of our kings, he’d a fooled that town a heap worse than ourn done. I don’t say that ourn is lambs, because they ain’t, when you come right down to the cold facts; but they ain’t nothing to that old ram, anyway. All I say is, kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. Take them all around, they’re a mighty ornery lot. It’s the way they’re raised.”6

“But dis one do smell so like de nation, Huck.” “Well, they all do, Jim. We can’t help the way a king smells; history don’t

tell no way.” “Now de duke, he’s a tolerable likely man, in some ways.” “Yes, a duke’s dif fer ent. But not very dif fer ent. This one’s a middling hard

lot, for a duke. When he’s drunk, there ain’t no near- sighted man could tell him from a king.”

“Well, anyways, I doan’ hanker for no mo’ un um, Huck. Dese is all I kin stan’.”

“It’s the way I feel, too, Jim. But we’ve got them on our hands, and we got to remember what they are, and make allowances. Sometimes I wish we could hear of a country that’s out of kings.”

What was the use to tell Jim these warn’t real kings and dukes? It wouldn’t a done no good; and besides, it was just as I said; you couldn’t tell them from the real kind.

I went to sleep, and Jim didn’t call me when it was my turn. He often done that. When I waked up, just at day- break, he was setting there with his head down betwixt his knees, moaning and mourning to himself. I didn’t take notice, nor let on. I knowed what it was about. He was thinking about his wife and his children, away up yonder, and he was low and homesick; because he hadn’t ever been away from home before in his life; and I do believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks does for their’n. It don’t seem natu ral, but I reckon it’s so. He was often moaning and mourning that way, nights, when he judged I was asleep, and saying “Po’ little ’Lizabeth! po’ little Johnny! its mighty hard; I spec’ I ain’t ever gwyne to see you no mo’, no mo’!” He was a mighty good nigger, Jim was.

But this time I somehow got to talking to him about his wife and young ones; and by- and-by he says:

“What makes me feel so bad dis time, ’uz bekase I hear sumpn over yon- der on de bank like a whack, er a slam, while ago, en it mine me er de time I treat my little ’Lizabeth so ornery. She warn’t on’y ’bout fo’ year ole, en she tuck de sk’yarlet- fever, en had a powful rough spell; but she got well, en one day she was a- stannin’ aroun’, en I says to her, I says:

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“ ‘Shet de do’.’ “She never done it; jis’ stood dar, kiner smilin’ up at me. It make me mad;

en I says agin, mighty loud, I says: “ ‘Doan’ you hear me?— shet de do’!’ “She jis’ stood de same way, kiner smilin’ up. I was a- bilin’! I says: “ ‘I lay I make you mine!’ “En wid dat I fetch’ her a slap side de head dat sont her a- sprawlin’. Den

I went into de yuther room, en ’uz gone ’bout ten minutes; en when I come back, dah was dat do’ a- stannin’ open yit, en dat chile stannin’ mos’ right in it, a- lookin’ down and mournin’, en de tears runnin’ down. My, but I wuz mad, I was agwyne for de chile, but jis’ den—it was a do’ dat open innerds— jis’ den, ’long come de wind en slam it to, behine de chile, ker- blam!—en my lan’, de chile never move’! My breff mos’ hop outer me; en I feel so— so— I doan’ know how I feel. I crope out, all a- tremblin’, en crope aroun’ en open de do’ easy en slow, en poke my head in behine de chile, sof’ en still, en all uv a sudden, I says pow! jis’ as loud as I could yell. She never budge! Oh, Huck, I bust out a- cryin’ en grab her up in my arms, en say, ‘Oh, de po’ little thing! de Lord God Amighty fogive po’ ole Jim, kaze he never gwyne to fogive hisself as long’s he live!’ Oh, she was plumb deef en dumb, Huck, plumb deef en dumb—en I’d ben a’treat’n her so!”

Chapter XXIV

Next day, towards night, we laid up under a little willow tow- head out in the middle, where there was a village on each side of the river, and the duke and the king begun to lay out a plan for working them towns. Jim he spoke to the duke, and said he hoped it wouldn’t take but a few hours, because it got mighty heavy and tiresome to him when he had to lay all day in the wigwam tied with the rope. You see, when we left him all alone we had to tie him, because if anybody happened on him all by himself and not tied, it wouldn’t look much like he was a runaway nigger, you know. So the duke said it was kind of hard to have to lay roped all day, and he’d cipher out some way to get around it.

He was uncommon bright, the duke was, and he soon struck it. He dressed Jim up in King Lear’s out"t—it was a long curtain- calico gown, and a white horse- hair wig and whis kers; and then he took his theatre- paint and painted Jim’s face and hands and ears and neck all over a dead bull solid blue, like a man that’s been drownded nine days. Blamed if he warn’t the horriblest looking outrage I ever see. Then the duke took and wrote out a sign on a shingle so—

Sick Arab— but harmless when not out of his head.

And he nailed that shingle to a lath, and stood the lath up four or "ve foot in front of the wigwam. Jim was satis"ed. He said it was a sight better than laying tied a couple of years every day and trembling all over every time there was a sound. The duke told him to make himself free and easy, and if any- body ever come meddling around, he must hop out of the wigwam, and carry on a little, and fetch a howl or two like a wild beast, and he reckoned they would light out and leave him alone. Which was sound enough judg-

7. Hat. 8. The third book of the Old Testament is here confused with Noah.

ment; but you take the average man, and he wouldn’t wait for him to howl. Why, he didn’t only look like he was dead, he looked considerable more than that.

These rapscallions wanted to try the Nonesuch again, because there was so much money in it, but they judged it wouldn’t be safe, because maybe the news might a worked along down by this time. They couldn’t hit no proj ect that suited, exactly; so at last the duke said he reckoned he’d lay off and work his brains an hour or two and see if he couldn’t put up something on the Arkansaw village; and the king he allowed he would drop over to t’other village, without any plan, but just trust in Providence to lead him the pro"t- able way— meaning the devil, I reckon. We had all bought store clothes where we stopped last; and now the king put his’n on, and he told me to put mine on. I done it, of course. The king’s duds was all black, and he did look real swell and starchy. I never knowed how clothes could change a body before. Why, before, he looked like the orneriest old rip that ever was; but now, when he’d take off his new white beaver7 and make a bow and do a smile, he looked that grand and good and pious that you’d say he had walked right out of the ark, and maybe was old Leviticus8 himself. Jim cleaned up the canoe, and I got my paddle ready. There was a big steamboat laying at the shore away up under the point, about three mile above town— been there a couple of hours, taking on freight. Says the king:

“Seein’ how I’m dressed, I reckon maybe I better arrive down from St. Louis or Cincinnati, or some other big place. Go for the steamboat, Huckleberry; we’ll come down to the village on her.”

I didn’t have to be ordered twice, to go and take a steamboat ride. I fetched the shore a half a mile above the village, and then went scooting along the bluff bank in the easy water. Pretty soon we come to a nice innocent- looking young country jake setting on a log swabbing the sweat off of his face, for it was power ful warm weather; and he had a couple of big carpet- bags by him.

“Run her nose in shore,” says the king. I done it. “Wher’ you bound for, young man?”

“For the steamboat; going to Orleans.” “Git aboard,” says the king. “Hold on a minute, my servant ’ll he’p you

with them bags. Jump out and he’p the gentleman, Adolphus”— meaning me, I see.

I done so, and then we all three started on again. The young chap was mighty thankful; said it was tough work toting his baggage such weather. He asked the king where he was going, and the king told him he’d come down the river and landed at the other village this morning, and now he was going up a few mile to see an old friend on a farm up there. The young fel- low says:

“When I "rst see you, I says to myself, ‘It’s Mr.  Wilks, sure, and he come mighty near getting here in time.’ But then I says again, ‘No, I reckon it ain’t him, or else he wouldn’t be paddling up the river.’ You ain’t him, are you?”

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“No, my name’s Blodgett— Elexander Blodgett— Reverend Elexander Blodgett, I spose I must say, as I’m one o’ the Lord’s poor servants. But still I’m jist as able to be sorry for Mr. Wilks for not arriving in time, all the same, if he’s missed anything by it— which I hope he hasn’t.”

“Well, he don’t miss any property by it, because he’ll get that all right; but he’s missed seeing his brother Peter die— which he mayn’t mind, nobody can tell as to that— but his brother would a give anything in this world to see him before he died; never talked about nothing else all these three weeks; hadn’t seen him since they was boys together— and hadn’t ever seen his brother William at all— that’s the deef and dumb one— William ain’t more than thirty or thirty- "ve. Peter and George was the only ones that come out here; George was the married brother; him and his wife both died last year. Harvey and William’s the only ones that’s left now; and, as I was saying, they haven’t got here in time.”

“Did anybody send ’em word?” “Oh, yes; a month or two ago, when Peter was "rst took; because Peter

said then that he sorter felt like he warn’t going to get well this time. You see, he was pretty old, and George’s g’yirls was too young to be much com- pany for him, except Mary Jane the red- headed one; and so he was kinder lonesome after George and his wife died, and didn’t seem to care much to live. He most desperately wanted to see Harvey— and William too, for that matter— because he was one of them kind that can’t bear to make a will. He left a letter behind for Harvey, and said he’d told in it where his money was hid, and how he wanted the rest of the property divided up so George’s g’yirls would be all right— for George didn’t leave nothing. And that letter was all they could get him to put a pen to.”

“Why do you reckon Harvey don’t come? Wher’ does he live?” “Oh, he lives in Eng land— Shef"eld— preaches there— hasn’t ever been

in this country. He hasn’t had any too much time— and besides he mightn’t a got the letter at all, you know.”

“Too bad, too bad he couldn’t a lived to see his brothers, poor soul. You going to Orleans, you say?”

“Yes, but that ain’t only a part of it. I’m going in a ship, next Wednesday, for Ryo Janeero,9 where my uncle lives.”

“It’s a pretty long journey. But it’ll be lovely; I wisht I was agoing. Is Mary Jane the oldest? How old is the others?”

“Mary Jane’s nineteen, Susan’s "fteen, and Joanna’s about fourteen— that’s the one that gives herself to good works and has a hare- lip.”1

“Poor things! to be left alone in the cold world so.” “Well, they could be worse off. Old Peter had friends, and they ain’t going

to let them come to no harm. There’s Hobson, the Babtis’ preacher; and Dea- con Lot Hovey, and Ben Rucker, and Abner Shackleford, and Levi Bell, the lawyer; and Dr. Robinson, and their wives, and the widow Bartley, and— well, there’s a lot of them; but these are the ones that Peter was thickest with, and used to write about sometimes, when he wrote home; so Harvey’ll know where to look for friends when he gets here.”

9. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 1. An outdated term for a cleft palate.

2. Dissenting ministers belonged to Christian denominations that had separated from the Church of Eng land.

Well, the old man he went on asking questions till he just fairly emptied that young fellow. Blamed if he didn’t inquire about every body and every- thing in that blessed town, and all about all the Wilkses; and about Peter’s business— which was a tanner; and about George’s— which was a carpen- ter; and about Harvey’s— which was a dissentering2 minister, and so on, and so on. Then he says:

“What did you want to walk all the way up to the steamboat for?” “ Because she’s a big Orleans boat, and I was afeard she mightn’t stop there.

When they’re deep they won’t stop for a hail. A Cincinnati boat will, but this is a St. Louis one.”

“Was Peter Wilks well off?” “Oh, yes, pretty well off. He had houses and land, and it’s reckoned he

left three or four thousand in cash hid up som’ers.” “When did you say he died?” “I didn’t say, but it was last night.” “Funeral to- morrow, likely?” “Yes, ’bout the middle of the day.” “Well, it’s all terrible sad; but we’ve all got to go, one time or another. So

what we want to do is to be prepared; then we’re all right.” “Yes, sir, it’s the best way. Ma used to always say that.” When we struck the boat, she was about done loading, and pretty soon

she got off. The king never said nothing about going aboard, so I lost my ride, after all. When the boat was gone, the king made me paddle up another mile to a lonesome place, and then he got ashore, and says:

“Now hustle back, right off, and fetch the duke up here, and the new carpet- bags. And if he’s gone over to t’other side, go over there and git him. And tell him to git himself up regardless. Shove along, now.”

I see what he was up to; but I never said nothing, of course. When I got back with the duke, we hid the canoe and then they set down on a log, and the king told him every thing, just like the young fellow had said it— every last word of it. And all the time he was a doing it, he tried to talk like an En glishman; and he done it pretty well too, for a slouch. I can’t imitate him, and so I ain’t agoing to try to; but he really done it pretty good. Then he says:

“How are you on the deef and dumb, Bilgewater?” The duke said, leave him alone for that; said he had played a deef and

dumb person on the histrionic boards. So then they waited for a steamboat. About the middle of the after noon a couple of little boats come along, but

they didn’t come from high enough up the river; but at last there was a big one, and they hailed her. She sent out her yawl, and we went aboard, and she was from Cincinnati; and when they found we only wanted to go four or "ve mile, they was booming mad, and give us a cussing, and said they wouldn’t land us. But the king was ca’m. He says:

“If gentlemen kin afford to pay a dollar a mile apiece, to be took on and put off in a yawl, a steamboat kin afford to carry ’em, can’t it?”

So they softened down and said it was all right; and when we got to the village, they yawled us ashore. About two dozen men `ocked down, when they see the yawl a coming; and when the king says—

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“Kin any of you gentlemen tell me wher’ Mr. Peter Wilks lives?” they give a glance at one another, and nodded their heads, as much as to say, “What d’ I tell you?” Then one of them says, kind of soft and gentle:

“I’m sorry, sir, but the best we can do is to tell you where he did live yes- terday eve ning.”

Sudden as winking, the ornery old cretur went all to smash, and fell up against the man, and put his chin on his shoulder, and cried down his back, and says:

“Alas, alas, our poor brother— gone, and we never got to see him; oh, it’s too, too hard!”

Then he turns around, blubbering, and makes a lot of idiotic signs to the duke on his hands, and blamed if he didn’t drop a carpet- bag and bust out a- crying. If they warn’t the beatenest lot, them two frauds, that ever I struck.

Well, the men gethered around, and sympathized with them, and said all sorts of kind things to them, and carried their carpet- bags up the hill for them, and let them lean on them and cry, and told the king all about his brother’s last moments, and the king he told it all over again on his hands to the duke, and both of them took on about that dead tanner like they’d lost the twelve disciples. Well, if ever I struck anything like it, I’m a nigger. It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race.

Chapter XXV

The news was all over town in two minutes, and you could see the people tearing down on the run, from every which way, some of them putting on their coats as they come. Pretty soon we was in the middle of a crowd, and the noise of the tramping was like a soldier- march. The win dows and dooryards was full; and every minute somebody would say, over a fence:

“Is it them!” And somebody trotting along with the gang would answer back and say: “You bet it is.” When we got to the house, the street in front of it was packed, and the three

girls was standing in the door. Mary Jane was red- headed, and that don’t make no difference, she was most awful beautiful, and her face and her eyes was all lit up like glory, she was so glad her uncles was come. The king he spread his arms, and Mary Jane she jumped for them, and the hare- lip jumped for the duke, and there they had it! Every body most, leastways women, cried for joy to see them meet again at last and have such good times.

Then the king he hunched the duke, private— I see him do it— and then he looked around and see the cof"n, over in the corner on two chairs; so then, him and the duke, with a hand across each other’s shoulder, and t’other hand to their eyes, walked slow and solemn over there, every body dropping back to give them room, and all the talk and noise stopping, people saying “Sh!” and all the men taking their hats off and drooping their heads, so you could a heard a pin fall. And when they got there, they bent over and looked in the cof"n, and took one sight, and then they bust out a crying so you could a heard them to Orleans, most; and then they put their arms around each other’s necks, and hung their chins over each other’s shoulders; and then for three minutes, or maybe four, I never see two men leak the way they done. And mind you, every- body was doing the same; and the place was that damp I never see anything

3. I.e., doxology, or hymn of praise to God. The par tic u lar doxology referred to here begins “Praise God, from whom all blessings `ow.”

like it. Then one of them got on one side of the cof"n, and t’other on t’other side, and they kneeled down and rested their foreheads on the cof"n, and let on to pray all to theirselves. Well, when it come to that, it worked the crowd like you never see anything like it, and so every body broke down and went to sobbing right out loud— the poor girls, too; and every woman, nearly, went up to the girls, without saying a word, and kissed them, solemn, on the forehead, and then put their hand on their head, and looked up towards the sky, with the tears running down, and then busted out and went off sobbing and swabbing, and give the next woman a show. I never see any- thing so disgusting.

Well, by- and-by the king he gets up and comes forward a little, and works himself up and slobbers out a speech, all full of tears and `apdoodle about its being a sore trial for him and his poor brother to lose the diseased, and to miss seeing diseased alive, after the long journey of four thousand mile, but it’s a trial that’s sweetened and sancti"ed to us by this dear sympathy and these holy tears, and so he thanks them out of his heart and out of his brother’s heart, because out of their mouths they can’t, words being too weak and cold, and all that kind of rot and slush, till it was just sickening; and then he blubbers out a pious goody- goody Amen, and turns himself loose and goes to crying "t to bust.

And the minute the words was out of his mouth somebody over in the crowd struck up the doxolojer,3 and every body joined in with all their might, and it just warmed you up and made you feel as good as church letting out. Music is a good thing; and after all that soul- butter and hogwash, I never see it freshen up things so, and sound so honest and bully.

Then the king begins to work his jaw again, and says how him and his nieces would be glad if a few of the main principal friends of the family would take supper here with them this eve ning, and help set up with the ashes of the diseased; and says if his poor brother laying yonder could speak, he knows who he would name, for they was names that was very dear to him, and mentioned often in his letters; and so he will name the same, to- wit, as follows, vizz:— Rev. Mr. Hobson, and Deacon Lot Hovey, and Mr. Ben Rucker, and Abner Shackleford, and Levi Bell, and Dr. Robinson, and their wives, and the widow Bartley.

Rev. Hobson and Dr. Robinson was down to the end of the town, a- hunting together; that is, I mean the doctor was shipping a sick man to t’other world, and the preacher was pinting him right. Lawyer Bell was away up to Louis- ville on some business. But the rest was on hand, and so they all come and shook hands with the king and thanked him and talked to him; and then they shook hands with the duke, and didn’t say nothing but just kept a- smiling and bobbing their heads like a passel of sapheads whilst he made all sorts of signs with his hands and said “Goo- goo— goo- goo- goo,” all the time, like a baby that can’t talk.

So the king he blatted along, and managed to inquire about pretty much every body and dog in town, by his name, and mentioned all sorts of little things that happened one time or another in the town, or to George’s family,

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4. Gold coins.

or to Peter; and he always let on that Peter wrote him the things, but that was a lie, he got every blessed one of them out of that young `athead that we canoed up to the steamboat.

Then Mary Jane she fetched the letter her father left behind, and the king he read it out loud and cried over it. It give the dwelling- house and three thousand dollars, gold, to the girls; and it give the tanyard (which was doing a good business), along with some other houses and land (worth about seven thousand), and three thousand dollars in gold to Harvey and William, and told where the six thousand cash was hid, down cellar. So these two frauds said they’d go and fetch it up, and have every thing square and above- board; and told me to come with a candle. We shut the cellar door behind us, and when they found the bag they spilt it out on the `oor, and it was a lovely sight, all them yallerboys.4 My, the way the king’s eyes did shine! He slaps the duke on the shoulder, and says:

“Oh, this ain’t bully, nor noth’n! Oh, no, I reckon not! Why, Biljy, it beats the Nonesuch, don’t it!”

The duke allowed it did. They pawed the yaller- boys, and sifted them through their "n gers and let them jingle down on the `oor; and the king says:

“It ain’t no use talkin’; bein’ brothers to a rich dead man, and representa- tives of furrin heirs that’s got left, is the line for you and me, Bilge. Thish- yer comes of trust’n to Providence. It’s the best way, in the long run. I’ve tried ’em all, and ther’ ain’t no better way.”

Most every body would a been satis"ed with the pile, and took it on trust; but no, they must count it. So they counts it, and it comes out four hundred and "fteen dollars short. Says the king:

“Dern him, I won der what he done with that four hundred and "fteen dol- lars?”

They worried over that a while, and ransacked all around for it. Then the duke says:

“Well, he was a pretty sick man, and likely he made a mistake— I reckon that’s the way of it. The best way’s to let it go, and keep still about it. We can spare it.”

“Oh, shucks, yes, we can spare it. I don’t k’yer noth’n ’bout that— it’s the count I’m thinkin’ about. We want to be awful square and open and above- board, here, you know. We want to lug this h’yer money up stairs and count it before every body— then ther’ ain’t noth’n suspicious. But when the dead man says ther’s six thous’n dollars, you know, we don’t want to—”

“Hold on,” says the duke. “Less make up the def"sit”— and he begun to haul out yallerboys out of his pocket.

“It’s a most amaz’n good idea, duke— you have got a rattlin’ clever head on you,” says the king. “Blest if the old Nonesuch ain’t a heppin’ us out agin”— and he begun to haul out yallerjackets and stack them up.

It most busted them, but they made up the six thousand clean and clear. “Say,” says the duke, “I got another idea. Le’s go up stairs and count this

money, and then take and give it to the girls.” “Good land, duke, lemme hug you! It’s the most dazzling idea ’at ever a

man struck. You have cert’nly got the most astonishin’ head I ever see. Oh,

5. Best con"dence trick.

this is the boss dodge,5 ther’ ain’t no mistake ’bout it. Let ’em fetch along their suspicions now, if they want to— this’ll lay ’em out.”

When we got up stairs, every body gathered around the table, and the king he counted it and stacked it up, three hundred dollars in a pile— twenty ele- gant little piles. Every body looked hungry at it, and licked their chops. Then they raked it into the bag again, and I see the king begin to swell himself up for another speech. He says:

“Friends all, my poor brother that lays yonder, has done generous by them that’s left behind in the vale of sorrers. He has done generous by these- yer poor little lambs that he loved and sheltered, and that’s left fatherless and motherless. Yes, and we that knowed him, knows that he would a done more generous by ’em if he hadn’t been afeard o’ woundin’ his dear William and me. Now, wouldn’t he? Ther’ ain’t no question ’bout it, in my mind. Well, then— what kind o’ brothers would it be, that ’d stand in his way at sech a time? And what kind o’ uncles would it be that ’d rob— yes, rob— sech poor sweet lambs as these ’at he loved so, at sech a time? If I know William— and I think I do— he— well, I’ll jest ask him.” He turns around and begins to make a lot of signs to the duke with his hands; and the duke he looks at him stupid and leather- headed a while, then all of sudden he seems to catch his meaning, and jumps for the king, goo- gooing with all his might for joy, and hugs him about "fteen times before he lets up. Then the king says, “I knowed it; I reckon that ’ll convince anybody the way he feels about it. Here, Mary Jane, Susan, Joanner, take the money— take it all. It’s the gift of him that lays yonder, cold but joyful.”

Mary Jane she went for him, Susan and the hare- lip went for the duke, and then such another hugging and kissing I never see yet. And every body crowded up with the tears in their eyes, and most shook the hands off of them frauds, saying all the time:

“You dear good souls!— how lovely!— how could you!” Well, then, pretty soon all hands got to talking about the diseased again,

and how good he was, and what a loss he was, and all that; and before long a big iron- jawed man worked himself in there from outside, and stood a lis- tening and looking, and not saying anything; and nobody saying anything to him either, because the king was talking and they was all busy listening. The king was saying—in the middle of something he’d started in on—

“— they bein’ partickler friends o’ the diseased. That’s why they’re invited here this evenin’; but to- morrow we want all to come— every body; for he respected every body, he liked every body, and so it’s "tten that his funeral orgies sh’d be public.”

And so he went a- mooning on and on, liking to hear himself talk, and every little while he fetched in his funeral orgies again, till the duke he couldn’t stand it no more; so he writes on a little scrap of paper, “obsequies, you old fool,” and folds it up and goes to goo- gooing and reaching it over people’s heads to him. The king he reads it, and puts it in his pocket, and says:

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6. The comic etymology was a stock- in- trade of the southwestern humorists and is still popu lar in com- edy routines.

“Poor William, af`icted as he is, his heart’s aluz right. Asks me to invite every body to come to the funeral— wants me to make ’em all welcome. But he needn’t a worried—it was jest what I was at.”

Then he weaves along again, perfectly ca’m, and goes to dropping in his funeral orgies again every now and then, just like he done before. And when he done it the third time, he says:

“I say orgies, not because it’s the common term, because it ain’t— obsequies bein’ the common term— but because orgies is the right term. Obsequies ain’t used in Eng land no more, now— it’s gone out. We say orgies now, in Eng land. Orgies is better, because it means the thing you’re after, more exact. It’s a word that’s made up out’n the Greek orgo, outside, open, abroad; and the Hebrew jeesum, to plant, cover up; hence inter. So, you see, funeral orgies is an open er public funeral.”6

He was the worst I ever struck. Well, the iron- jawed man he laughed right in his face. Every body was shocked. Every body says, “Why doctor!” and Abner Shackleford says:

“Why, Robinson, hain’t you heard the news? This is Harvey Wilks.” The king he smiled eager, and shoved out his `apper, and says: “Is it my poor brother’s dear good friend and physician? I—” “Keep your hands off of me!” says the doctor. “You talk like an Englishman—

don’t you? It’s the worse imitation I ever heard. You Peter Wilks’s brother. You’re a fraud, that’s what you are!”

Well, how they all took on! They crowded around the doctor, and tried to quiet him down, and tried to explain to him, and tell him how Harvey’d showed in forty ways that he was Harvey, and knowed every body by name, and the names of the very dogs, and begged and begged him not to hurt Har- vey’s feelings and the poor girls’ feelings, and all that; but it warn’t no use, he stormed right along, and said any man that pretended to be an En glishman and couldn’t imitate the lingo no better than what he did, was a fraud and a liar. The poor girls was hanging to the king and crying; and all of a sud- den the doctor ups and turns on them. He says:

“I was your father’s friend, and I’m your friend; and I warn you as a friend, and an honest one, that wants to protect you and keep you out of harm and trou ble, to turn your backs on that scoundrel, and have nothing to do with him, the ignorant tramp, with his idiotic Greek and Hebrew as he calls it. He is the thinnest kind of an impostor— has come here with a lot of empty names and facts which he has picked up somewheres, and you take them for proofs, and are helped to fool yourselves by these foolish friends here, who ought to know better. Mary Jane Wilks, you know me for your friend, and for your unsel"sh friend, too. Now listen to me; turn this pitiful rascal out— I beg you to do it. Will you?”

Mary Jane straightened herself up, and my, but she was handsome! She says:

“ Here is my answer.” She hove up the bag of money and put it in the king’s hands, and says, “Take this six thousand dollars, and invest it for me and my sisters any way you want to, and don’t give us no receipt for it.”

Then she put her arm around the king on one side, and Susan and the hare- lip done the same on the other. Every body clapped their hands and stomped on the `oor like a perfect storm, whilst the king held up his head and smiled proud. The doctor says:

“All right, I wash my hands of the matter. But I warn you all that a time’s coming when you’re going to feel sick whenever you think of this day”— and away he went.

“All right, doctor,” says the king, kinder mocking him, “ we’ll try and get ’em to send for you”— which made them all laugh, and they said it was a prime good hit.

Chapter XXVI

Well, when they was all gone, the king he asks Mary Jane how they was off for spare rooms, and she said she had one spare room, which would do for Uncle William, and she’d give her own room to Uncle Harvey, which was a little bigger, and she would turn into the room with her sisters and sleep on a cot; and up garret was a little cubby, with a pallet in it. The king said the cubby would do for his valley— meaning me.

So Mary Jane took us up, and she showed them their rooms, which was plain but nice. She said she’d have her frocks and a lot of other traps took out of her room if they was in Uncle Harvey’s way, but he said they warn’t. The frocks was hung along the wall, and before them was a curtain made out of calico that hung down to the `oor. There was an old hair trunk in one corner, and a guitar box in another, and all sorts of little knickknacks and jimcracks around, like girls brisken up a room with. The king said it was all the more homely and more pleasanter for these "xings, and so don’t disturb them. The duke’s room was pretty small, but plenty good enough, and so was my cubby.

That night they had a big supper, and all them men and women was there, and I stood behind the king and the duke’s chairs and waited on them, and the niggers waited on the rest. Mary Jane she set at the head of the table, with Susan along side of her, and said how bad the biscuits was, and how mean the preserves was, and how ornery and tough the fried chickens was— and all that kind of rot, the way women always do for to force out compli- ments; and the people all knowed every thing was tip- top, and said so— said “How do you get biscuits to brown so nice?” and “Where, for the land’s sake did you get these amaz’n pickles?” and all that kind of humbug talky- talk, just the way people always does at a supper, you know.

And when it was all done, me and the hare- lip had supper in the kitchen off of the leavings, whilst the others was helping the niggers clean up the things. The hare- lip she got to pumping me about Eng land, and blest if I didn’t think the ice was getting mighty thin, sometimes. She says:

“Did you ever see the king?” “Who? William Fourth?7 Well, I bet I have—he goes to our church.”

I knowed he was dead years ago, but I never let on. So when I says he goes to our church, she says:

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7. William IV of Eng land (1765–1837) became king in 1830.

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“What— regular?” “Yes— regular. His pew’s right over opposite ourn—on ’tother side the

pulpit.” “I thought he lived in London?” “Well, he does. Where would he live?” “But I thought you lived in Shef"eld?”8 I see I was up a stump. I had to let on to get choked with a chicken bone,

so as to get time to think how to get down again. Then I says: “I mean he goes to our church regular when he’s in Shef"eld. That’s only

in the summer- time, when he comes there to take the sea baths.” “Why, how you talk— Shef"eld ain’t on the sea.” “Well, who said it was?” “Why, you did.” “I didn’t, nuther.” “You did!” “I didn’t.” “You did.” “I never said nothing of the kind.” “Well, what did you say, then?” “Said he come to take the sea baths— that’s what I said.” “Well, then! how’s he going to take the sea baths if it ain’t on the sea?” “Looky here,” I says, “did you ever see any Congress water?”9 “Yes.” “Well, did you have to go to Congress to get it?” “Why, no.” “Well, neither does William Fourth have to go to the sea to get a sea bath.” “How does he get it, then?” “Gets it the way people down here gets Congress water—in barrels. There

in the palace at Shef"eld they’ve got furnaces, and he wants his water hot. They can’t bile that amount of water away off there at the sea. They haven’t got no con ve niences for it.”

“Oh, I see, now. You might a said that in the "rst place and saved time.” When she said that, I see I was out of the woods again, and so I was com-

fortable and glad. Next, she says: “Do you go to church, too?” “Yes— regular.” “Where do you set?” “Why, in our pew.” “Whose pew?” “Why, ourn— your Uncle Harvey’s.” “His’n? What does he want with a pew?” “Wants it to set in. What did you reckon he wanted with it?” “Why, I thought he’d be in the pulpit.” Rot him, I forgot he was a preacher. I see I was up a stump again, so I

played another chicken bone and got another think. Then I says: “Blame it, do you suppose there ain’t but one preacher to a church?” “Why, what do they want with more?”

8. Industrial city north of London and many miles from the sea.

9. Famous mineral water from the Congress Spring in Saratoga Springs, New York.

1. Minstrel shows.

“What!—to preach before a king? I never see such a girl as you. They don’t have no less than seventeen.”

“Seventeen! My land! Why, I wouldn’t set out such a string as that, not if I never got to glory. It must take ’em a week.”

“Shucks, they don’t all of ’em preach the same day— only one of ’em.” “Well, then, what does the rest of ’em do?” “Oh, nothing much. Loll around, pass the plate— and one thing or another.

But mainly they don’t do nothing.” “Well, then, what are they for?” “Why, they’re for style. Don’t you know nothing?” “Well, I don’t want to know no such foolishness as that. How is servants

treated in Eng land? Do they treat ’em better ’n we treat our niggers?” “No! A servant ain’t nobody there. They treat them worse than dogs.” “ Don’t they give ’em holidays, the way we do, Christmas and New Year’s

week, and Fourth of July?” “Oh, just listen! A body could tell you hain’t ever been to Eng land, by

that. Why, Hare- l— why, Joanna, they never see a holiday from year’s end to year’s end; never go to the circus, nor theatre, nor nigger shows1 nor nowheres.”

“Nor church?” “Nor church.” “But you always went to church.” Well, I was gone up again. I forgot I was the old man’s servant. But next

minute I whirled in on a kind of an explanation how a valley was dif fer ent from a common servant, and had to go to church whether he wanted to or not, and set with the family, on account of it’s being the law. But I didn’t do it pretty good, and when I got done I see she warn’t satis"ed. She says:

“Honest injun, now, hain’t you been telling me a lot of lies?” “Honest injun,” says I. “None of it at all?” “None of it at all. Not a lie in it,” says I. “Lay your hand on this book and say it.” I see it warn’t nothing but a dictionary, so I laid my hand on it and said it.

So then she looked a little better satis"ed, and says: “Well, then, I’ll believe some of it; but I hope to gracious if I’ll believe

the rest.” “What is it you won’t believe, Joe?” says Mary Jane, stepping in with Susan

behind her. “It ain’t right nor kind for you to talk so to him, and him a stranger and so far from his people. How would you like to be treated so?”

“That’s always your way, Maim— always sailing in to help somebody before they’re hurt. I hain’t done nothing to him. He’s told some stretchers, I reckon; and I said I wouldn’t swallow it all; and that’s every bit and grain I did say. I reckon he can stand a little thing like that, can’t he?”

“I don’t care whether ’twas little or whether ’twas big, he’s here in our house and a stranger, and it wasn’t good of you to say it. If you was in his place, it would make you feel ashamed; and so you ought’nt to say a thing to another person that will make them feel ashamed.”

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2. A scolding. The phrase refers to a hymn, “Hark! From the Tomb a Doleful Sound,” by Isaac Watts (1674–1748).

“Why, Maim, he said—” “It don’t make no difference what he said— that ain’t the thing. The thing

is for you to treat him kind, and not be saying things to make him remem- ber he ain’t in his own country and amongst his own folks.”

I says to myself, this is a girl that I’m letting that old reptle rob her of her money!

Then Susan she waltzed in; and if you’ll believe me, she did give Hare- lip hark from the tomb!2

Says I to myself, And this is another one that I’m letting him rob her of her money!

Then Mary Jane she took another inning, and went in sweet and lovely again— which was her way— but when she got done there warn’t hardly any- thing left o’ poor Hare- lip. So she hollered.

“All right, then,” says the other girls, “you just ask his pardon.” She done it, too. And she done it beautiful. She done it so beautiful it was

good to hear; and I wished I could tell her a thousand lies, so she could do it again.

I says to myself, this is another one that I’m letting him rob her of her money. And when she got through, they all jest laid theirselves out to make me feel at home and know I was amongst friends. I felt so ornery and low down and mean, that I says to myself, My mind’s made up; I’ll hive that money for them or bust.

So then I lit out— for bed, I said, meaning some time or another. When I got by myself, I went to thinking the thing over. I says to myself, shall I go to that doctor, private, and blow on these frauds? No— that won’t do. He might tell who told him; then the king and the duke would make it warm for me. Shall I go, private, and tell Mary Jane? No— I dasn’t do it. Her face would give them a hint, sure; they’ve got the money, and they’d slide right out and get away with it. If she was to fetch in help, I’d get mixed up in the business, before it was done with, I judge. No, there ain’t no good way but one. I got to steal that money, somehow; and I got to steal it some way that they won’t suspicion that I done it. They’ve got a good thing, here; and they ain’t agoing to leave till they’ve played this family and this town for all they’re worth, so I’ll "nd a chance time enough. I’ll steal it, and hide it; and by- and-by, when I’m away down the river, I’ll write a letter and tell Mary Jane where it’s hid. But I better hive it to- night, if I can, because the doctor maybe hasn’t let up as much as he lets on he has; he might scare them out of here, yet.

So, thinks I, I’ll go and search them rooms. Up stairs the hall was dark, but I found the duke’s room, and started to paw around it with my hands; but I recollected it wouldn’t be much like the king to let anybody else take care of that money but his own self; so then I went to his room and begun to paw around there. But I see I couldn’t do nothing without a candle, and I dasn’t light one, of course. So I judged I’d got to do the other thing— lay for them, and eavesdrop. About that time, I hears their footsteps coming, and was going to skip under the bed; I reached for it, but it wasn’t where I thought it would be; but I touched the curtain that hid Mary Jane’s frocks,

so I jumped in behind that and snuggled in amongst the gowns, and stood there perfectly still.

They come in and shut the door; and the "rst thing the duke done was to get down and look under the bed. Then I was glad I hadn’t found the bed when I wanted it. And yet, you know, it’s kind of natu ral to hide under the bed when you are up to anything private. They sets down, then, and the king says:

“Well, what is it? and cut it middlin’ short, because it’s better for us to be down there a whoopin’-up the mournin’, than up here givin’ ’em a chance to talk us over.”

“Well, this is it, Capet. I ain’t easy; I ain’t comfortable. That doctor lays on my mind. I wanted to know your plans. I’ve got a notion, and I think it’s a sound one.”

“What is it, duke?” “That we better glide out of this, before three in the morning, and clip it

down the river with what we’ve got. Specially, seeing we got it so easy— given back to us, `ung at our heads, as you may say, when of course we allowed to have to steal it back. I’m for knocking off and lighting out.”

That made me feel pretty bad. About an hour or two ago, it would a been a little dif fer ent, but now it made me feel bad and disappointed. The king rips out and says:

“What! And not sell out the rest o’ the property? March off like a passel o’ fools and leave eight or nine thous’n dollars’ worth o’ property layin’ around jest sufferin’ to be scooped in?— and all good salable stuff, too.”

The duke he grumbled; said the bag of gold was enough, and he didn’t want to go no deeper— didn’t want to rob a lot of orphans of every thing they had.

“Why, how you talk!” says the king. “We shan’t rob ’em of nothing at all but jest this money. The people that buys the property is the suff’rers; because as soon’s it’s found out ’at we didn’t own it— which won’t be long after we’ve slid— the sale won’t be valid, and it’ll all go back to the estate. These- yer orphans ’ll git their house back agin, and that’s enough for them; they’re young and spry, and k’n easy earn a livin’. They ain’t agoing to suffer. Why, jest think— there’s thous’n’s and thous’n’s that ain’t nigh so well off. Bless you, they ain’t got noth’n to complain of.”

Well, the king he talked him blind; so at last he give in, and said all right, but said he believed it was blame foolishness to stay, and that doctor hang- ing over them. But the king says:

“Cuss the doctor! What do we k’yer for him? Hain’t we got all the fools in town on our side? and ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?”

So they got ready to go down stairs again. The duke says: “I don’t think we put that money in a good place.” That cheered me up. I’d begun to think I warn’t going to get a hint of no

kind to help me. The king says: “Why?” “ Because Mary Jane ’ll be in mourning from this out; and "rst you know

the nigger that does up the rooms will get an order to box these duds up and put ’em away; and do you reckon a nigger can run across money and not bor- row some of it?”

“Your head’s level, agin, duke,” says the king; and he come a fumbling under the curtain two or three foot from where I was. I stuck tight to the

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wall, and kept mighty still, though quivery; and I wondered what them fel- lows would say to me if they catched me; and I tried to think what I’d better do if they did catch me. But the king he got the bag before I could think more than about a half a thought, and he never suspicioned I was around. They took and shoved the bag through a rip in the straw tick that was under the feather bed, and crammed it in a foot or two amongst the straw and said it was all right, now, because a nigger only makes up the feather bed, and don’t turn over the straw tick only about twice a year, and so it warn’t in no danger of getting stole, now.

But I knowed better. I had it out of there before they was halfway down stairs. I groped along up to my cubby, and hid it there till I could get a chance to do better. I judged I better hide it outside of the house somewheres, because if they missed it they would give the house a good ransacking. I knowed that very well. Then I turned in, with my clothes all on; but I couldn’t a gone to sleep, if I’d a wanted to, I was in such a sweat to get through with the business. By- and-by I heard the king and the duke come up; so I rolled off of my pallet and laid with my chin at the top of my ladder and waited to see if anything was going to happen. But nothing did.

So I held on till all the late sounds had quit and the early ones hadn’t begun, yet; and then I slipped down the ladder.

Chapter XXVII

I crept to their doors and listened; they was snoring, so I tip- toed along, and got down stairs all right. There warn’t a sound anywheres. I peeped through a crack of the dining- room door, and see the men that was watch- ing the corpse all sound asleep on their chairs. The door was open into the parlor, where the corpse was laying, and there was a candle in both rooms, I passed along, and the parlor door was open; but I see there warn’t nobody in there but the remainders of Peter; so I shoved on by; but the front door was locked, and the key wasn’t there. Just then I heard some- body coming down the stairs, back behind me. I run in the parlor, and took a swift look around, and the only place I see to hide the bag was in the cof"n. The lid was shoved along about a foot, showing the dead man’s face down in there, with a wet cloth over it, and his shroud on. I tucked the money- bag in under the lid, just down beyond where his hands was crossed, which made me creep, they was so cold, and then I run back across the room and in behind the door.

The person coming was Mary Jane. She went to the cof"n, very soft, and kneeled down and looked in; then she put up her handkerchief and I see she begun to cry, though I couldn’t hear her, and her back was to me. I slid out, and as I passed the dining- room I thought I’d make sure them watchers hadn’t seen me; so I looked through the crack and every thing was all right. They hadn’t stirred.

I slipped up to bed, feeling ruther blue, on accounts of the thing playing out that way after I had took so much trou ble and run so much resk about it. Says I, if it could stay where it is, all right; because when we get down the river a hundred mile or two, I could write back to Mary Jane, and she could dig him up again and get it; but that ain’t the thing that’s going to happen;

3. A melodeon, small keyboard organ.

the thing that’s going to happen is, the money ’ll be found when they come to screw on the lid. Then the king ’ll get it again, and it ’ll be a long day before he gives anybody another chance to smouch it from him. Of course I wanted to slide down and get it out of there, but I dasn’t try it. Every min- ute it was getting earlier, now, and pretty soon some of them watchers would begin to stir, and I might get catched— catched with six thousand dollars in my hands that nobody hadn’t hired me to take care of. I don’t wish to be mixed up in no such business as that, I says to myself.

When I got down stairs in the morning, the parlor was shut up, and the watchers was gone. There warn’t nobody around but the family and the widow Bartley and our tribe. I watched their faces to see if anything had been happening, but I couldn’t tell.

Towards the middle of the day the undertaker come, with his man, and they set the cof"n in the middle of the room on a couple of chairs, and then set all our chairs in rows, and borrowed more from the neighbors till the hall and the parlor and the dining- room was full. I see the cof"n lid was the way it was before, but I dasn’t go to look in under it, with folks around.

Then the people begun to `ock in, and the beats and the girls took seats in the front row at the head of the cof"n, and for a half an hour the people "led around slow, in single rank, and looked down at the dead man’s face a minute, and some dropped in a tear, and it was all very still and solemn, only the girls and the beats holding handkerchiefs to their eyes and keeping their heads bent, and sobbing a little. There warn’t no other sound but the scraping of the feet on the `oor, and blowing noses— because people always blows them more at a funeral than they do at other places except church.

When the place was packed full, the undertaker he slid around in his black gloves with his softy soothering ways, putting on the last touches, and get- ting people and things all shipshape and comfortable, and making no more sound than a cat. He never spoke; he moved people around, he squeezed in late ones, he opened up passage- ways, and done it all with nods, and signs with his hands. Then he took his place over against the wall. He was the softest, glidingest, stealthiest man I ever see; and there warn’t no more smile to him than there is to a ham.

They had borrowed a melodeum3— a sick one; and when every thing was ready, a young woman set down and worked it, and it was pretty skreeky and colicky, and every body joined in and sung, and Peter was the only one that had a good thing, according to my notion. Then the Reverend Hobson opened up, slow and solemn, and begun to talk; and straight off the most outrageous row busted out in the cellar a body ever heard; it was only one dog, but he made a most power ful racket, and he kept it up, right along; the parson he had to stand there, over the cof"n, and wait— you couldn’t hear yourself think. It was right down awkward, and nobody didn’t seem to know what to do. But pretty soon they see that long- legged undertaker make a sign to the preacher as much as to say, “ Don’t you worry— just depend on me.” Then he stooped down and begun to glide along the wall, just his shoulders showing

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over the people’s heads. So he glided along, and the pow- wow and racket getting more and more outrageous all the time; and at last, when he had gone around two sides of the room, he dis appears down cellar. Then, in about two seconds we heard a whack, and the dog he "nished up with a most amaz- ing howl or two, and then every thing was dead still, and the parson begun his solemn talk where he left off. In a minute or two here comes this under- taker’s back and shoulders gliding along the wall again; and so he glided, and glided, around three sides of the room, and then rose up, and shaded his mouth with his hands, and stretched his neck out towards the preacher, over the people’s heads, and says, in a kind of a coarse whisper, “He had a rat!” Then he drooped down and glided along the wall again to his place. You could see it was a great satisfaction to the people, because naturally they wanted to know. A little thing like that don’t cost nothing, and it’s just the little things that makes a man to be looked up to and liked. There warn’t no more popu lar man in town than what that undertaker was.

Well, the funeral sermon was very good, but pison long and tiresome; and then the king he shoved in and got off some of his usual rubbage, and at last the job was through, and the undertaker begun to sneak up on the cof- "n with his screw- driver. I was in a sweat then, and watched him pretty keen. But he never meddled at all; just slid the lid along, as soft as mush, and screwed it down tight and fast. So there I was! I didn’t know whether the money was in there, or not. So, says I, spose somebody has hogged that bag on the sly?— now how do I know whether to write to Mary Jane or not? ’Spose she dug him up and didn’t "nd nothing— what would she think of me? Blame it, I says, I might get hunted up and jailed; I’d better lay low and keep dark, and not write at all; the thing’s awful mixed, now; trying to better it, I’ve worsened it a hundred times, and I wish to goodness I’d just let it alone, dad fetch the whole business!

They buried him, and we come back home, and I went to watching faces again— I couldn’t help it, and I couldn’t rest easy. But nothing come of it; the faces didn’t tell me nothing.

The king he visited around, in the eve ning, and sweetened every body up, and made himself ever so friendly; and he give out the idea that his congre- gation over in Eng land would be in a sweat about him, so he must hurry and settle up the estate right away, and leave for home. He was very sorry he was so pushed, and so was every body; they wished he could stay longer, but they said they could see it couldn’t be done. And he said of course him and William would take the girls home with them; and that pleased every- body too, because then the girls would be well "xed, and amongst their own relations; and it pleased the girls, too— tickled them so they clean forgot they ever had a trou ble in the world; and told him to sell out as quick as he wanted to, they would be ready. Them poor things was that glad and happy it made my heart ache to see them getting fooled and lied to so, but I didn’t see no safe way for me to chip in and change the general tune.

Well, blamed if the king didn’t bill the house and the niggers and all the property for auction straight off— sale two days after the funeral; but any- body could buy private beforehand if they wanted to.

So the next day after the funeral, along about noontime, the girls’ joy got the "rst jolt; a couple of nigger traders come along, and the king sold them

4. Bank drafts or checks payable three days later.

the niggers reasonable, for three- day drafts4 as they called it, and away they went, the two sons up the river to Memphis, and their mother down the river to Orleans. I thought them poor girls and them niggers would break their hearts for grief; they cried around each other, and took on so it most made me down sick to see it. The girls said they hadn’t ever dreamed of seeing the family separated or sold away from the town. I can’t ever get it out of my memory, the sight of them poor miserable girls and niggers hang- ing around each other’s necks and crying; and I reckon I couldn’t a stood it all but would a had to bust out and tell on our gang if I hadn’t knowed the sale warn’t no account and the niggers would be back home in a week or two.

The thing made a big stir in the town, too, and a good many come out `atfooted and said it was scandalous to separate the mother and the children that way. It injured the frauds some; but the old fool he bulled right along, spite of all the duke could say or do, and I tell you the duke was power ful uneasy.

Next day was auction day. About broad- day in the morning, the king and the duke come up in the garret and woke me up, and I see by their look that there was trou ble. The king says:

“Was you in my room night before last?” “No, your majesty”— which was the way I always called him when nobody

but our gang warn’t around. “Was you in there yisterday er last night?” “No, your majesty.” “Honor bright, now—no lies.” “Honor bright, your majesty, I’m telling you the truth. I hain’t been anear

your room since Miss Mary Jane took you and the duke and showed it to you.”

The duke says: “Have you seen anybody else go in there?” “No, your grace, not as I remember, I believe.” “Stop and think.” I studied a while, and see my chance, then I says: “Well, I see the niggers go in there several times.” Both of them give a little jump; and looked like they hadn’t ever expected

it, and then like they had. Then the duke says: “What, all of them?” “No— leastways not all at once. That is, I don’t think I ever see them all

come out at once but just one time.” “Hello— when was that?” “It was the day we had the funeral. In the morning. It warn’t early, because

I overslept. I was just starting down the ladder, and I see them.” “Well, go on, go on— what did they do? How’d they act?” “They didn’t do nothing. And they didn’t act anyway, much, as fur as I

see. They tip- toed away; so I seen, easy enough, that they’d shoved in there to do up your majesty’s room, or something, sposing you was up; and found

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5. To scream insults or criticism (slang).

you warn’t up, and so they was hoping to slide out of the way of trou ble with- out waking you up, if they hadn’t already waked you up.”

“ Great guns, this is a go!” says the king; and both of them looked pretty sick, and tolerable silly. They stood there a thinking and scratching their heads, a minute, and then the duke he bust into a kind of a little raspy chuckle, and says:

“It does beat all, how neat the niggers played their hand. They let on to be sorry they was going out of this region! and I believed they was sorry. And so did you, and so did every body. Don’t ever tell me any more that a nigger ain’t got any histrionic talent. Why, the way they played that thing, it would fool anybody. In my opinion there’s a fortune in ’em. If I had capital and a theatre, I wouldn’t want a better lay out than that— and here we’ve gone and sold ’em for a song. Yes, and ain’t privileged to sing the song, yet. Say, where is that song?— that draft.”

“In the bank for to be collected. Where would it be?” “Well, that’s all right then, thank goodness.” Says I, kind of timid- like: “Is something gone wrong?” The king whirls on me and rips out: “None o’ your business! You keep your head shet, and mind y’r own

affairs—if you got any. Long as you’re in this town, don’t you forgit that, you hear?” Then he says to the duke, “We got to jest swaller it, and say noth’n: mum’s the word for us.”

As they was starting down the ladder, the duke he chuckles again, and says:

“Quick sales and small pro"ts! It’s a good business— yes.” The king snarls around on him and says, “I was trying to do for the best, in sellin’ ’m out so quick. If the pro"ts has

turned out to be none, lackin’ considable, and none to carry, is it my fault any more’n it’s yourn?”

“Well, they’d be in this house yet, and we wouldn’t if I could a got my advice listened to.”

The king sassed back, as much as was safe for him, and then swapped around and lit into me again. He give me down the banks5 for not coming and telling him I see the niggers come out of his room acting that way— said any fool would a knowed something was up. And then waltzed in and cussed himself a while; and said it all come of him not laying late and taking his natu ral rest that morning, and he’d be blamed if he’d ever do it again. So they went off a jawing; and I felt dreadful glad I’d worked it all off onto the niggers and yet hadn’t done the niggers no harm by it.

Chapter XXVIII

By- and-by it was getting-up time; so I come down the ladder and started for down stairs, but as I come to the girls’ room, the door was open, and I see Mary Jane setting by her old hair trunk, which was open and she’d been packing things in it— getting ready to go to Eng land. But she had stopped

now, with a folded gown in her lap, and had her face in her hands, crying. I felt awful bad to see it; of course anybody would. I went in there, and says:

“Miss Mary Jane, you can’t abear to see people in trou ble, and I can’t— most always. Tell me about it.”

So she done it. And it was the niggers— I just expected it. She said the beautiful trip to Eng land was most about spoiled for her; she didn’t know how she was ever going to be happy there, knowing the mother and the children warn’t ever going to see each other no more— and then busted out bitterer than ever, and `ung up her hands, and says:

“Oh, dear, dear, to think they ain’t ever going to see each other any more!” “But they will— and inside of two weeks— and I know it!” says I. Laws it was out before I could think!— and before I could budge, she

throws her arms around my neck, and told me to say it again, say it again, say it again!

I see I had spoke too sudden, and said too much, and was in a close place. I asked her to let me think a minute; and she set there, very impatient and excited, and handsome, but looking kind of happy and eased-up, like a per- son that’s had a tooth pulled out. So I went to studying it out. I says to myself, I reckon a body that ups and tells the truth when he is in a tight place, is taking considerable many resks, though I ain’t had no experience, and can’t say for certain; but it looks so to me, anyway; and yet here’s a case where I’m blest if it don’t look to me like the truth is better, and actuly safer, than pa lie. I must lay it by in my mind, and think it over some time or other, it’s so kind of strange and unregular. I never see nothing like it. Well, I says to myself at last, I’m agoing to chance it; I’ll up and tell the truth this time, though it does seem most like setting down on a kag of powder and touch- ing it off just to see where you’ll go to. Then I says:

“Miss Mary Jane, is there any place out of town a little ways, where you could go and stay three or four days?”

“Yes— Mr. Lothrop’s. Why?” “Never mind why, yet. If I’ll tell you how I know the niggers will see each

other again— inside of two weeks— here in this house— and prove how I know it— will you go to Mr. Lothrop’s and stay four days?”

“Four days!” she says; “I’ll stay a year!” “All right,” I says, “I don’t want nothing more out of you than just your

word— I druther have it than another man’s kiss- the- Bible.” She smiled, and reddened up very sweet, and I says, “If you don’t mind it, I’ll shut the door— and bolt it.”

Then I come back and set down again, and says: “ Don’t you holler. Just set still, and take it like a man. I got to tell the truth,

and you want to brace up, Miss Mary, because it’s a bad kind, and going to be hard to take, but there ain’t no help for it. These uncles of yourn ain’t no uncles at all— they’re a couple of frauds— regular dead- beats. There, now we’re over the worst of it— you can stand the rest middling easy.”

It jolted her up like every thing, of course; but I was over the shoal water now, so I went right along, her eyes a blazing higher and higher all the time, and told her every blame thing, from where we "rst struck that young fool going up to the steamboat, clear through to where she `ung herself onto the king’s breast at the front door and he kissed her sixteen or seventeen times— and then up she jumps, with her face a"re like sunset, and says:

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6. The victim of this fairly commonplace mob punishment was tied to a rail, smeared with hot tar, and covered with feathers. Then the victim would be ridden out of town on the rail to the jeers of the mob.

“The brute! Come— don’t waste a minute— not a second— we’ll have them tarred and feathered, and `ung in the river!”6

Says I; “Cert’nly. But do you mean, before you go to Mr. Lothrop’s, or—” “Oh,” she says, “what am I thinking about!” she says, and set right down

again. “ Don’t mind what I said— please don’t— you won’t, now, will you?” Laying her silky hand on mine in that kind of a way that I said I would die "rst. “I never thought, I was so stirred up,” she says; “now go on, and I won’t do so any more. You tell me what to do, and what ever you say, I’ll do it.”

“Well,” I says, “it’s a rough gang, them two frauds, and I’m "xed so I got to travel with them a while longer, whether I want to or not— I druther not tell you why— and if you was to blow on them this town would get me out of their claws, and I’d be all right, but there’d be another person that you don’t know about who’d be in big trou ble. Well, we got to save him, hain’t we? Of course. Well, then, we won’t blow on them.”

Saying them words put a good idea in my head. I see how maybe I could get me and Jim rid of the frauds; get them jailed here, and then leave. But I didn’t want to run the raft in day- time, without anybody aboard to answer questions but me; so I didn’t want the plan to begin working till pretty late to- night. I says:

“Miss Mary Jane, I’ll tell you what we’ll do— and you won’t have to stay at Mr. Lothrop’s so long, nuther. How fur is it?”

“A little short of four miles— right out in the country, back here.” “Well, that’ll answer. Now you go along out there, and lay low till nine or

half- past, to- night, and then get them to fetch you home again— tell them you’ve thought of something. If you get here before eleven, put a candle in this win dow, and if I don’t turn up, wait till eleven, and then if I don’t turn up it means I’m gone, and out of the way, and safe. Then you come out and spread the news around, and get these beats jailed.”

“Good,” she says, “I’ll do it.” “And if it just happens so that I don’t get away, but get took up along with

them, you must up and say I told you the whole thing beforehand, and you must stand by me all you can.”

“Stand by you, indeed I will. They sha’n’t touch a hair of your head!” she says, and I see her nostrils spread and her eyes snap when she said it, too.

“If I get away, I sha’n’t be here,” I says, “to prove these rapscallions ain’t your uncles, and I couldn’t do it if I was here. I could swear they was beats and bummers, that’s all; though that’s worth something. Well, there’s others can do that better than what I can— and they’re people that ain’t going to be doubted as quick as I’d be. I’ll tell you how to "nd them. Gimme a pencil and a piece of paper. There— ‘Royal Nonesuch, Bricksville.’ Put it away, and don’t lose it. When the court wants to "nd out something about these two, let them send up to Bricksville and say they’ve got the men that played the Royal Nonesuch, and ask for some witnesses— why, you’ll have that entire town down here before you can hardly wink, Miss Mary. And they’ll come a- biling, too.”

I judged we had got every thing "xed about right, now. So I says: “Just let the auction go right along, and don’t worry. Nobody don’t have

to pay for the things they buy till a whole day after the auction, on accounts of the short notice, and they ain’t going out of this till they get that money— and the way we’ve "xed it the sale ain’t going to count, and they ain’t going to get no money. It’s just like the way it was with the niggers—it warn’t no sale, and the niggers will be back before long. Why, they can’t collect the money for the niggers, yet— they’re in the worst kind of a "x, Miss Mary.”

“Well,” she says, “I’ll run down to breakfast now, and then I’ll start straight for Mr. Lothrop’s.”

“ ’Deed, that ain’t the ticket, Miss Mary Jane,” I says, “by no manner of means; go before breakfast.”

“Why?” “What did you reckon I wanted you to go at all for, Miss Mary?” “Well, I never thought— and come to think, I don’t know. What was it?” “Why, it’s because you ain’t one of these leather- face people. I don’t want

no better book than what your face is. A body can set down and read it off like coarse paint. Do you reckon you can go and face your uncles, when they come to kiss you good- morning, and never—”

“ There, there, don’t! Yes, I’ll go before breakfast— I’ll be glad to. And leave my sisters with them?”

“Yes— never mind about them. They’ve got to stand it yet a while. They might suspicion something if all of you was to go. I don’t want you to see them, nor your sisters, nor nobody in this town—if a neighbor was to ask how is your uncles this morning, your face would tell something. No, you go right along, Miss Mary Jane, and I’ll "x it with all of them. I’ll tell Miss Susan to give your love to your uncles and say you’ve went away for a few hours for to get a little rest and change, or to see a friend, and you’ll be back to- night or early in the morning.”

“Gone to see a friend is all right, but I won’t have my love given to them.” “Well, then, it sha’n’t be.” It was well enough to tell her so—no harm in

it. It was only a little thing to do, and no trou ble; and it’s the little things that smoothes people’s roads the most, down here below; it would make Mary Jane comfortable, and it wouldn’t cost nothing. Then I says: “ There’s one more thing— that bag of money.”

“Well, they’ve got that; and it makes me feel pretty silly to think how they got it.”

“No, you’re out, there. They hain’t got it.” “Why, who’s got it?” “I wish I knowed, but I don’t. I had it, because I stole it from them: and I

stole it to give to you; and I know where I hid it, but I’m afraid it ain’t there no more. I’m awful sorry, Miss Mary Jane, I’m just as sorry as I can be; but I done the best I could; I did, honest. I come nigh getting caught, and I had to shove it into the "rst place I come to, and run— and it warn’t a good place.”

“Oh, stop blaming yourself— it’s too bad to do it, and I won’t allow it— you couldn’t help it; it wasn’t your fault. Where did you hide it?”

I didn’t want to set her to thinking about her trou bles again; and I couldn’t seem to get my mouth to tell her what would make her see that corpse laying

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7. Courage.

in the cof"n with that bag of money on his stomach. So for a minute I didn’t say nothing— then I says:

“I’d ruther not tell you where I put it, Miss Mary Jane, if you don’t mind letting me off; but I’ll write it for you on a piece of paper, and you can read it along the road to Mr. Lothrop’s; if you want to. Do you reckon that’ll do?”

“Oh, yes.” So I wrote: “I put it in the cof"n. It was in there when you was crying

there, away in the night. I was behind the door, and I was mighty sorry for you, Miss Mary Jane.”

It made my eyes water a little, to remember her crying there all by her- self in the night, and them dev ils laying there right under her own roof, shaming her and robbing her; and when I folded it up and give it to her, I see the water come into her eyes, too; and she shook me by the hand, hard, and says:

“Good- bye— I’m going to do every thing just as you’ve told me; and if I don’t ever see you again, I sha’n’t ever forget you, and I’ll think of you a many and a many a time, and I’ll pray for you, too!”— and she was gone.

Pray for me! I reckoned if she knowed me she’d take a job that was more nearer her size. But I bet she done it, just the same— she was just that kind. She had the grit to pray for Judus if she took the notion— there warn’t no backdown to her, I judge. You may say what you want to, but in my opinion she had more sand in her than any girl I ever see; in my opinion she was just full of sand.7 It sounds like `attery, but it ain’t no `attery. And when it comes to beauty— and goodness too— she lays over them all. I hain’t ever seen her since that time that I see her go out of that door; no, I hain’t ever seen her since, but I reckon I’ve thought of her a many and a many a mil- lion times, and of her saying she would pray for me; and if ever I’d a thought it would do any good for me to pray for her, blamed if I wouldn’t a done it or bust.

Well, Mary Jane she lit out the back way, I reckon; because nobody see her go. When I struck Susan and the hare- lip, I says:

“What’s the name of them people over on t’other side of the river that you all goes to see sometimes?”

They says: “ There’s several; but it’s the Proctors, mainly.” “That’s the name,” I says; “I most forgot it. Well, Miss Mary Jane she

told me to tell you she’s gone over there in a dreadful hurry— one of them’s sick.”

“Which one?” “I don’t know; leastways I kinder forget; but I think it’s—” “Sakes alive, I hope it ain’t Hanner?” “I’m sorry to say it,” I says, “but Hanner’s the very one.” “My goodness— and she so well only last week! Is she took bad?” “It ain’t no name for it. They set up with her all night, Miss Mary Jane

said, and they don’t think she’ll last many hours.” “Only think of that, now! What’s the matter with her!” I couldn’t think of anything reasonable, right off that way, so I says:

8. Huck reaches for the handiest Latin phrase he could be expected to know; meaning “out of

many, one” (the motto of the United States). 9. A fool.

“Mumps.” “Mumps your granny! They don’t set up with people that’s got the mumps.” “They don’t, don’t they? You better bet they do with these mumps. These

mumps is dif fer ent. It’s a new kind, Miss Mary Jane said.” “How’s it a new kind?” “ Because it’s mixed up with other things.” “What other things?” “Well, measles, and whooping- cough, and erysiplas, and consumption, and

yaller janders, and brain fever, and I don’t know what all.” “My land! And they call it the mumps?” “That’s what Miss Mary Jane said.” “Well, what in the nation do they call it the mumps for?” “Why, because it is the mumps. That’s what it starts with.” “Well, ther’ ain’t no sense in it. A body might stump his toe, and take pison,

and fall down the well, and break his neck, and bust his brains out, and somebody come along and ask what killed him, and some numskull up and say, ‘Why, he stumped his toe.’ Would ther’ be any sense in that? No. And ther’ ain’t no sense in this, nuther. Is it ketching?”

“Is it ketching? Why, how you talk. Is a harrow catching?—in the dark? If you don’t hitch onto one tooth, you’re bound to on another, ain’t you? And you can’t get away with that tooth without fetching the whole harrow along, can you? Well, these kind of mumps is a kind of a harrow, as you may say— and it ain’t no slouch of a harrow, nuther, you come to get it hitched on good.”

“Well, it’s awful, I think,” says the hare- lip. “I’ll go to Uncle Harvey and—” “Oh, yes,” I says, “I would. Of course I would. I wouldn’t lose no time.” “Well, why wouldn’t you?” “Just look at it a minute, and maybe you can see. Hain’t your uncles

obleeged to get along home to Eng land as fast as they can? And do you reckon they’d be mean enough to go off and leave you to go all that journey by your- selves? You know they’ll wait for you. So fur, so good. Your uncle Harvey’s a preacher, ain’t he? Very well, then; is a preacher going to deceive a steam- boat clerk? is he going to deceive a ship clerk?—so as to get them to let Miss Mary Jane go aboard? Now you know he ain’t. What will he do, then? Why, he’ll say, ‘It’s a great pity, but my church matters has got to get along the best way they can; for my niece has been exposed to the dreadful pluribus- unum8 mumps, and so it’s my bounden duty to set down here and wait the three months it takes to show on her if she’s got it.’ But never mind, if you think it’s best to tell your uncle Harvey—”

“Shucks, and stay fooling around here when we could all be having good times in Eng land whilst we was waiting to "nd out whether Mary Jane’s got it or not? Why, you talk like a muggins.”9

“Well, anyway, maybe you better tell some of the neighbors.” “Listen at that, now. You do beat all, for natu ral stupidness. Can’t you see

that they’d go and tell? Ther’ ain’t no way but just to not tell anybody at all.” “Well, maybe you’re right— yes, I judge you are right.”

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1. Giraffe.

“But I reckon we ought to tell Uncle Harvey she’s gone out a while, any- way, so he wont be uneasy about her?”

“Yes, Miss Mary Jane she wanted you to do that. She says, ‘Tell them to give Uncle Harvey and William my love and a kiss, and say I’ve run over the river to see Mr.— Mr.— what is the name of that rich family your uncle Peter used to think so much of?— I mean the one that—”

“Why, you must mean the Apthorps, ain’t it?” “Of course; bother them kind of names, a body can’t ever seem to remem-

ber them, half the time, somehow. Yes, she said, say she has run over for to ask the Apthorps to be sure and come to the auction and buy this house, because she allowed her uncle Peter would ruther they had it than anybody else; and she’s going to stick to them till they say they’ll come, and then, if she ain’t too tired, she’s coming home; and if she is, she’ll be home in the morning anyway. She said, don’t say nothing about the Proctors, but only about the Apthorps— which’ll be perfectly true, because she is going there to speak about their buying the house; I know it, because she told me so, herself.”

“All right,” they said, and cleared out to lay for their uncles, and give them the love and the kisses, and tell them the message.

Every thing was all right now. The girls wouldn’t say nothing because they wanted to go to Eng land; and the king and the duke would ruther Mary Jane was off working for the auction than around in reach of Doctor Robinson. I felt very good; I judged I had done it pretty neat— I reckoned Tom Sawyer couldn’t a done it no neater himself. Of course he would a throwed more style into it, but I can’t do that very handy, not being brung up to it.

Well, they held the auction in the public square, along towards the end of the after noon, and it strung along, and strung along, and the old man he was on hand and looking his level piousest, up there longside of the auc- tioneer, and chipping in a little Scripture, now and then, or a little goody- goody saying, of some kind, and the duke he was around goo- gooing for sympathy all he knowed how, and just spreading himself generly.

But by- and-by the thing dragged through, and every thing was sold. Every- thing but a little old tri`ing lot in the graveyard. So they’d got to work that off— I never see such a girafft1 as the king was for wanting to swallow every- thing. Well, whilst they was at it, a steamboat landed, and in about two minutes up comes a crowd a whooping and yelling and laughing and carry- ing on, and singing out:

“ Here’s your opposition line! here’s your two sets o’ heirs to old Peter Wilks— and you pays your money and you takes your choice!”

Chapter XXIX

They was fetching a very nice looking old gentleman along, and a nice look- ing younger one, with his right arm in a sling. And my souls, how the people yelled, and laughed, and kept it up. But I didn’t see no joke about it, and I judged it would strain the duke and the king some to see any. I reckoned

2. A person who can’t hear or speak.

they’d turn pale. But no, nary a pale did they turn. The duke he never let on he suspicioned what was up, but just went a goo- gooing around, happy and satis"ed, like a jug that’s googling out buttermilk; and as for the king, he just gazed and gazed down sorrowful on them newcomers like it give him the stomach- ache in his very heart to think there could be such frauds and rascals in the world. Oh, he done it admirable. Lots of the principal people gethered around the king, to let him see they was on his side. That old gentle- man that had just come looked all puzzled to death. Pretty soon he begun to speak, and I see, straight off, he pronounced like an En glishman, not the king’s way, though the king’s was pretty good, for an imitation. I can’t give the old gent’s words, nor I can’t imitate him; but he turned around to the crowd, and says, about like this:

“This is a surprise to me which I wasn’t looking for; and I’ll acknowledge, candid and frank, I ain’t very well "xed to meet it and answer it; for my brother and me has had misfortunes, he’s broke his arm, and our baggage got put off at a town above here, last night in the night by a mistake. I am Peter Wilks’s brother Harvey, and this is his brother William, which can’t hear nor speak— and can’t even make signs to amount to much, now ’t he’s only got one hand to work them with. We are who we say we are; and in a day or two, when I get the baggage, I can prove it. But, up till then, I won’t say nothing more, but go to the hotel and wait.”

So him and the new dummy2 started off; and the king he laughs, and blethers out:

“Broke his arm— very likely ain’t it?— and very con ve nient, too, for a fraud that’s got to make signs, and hain’t learnt how. Lost their baggage! That’s mighty good!— and mighty ingenious— under the circumstances!”

So he laughed again; and so did every body else, except three or four, or maybe half a dozen. One of these was that doctor; another one was a sharp looking gentleman, with a carpet- bag of the old- fashioned kind made out of carpet- stuff, that had just come off of the steamboat and was talking to him in a low voice, and glancing towards the king now and then and nodding their heads—it was Levi Bell, the lawyer that was gone up to Louisville; and another one was a big rough husky that come along and listened to all the old gentleman said, and was listening to the king now. And when the king got done, this husky up and says:

“Say, looky here; if you are Harvey Wilks, when’d you come to this town?”

“The day before the funeral, friend,” says the king. “But what time o’ day?” “In the evenin’—’bout an hour er two before sundown.” “How’d you come?” “I come down on the Susan Powell, from Cincinnati.” “Well, then, how’d you come to be up at the Pint in the mornin’—in a

canoe?” “I warn’t up at the Pint in the mornin’.” “It’s a lie.”

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Several of them jumped for him and begged him not to talk that way to an old man and a preacher.

“Preacher be hanged, he’s a fraud and a lair. He was up at the Pint that mornin’. I live up there, don’t I? Well, I was up there, and he was up there. I see him there. He come in a canoe, along with Tim Collins and a boy.”

The doctor he up and says: “Would you know the boy again if you was to see him, Hines?” “I reckon I would, but I don’t know. Why, yonder he is, now. I know him

perfectly easy.” It was me he pointed at. The doctor says: “Neighbors. I don’t know whether the new couple is frauds or not; but if

these two ain’t frauds, I am an idiot, that’s all. I think it’s our duty to see that they don’t get away from here till we’ve looked into this thing. Come along, Hines; come along, the rest of you. We’ll take these fellows to the tavern and affront them with t’other couple, and I reckon we’ll "nd out something before we get through.”

It was nuts for the crowd, though maybe not for the king’s friends; so we all started. It was about sundown. The doctor he led me along by the hand, and was plenty kind enough, but he never let go my hand.

We all got in a big room in the hotel, and lit up some candles, and fetched in the new couple. First, the doctor says:

“I don’t wish to be too hard on these two men, but I think they’re frauds, and they may have complices that we don’t know nothing about. If they have, won’t the complices get away with that bag of gold Peter Wilks left? It ain’t unlikely. If these men ain’t frauds, they won’t object to sending for that money and letting us keep it till they prove they’re all right— ain’t that so?”

Every body agreed to that. So I judged they had our gang in a pretty tight place, right at the outstart. But the king he only looked sorrowful, and says:

“Gentlemen, I wish the money was there, for I ain’t got no disposition to throw anything in the way of a fair, open, out- and- out investigation o’ this misable business; but alas, the money ain’t there; you k’n send and see, if you want to.”

“Where is it, then?” “Well, when my niece give it to me to keep for her, I took and hid it inside

o’ the straw tick o’ my bed, not wishin’ to bank it for the few days we’d be here, and considerin’ the bed a safe place, we not bein’ used to niggers, and suppos’n’ ’em honest, like servants in Eng land. The niggers stole it the very next mornin’ after I had went down stairs; and when I sold ’em, I hadn’t missed the money yit, so they got clean away with it. My servant here k’n tell you ’bout it gentlemen.”

The doctor and several said “Shucks!” and I see nobody didn’t altogether believe him. One man asked me if I see the niggers steal it. I said no, but I see them sneaking out of the room and hustling away, and I never thought nothing, only I reckoned they was afraid they had waked up my master and was trying to get away before he made trou ble with them. That was all they asked me. Then the doctor whirls on me and says:

“Are you En glish too?” I says yes; and him and some others laughed, and said, “Stuff!” Well, then they sailed in on the general investigation, and there we had it,

up and down, hour in, hour out, and nobody never said a word about supper,

nor ever seemed to think about it— and so they kept it up, and kept it up; and it was the worst mixed-up thing you ever see. They made the king tell his yarn, and they made the old gentleman tell his’n; and anybody but a lot of prejudiced chuckleheads would a seen that the old gentleman was spinning truth and t’other one lies. And by- and-by they had me up to tell what I knowed. The king he give me a left- handed look out of the corner of his eye, and so I knowed enough to talk on the right side. I begun to tell about Shef"eld, and how we lived there, and all about the En glish Wilkses, and so on; but I didn’t get pretty fur till the doctor begun to laugh; and Levi Bell, the lawyer says:

“Set down, my boy, I wouldn’t strain myself, if I was you. I reckon you ain’t used to lying, it don’t seem to come handy; what you want is practice. You do it pretty awkward.”

I didn’t care nothing for the compliment, but I was glad to be let off, any- way.

The doctor he started to say something, and turns and says: “If you’d been in town at "rst, Levi Bell—” The king broke in and reached out his hand, and says: “Why, is this my poor dead brother’s old friend that he’s wrote so often

about?” The lawyer and him shook hands, and the lawyer smiled and looked

pleased, and they talked right along a while, and then got to one side and talked low; and at last the lawyer speaks up and says:

“That’ll "x it. I’ll take the order and send it, along with your brother’s, and then they’ll know it’s all right.”

So they got some paper and a pen, and the king he set down and twisted his head to one side, and chawed his tongue, and scrawled off something; and then they give the pen to the duke— and then for the "rst time, the duke looked sick. But he took the pen and wrote. So then the lawyer turns to the new old gentleman and says:

“You and your brother please write a line or two and sign your names.” The old gentleman wrote, but nobody couldn’t read it. The lawyer looked

power ful astonished, and says: “Well, it beats me”— and snaked a lot of old letters out of his pocket, and

examined them, and then examined the old man’s writing, and then them again; and then says: “ These old letters is from Harvey Wilks; and here’s these two’s handwritings, and anybody can see they didn’t write them” (the king and the duke looked sold and foolish, I tell you, to see how the lawyer had took them in), “and here’s this old gentleman’s handwriting, and any- body can tell, easy enough, he didn’t write them— fact is, the scratches he makes ain’t properly writing, at all. Now here’s some letters from—”

The new old gentleman says: “If you please, let me explain. Nobody can read my hand but my brother

there—so he copies for me. It’s his hand you’ve got there, not mine.” “Well!” says the lawyer, “this is a state of things. I’ve got some of William’s

letters too; so if you’ll get him to write a line or so we can com—” “He can’t write with his left hand,” says the old gentleman. “If he could

use his right hand, you would see that he wrote his own letters and mine too. Look at both, please— they’re by the same hand.”

The lawyer done it, and says:

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“I believe it’s so— and if it ain’t so, there’s a heap stronger resemblance than I’d noticed before, anyway. Well, well, well! I thought we was right on the track of a slution, but it’s gone to grass, partly. But anyway, one thing is proved— these two ain’t either of ’em Wilkses”— and he wagged his head towards the king and the duke.

Well, what do you think?— that muleheaded old fool wouldn’t give in then! Indeed he wouldn’t. Said it warn’t no fair test. Said his brother William was the cussedest joker in the world, and hadn’t tried to write— he see William was going to play one of his jokes the minute he put the pen to paper. And so he warmed up and went warbling and warbling right along, till he was actuly beginning to believe what he was saying, himself— but pretty soon the new old gentleman broke in, and says:

“I’ve thought of something. Is there anybody here that helped to lay out my br— helped to lay out the late Peter Wilks for burying?”

“Yes,” says somebody, “me and Ab Turner done it. We’re both here.” Then the old man turns towards the king, and says: “Peraps this gentleman can tell me what was tatooed on his breast?” Blamed if the king didn’t have to brace up mighty quick, or he’d a squshed

down like a bluff bank that the river has cut under, it took him so sudden— and mind you, it was a thing that was calculated to make most anybody sqush to get fetched such a solid one as that without any notice— because how was he going to know what was tatooed on the man? He whitened a little; he couldn’t help it; and it was mighty still in there, and every body bending a little forwards and gazing at him. Says I to myself, Now he’ll throw up the sponge— there ain’t no more use. Well, did he? A body can’t hardly believe it, but he didn’t. I reckon he thought he’d keep the thing up till he tired them people out, so they’d thin out, and him and the duke could break loose and get away. Anyway, he set there, and pretty soon he begun to smile, and says:

“Mf! It’s a very tough question, ain’t it! Yes, sir, I k’n tell you what’s tatooed on his breast. It’s jest a small, thin, blue arrow— that’s what it is; and if you don’t look clost, you can’t see it. Now what do you say— hey?”

Well, I never see anything like that old blister for clean out- and- out cheek. The new old gentleman turns brisk towards Ab Turner and his pard, and

his eye lights up like he judged he’d got the king this time, and says: “ There— you’ve heard what he said! Was there any such mark on Peter

Wilks’s breast?” Both of them spoke up and says: “We didn’t see no such mark.” “Good!” says the old gentleman. “Now, what you did see on his breast was

a small dim P, and a B (which is an initial he dropped when he was young), and a W, with dashes between them, so: P— B— W”— and he marked them that way on a piece of paper. “Come— ain’t that what you saw?”

Both of them spoke up again, and says: “No, we didn’t. We never seen any marks at all.” Well, every body was in a state of mind, now; and they sings out: “The whole bilin’ of ’m ’s frauds! Le’s duck ’em! le’s drown ’em! le’s ride

’em on a rail!” and every body was whooping at once, and there was a rat- tling pow- wow. But the lawyer he jumps on the table and yells, and says:

3. Goliath, a Philistine giant who challenged the Israelites. In 1 Samuel, David, a young shepherd, accepts his challenge and kills him with a stone thrown from a sling.

“Gentlemen— gentlemen! Hear me just a word— just a single word—if you please! There’s one way yet— let’s go and dig up the corpse and look.”

That took them. “Hooray!” they all shouted, and was starting right off; but the lawyer and

the doctor sung out: “Hold on, hold on! Collar all these four men and the boy, and fetch them

along, too!” “ We’ll do it!” they all shouted: “and if we don’t "nd them marks we’ll lynch

the whole gang!” I was scared, now, I tell you. But there warn’t no getting away, you know.

They gripped us all, and marched us right along, straight for the graveyard, which was a mile and a half down the river, and the whole town at our heels, for we made noise enough, and it was only nine in the eve ning.

As we went by our house I wished I hadn’t sent Mary Jane out of town; because now if I could tip her the wink, she’d light out and save me, and blow on our dead- beats.

Well, we swarmed along down the river road, just carry ing on like wild- cats; and to make it more scary, the sky was darking up, and the lightning beginning to wink and `itter, and the wind to shiver amongst the leaves. This was the most awful trou ble and most dangersome I ever was in; and I was kinder stunned; every thing was going so dif fer ent from what I had allowed for; stead of being "xed so I could take my own time, if I wanted to, and see all the fun, and have Mary Jane at my back to save me and set me free when the close- "t come, here was nothing in the world betwixt me and sudden death but just them tatoo- marks. If they didn’t "nd them—

I couldn’t bear to think about it; and yet, somehow, I couldn’t think about nothing else. It got darker and darker, and it was a beautiful time to give the crowd the slip; but that big husky had me by the wrist— Hines— and a body might as well try to give Goliar3 the slip. He dragged me right along, he was so excited; and I had to run to keep up.

When they got there they swarmed into the graveyard and washed over it like an over`ow. And when they got to the grave, they found they had about a hundred times as many shovels as they wanted, but nobody hadn’t thought to fetch a lantern. But they sailed into digging, anyway, by the `icker of the lightning, and sent a man to the nearest house a half a mile off, to borrow one.

So they dug and dug, like every thing; and it got awful dark, and the rain started, and the wind swished and swushed along, and the lightning come brisker and brisker, and the thunder boomed; but them people never took no notice of it, they was so full of this business; and one minute you could see every thing and every face in that big crowd, and the shovelfuls of dirt sailing up out of the grave, and the next second the dark wiped it all out, and you couldn’t see nothing at all.

At last they got out the cof"n, and begun to unscrew the lid, and then such another crowding, and shouldering, and shoving as there was, to scrouge in and get a sight, you never see; and in the dark, that way, it was awful.

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Hines he hurt my wrist dreadful, pulling and tugging so, and I reckon he clean forgot I was in the world, he was so excited and panting.

All of a sudden the lightning let go a perfect sluice of white glare, and somebody sings out:

“By the living jingo, here’s the bag of gold on his breast!” Hines let out a whoop, like every body else, and dropped my wrist and give

a big surge to bust his way in and get a look, and the way I lit out and shinned for the road in the dark, there ain’t nobody can tell.

I had the road all to myself, and I fairly `ew— leastways I had it all to myself except the solid dark, and the now- and- then glares, and the buzzing of the rain, and the thrashing of the wind, and the splitting of the thunder; and sure as you are born I did clip it along!

When I struck the town, I see there warn’t nobody out in the storm, so I never hunted for no back streets, but humped it straight through the main one; and when I begun to get towards our house I aimed my eye and set it. No light there; the house all dark— which made me feel sorry and disap- pointed, I didn’t know why. But at last, just as I was sailing by, #ash comes the light in Mary Jane’s win dow! and my heart swelled up sudden, like to bust; and the same second the house and all was behind me in the dark, and wasn’t ever going to be before me no more in this world. She was the best girl I ever see, and had the most sand.

The minute I was far enough above the town to see I could make the tow- head, I begun to look sharp for a boat to borrow; and the "rst time the light- ning showed me one that wasn’t chained, I snatched it and shoved. It was a canoe, and warn’t fastened with nothing but a rope. The tow- head was a rat- tling big distance off, away out there in the middle of the river, but I didn’t lose no time; and when I struck the raft at last, I was so fagged I would a just laid down to blow and gasp if I could afforded it. But I didn’t. As I sprung aboard I sung out:

“Out with you Jim, and set her loose! Glory be to goodness, we’re shut of them!”

Jim lit out, and was a coming for me with both arms spread, he was so full of joy; but when I glimpsed him in the lightning, my heart shot up in my mouth, and I went overboard backwards; for I forgot he was old King Lear and a drownded A- rab all in one, and it most scared the livers and lights out of me. But Jim "shed me out, and was going to hug me and bless me, and so on, he was so glad I was back and we was shut of the king and the duke, but I says:

“Not now— have it for breakfast, have it for breakfast! Cut loose and let her slide!”

So, in two seconds, away we went, a sliding down the river, and it did seem so good to be free again and all by ourselves on the big river and nobody to bother us. I had to skip around a bit, and jump up and crack my heels a few times, I couldn’t help it; but about the third crack, I noticed a sound that I knowed mighty well— and held my breath and listened and waited— and sure enough, when the next `ash busted out over the water, here they come!— and just a laying to their oars and making their skiff hum! It was the king and the duke.

So I wilted right down onto the planks, then, and give up; and it was all I could do to keep from crying.

4. Nooses from a hanging.

Chapter XXX

When they got aboard, the king went for me, and shook me by the collar, and says:

“Tryin’ to give us the slip, was ye, you pup! Tired of our com pany— hey!” I says: “No, your majesty, we warn’t— please don’t, your majesty!” “Quick, then, and tell us what was your idea, or I’ll shake the insides out

o’ you!” “Honest, I’ll tell you every thing, just as it happened, your majesty. The

man that had aholt of me was very good to me, and kept saying he had a boy about as big as me that died last year, and he was sorry to see a boy in such a dangerous "x; and when they was all took by surprise by "nding the gold, and made a rush for the cof"n, he lets go of me and whispers, ‘Heel it, now, or they’ll hang ye, sure!’ and I lit out. It didn’t seem no good for me to stay— I couldn’t do nothing, and I didn’t want to be hung if I could get away. So I never stopped running till I found the canoe; and when I got here I told Jim to hurry, or they’d catch me and hang me yet, and said I was afeard you and the duke wasn’t alive, now, and I was awful sorry, and so was Jim, and was awful glad when we see you coming, you may ask Jim if I didn’t.”

Jim said it was so; and the king told him to shut up, and said, “Oh, yes, it’s mighty likely!” and shook me up again, and said he reckoned he’d drownded me. But the duke says:

“Leggo the boy, you old idiot! Would you a done any dif fer ent? Did you inquire around for him, when you got loose? I don’t remember it.”

So the king let go of me, and begun to cuss that town and every body in it. But the duke says:

“You better a blame sight give yourself a good cussing, for you’re the one that’s entitled to it most. You hain’t done a thing, from the start, that had any sense in it, except coming out so cool and cheeky with that imaginary blue- arrow mark. That was bright—it was right down bully; and it was the thing that saved us. For if it hadn’t been for that, they’d a jailed us till them En glishmen’s baggage come— and then— the penitentiary, you bet! But that trick took ’em to the graveyard, and the gold done us a still bigger kindness; for if the excited fools hadn’t let go all holts and made that rush to get a look, we’d a slept in our cravats4 to- night— cravats warranted to wear, too— longer than we’d need ’em.”

They was still a minute— thinking— then the king says, kind of absent- minded like:

“Mf! And we reckoned the niggers stole it!” That made me squirm! “Yes,” says the duke, kinder slow, and deliberate, and sarcastic, “We did.” After about a half a minute, the king drawls out: “Leastways— I did.” The duke says, the same way: “On the contrary— I did.” The king kind of ruf`es up, and says:

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5. Coin of ancient Israel used here colloquially to suggest a coin of low value.

“Looky here, Bilgewater, what’r you referrin’ to?” The duke says, pretty brisk: “When it comes to that, maybe you’ll let me ask, what was you refer-

ring to?” “Shucks!” says the king, very sarcastic; “but I don’t know— maybe you was

asleep, and didn’t know what you was about.” The duke bristles right up, now, and says: “Oh, let up on this cussed nonsense—do you take me for a blame’ fool?

Don’t you reckon I know who hid that money in that cof"n?” “Yes, sir! I know you do know— because you done it yourself!” “It’s a lie!”— and the duke went for him. The king sings out: “Take y’r hands off!— leggo my throat!— I take it all back!” The duke says: “Well, you just own up, "rst, that you did hide that money there, intend-

ing to give me the slip one of these days, and come back and dig it up, and have it all to yourself.”

“Wait jest a minute, duke— answer me this one question, honest and fair; if you didn’t put the money there, say it, and I’ll b’lieve you, and take back every thing I said.”

“You old scoundrel, I didn’t, and you know I didn’t. There, now!” “Well, then, I b’lieve you. But answer me only jest this one more— now

don’t git mad; didn’t you have it in your mind to hook the money and hide it?” The duke never said nothing for a little bit; then he says: “Well— I don’t care if I did, I didn’t do it, anyway. But you not only had it

in mind to do it, but you done it.” “I wisht I may never die if I done it, duke, and that’s honest. I won’t say I

warn’t goin’ to do it, because I was; but you— I mean somebody— got in ahead o’ me.”

“It’s a lie! You done it, and you got to say you done it, or—” The king begun to gurgle, and then he gasps out: “ ’Nough!— I own up!” I was very glad to hear him say that, it made me feel much more easier

than what I was feeling before. So the duke took his hands off, and says: “If you ever deny it again, I’ll drown you. It’s well for you to set there and

blubber like a baby— it’s "tten for you, after the way you’ve acted. I never see such an old ostrich for wanting to gobble every thing— and I a trusting you all the time, like you was my own father. You ought to be ashamed of yourself to stand by and hear it saddled onto a lot of poor niggers and you never say a word for ’em. It makes me feel ridicu lous to think I was soft enough to believe that rubbage. Cuss you, I can see, now, why you was so anxious to make up the deffesit— you wanted to get what money I’d got out of the Nonesuch and one thing or another, and scoop it all!”

The king says, timid, and still a snuf`ing: “Why, duke, it was you that said make up the deffersit, it warn’t me.” “Dry up! I don’t want to hear no more out of you!” says the duke. “And

now you see what you got by it. They’ve got all their own money back, and all of ourn but a shekel5 or two, besides. G’long to bed— and don’t you def- fersit me no more deffersits, long ’s you live!”

So the king sneaked into the wigwam, and took to his bottle for comfort; and before long the duke tackled his bottle; and so in about a half an hour they was as thick as thieves again, and the tighter they got, the lovinger they got; and went off a snoring in each other’s arms. They both got power ful mellow, but I noticed the king didn’t get mellow enough to forget to remem- ber to not deny about hiding the money- bag again. That made me feel easy and satis"ed. Of course when they got to snoring, we had a long gabble, and I told Jim every thing.

Chapter XXXI

We dasn’t stop again at any town, for days and days; kept right along down the river. We was down south in the warm weather, now, and a mighty long ways from home. We begun to come to trees with Spanish moss on them, hanging down from the limbs like long gray beards. It was the "rst I ever see it growing, and it made the woods look solemn and dismal. So now the frauds reckoned they was out of danger, and they begun to work the villages again.

First they done a lecture on temperance; but they didn’t make enough for them both to get drunk on. Then in another village they started a dancing school; but they didn’t know no more how to dance than a kangaroo does; so the "rst prance they made, the general public jumped in and pranced them out of town. Another time they tried a go at yellocution; but they didn’t yellocute long till the audience got up and give them a solid good cussing and made them skip out. They tackled missionarying, and mesmerizering, and doctoring, and telling fortunes, and a little of every thing; but they couldn’t seem to have no luck. So at last they got just about dead broke, and laid around the raft, as she `oated along, thinking, and thinking, and never saying nothing, by the half a day at a time, and dreadful blue and desperate.

And at last they took a change, and begun to lay their heads together in the wigwam and talk low and con"dential two or three hours at a time. Jim and me got uneasy. We didn’t like the look of it. We judged they was study- ing up some kind of worse dev iltry than ever. We turned it over and over, and at last we made up our minds they was going to break into somebody’s house or store, or was going into the counterfeit- money business, or some- thing. So then we was pretty scared, and made up an agreement that we wouldn’t have nothing in the world to do with such actions, and if we ever got the least show we would give them the cold shake, and clear out and leave them behind. Well, early one morning we hid the raft in a good safe place about two mile below a little bit of a shabby village, named Pikesville, and the king he went ashore, and told us all to stay hid whilst he went up to town and smelt around to see if anybody had got any wind of the Royal None- such there yet. (“House to rob, you mean,” says I to myself; “and when you get through robbing it you’ll come back here and won der what’s become of me and Jim and the raft— and you’ll have to take it out in wondering.”) And he said if he warn’t back by midday, the duke and me would know it was all right, and we was to come along.

So we staid where we was. The duke he fretted and sweated around, and was in a mighty sour way. He scolded us for every thing, and we couldn’t seem to do nothing right; he found fault with every little thing. Something was

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6. Cheap barroom.

a- brewing, sure. I was good and glad when midday come and no king; we could have a change, anyway— and maybe a chance for the change, on top of it. So me and the duke went up to the village, and hunted around there for the king, and by- and-by we found him in the back room of a little low doggery,6 very tight, and a lot of loafers bullyragging him for sport, and he a cussing and threatening with all his might, and so tight he couldn’t walk, and couldn’t do nothing to them. The duke he begun to abuse him for an old fool, and the king begun to sass back; and the minute they was fairly at it, I lit out, and shook the reefs out of my hind legs, and spun down the river road like a deer— for I see our chance; and I made up my mind that it would be a long day before they ever see me and Jim again. I got down there all out of breath but loaded up with joy, and sung out—

“Set her loose, Jim, we’re all right, now!” But there warn’t no answer, and nobody come out of the wigwam. Jim was

gone! I set up a shout— and then another— and then another one; and run this way and that in the woods, whooping and screeching; but it warn’t no use— old Jim was gone. Then I set down and cried; I couldn’t help it. But I couldn’t set still long. Pretty soon I went out on the road, trying to think what I better do, and I run across a boy walking, and asked him if he’d seen a strange nigger, dressed so and so, and he says:

“Yes.” “Whereabouts?” says I. “Down to Silas Phelps’s place, two mile below here. He’s a runaway nig-

ger, and they’ve got him. Was you looking for him?” “You bet I ain’t! I run across him in the woods about an hour or two ago,

and he said if I hollered he’d cut my livers out— and told me to lay down and stay where I was; and I done it. Been there ever since; afeard to come out.”

“Well,” he says, “you needn’t be afraid no more, becuz they’ve got him. He run off f’m down South, som’ers.”

“It’s a good job they got him.” “Well, I reckon! There’s two hundred dollars reward on him. It’s like pick-

ing up money out’n the road.” “Yes, it is— and I could a had it if I’d been big enough; I see him "rst. Who

nailed him?” “It was an old fellow— a stranger— and he sold out his chance in him for

forty dollars, becuz he’s got to go up the river and can’t wait. Think o’ that, now! You bet I’d wait, if it was seven year.”

“That’s me, every time,” says I. “But maybe his chance ain’t worth no more than that, if he’ll sell it so cheap. Maybe there’s something ain’t straight about it.”

“But it is, though— straight as a string. I see the handbill myself. It tells all about him, to a dot— paints him like a picture, and tells the plantation he’s frum, below Newrleans. No- siree- bob, they ain’t no trou ble ’bout that speculation, you bet you. Say, gimme a chaw tobacker, won’t ye?”

I didn’t have none, so he left. I went to the raft, and set down in the wig- wam to think. But I couldn’t come to nothing. I thought till I wore my head sore, but I couldn’t see no way out of the trou ble. After all this long journey,

and after all we’d done for them scoundrels, here was it all come to noth- ing, every thing all busted up and ruined, because they could have the heart to serve Jim such a trick as that, and make him a slave again all his life, and amongst strangers, too, for forty dirty dollars.

Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to be a slave at home where his family was, as long as he’d got to be a slave, and so I’d better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him to tell Miss Watson where he was. But I soon give up that notion, for two things: she’d be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for leaving her, and so she’d sell him straight down the river again; and if she didn’t, every body naturally despises an ungrateful nigger, and they’d make Jim feel it all the time, and so he’d feel ornery and disgraced. And then think of me! It would get all around, that Huck Finn helped a nigger to get his freedom; and if I was to ever see anybody from that town again, I’d be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame. That’s just the way: a person does a low- down thing, and then he don’t want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide it, it ain’t no disgrace. That was my "x exactly. The more I studied about this, the more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and low- down and ornery I got to feeling. And at last, when it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven, whilst I was stealing a poor old woman’s nigger that hadn’t ever done me no harm, and now was showing me there’s One that’s always on the lookout, and ain’t agoing to allow no such miserable doings to go only just so fur and no further, I most dropped in my tracks I was so scared. Well, I tried the best I could to kinder soften it up somehow for myself, by saying I was brung up wicked, and so I warn’t so much to blame; but something inside of me kept saying, “ There was the Sunday school, you could a gone to it; and if you’d a done it they’d a learnt you, there, that people that acts as I’d been acting about the nigger goes to everlasting "re.”

It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray; and see if I couldn’t try to quit being the kind of a boy I was, and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn’t come. Why wouldn’t they? It warn’t no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from me, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn’t come. It was because my heart warn’t right; it was because I warn’t square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger’s owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie— and He knowed it. You can’t pray a lie— I found that out.

So I was full of trou ble, full as I could be; and didn’t know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I’ll go and write the letter— and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather, right straight off, and my trou bles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:

Miss Watson your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send.

Huck Finn.

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I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the "rst time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn’t do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking— thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me, all the time, in the day, and in the night- time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a `oating along, talking, and singing, and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I’d see him standing my watch on top of his’n, stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such- like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me, and do every thing he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small- pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he’s got now; and then I happened to look around, and see that paper.

It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a trem- bling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:

“All right, then, I’ll go to hell”— and tore it up. It was awful thoughts, and awful words, but they was said. And I let them

stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head; and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn’t. And for a starter, I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog.

Then I set to thinking over how to get at it, and turned over considerable many ways in my mind; and at last "xed up a plan that suited me. So then I took the bearings of a woody island that was down the river a piece, and as soon as it was fairly dark I crept out with my raft and went for it, and hid it there, and then turned in. I slept the night through, and got up before it was light, and had my breakfast, and put on my store clothes, and tied up some others and one thing or another in a bundle, and took the canoe and cleared for shore. I landed below where I judged was Phelps’s place, and hid my bundle in the woods, and then "lled up the canoe with water, and loaded rocks into her and sunk her where I could "nd her again when I wanted her, about a quarter of a mile below a little steam sawmill that was on the bank.

Then I struck up the road, and when I passed the mill I see a sign on it, “Phelps’s Sawmill,” and when I come to the farm houses, two or three hun- dred yards further along, I kept my eyes peeled, but didn’t see nobody around, though it was good daylight, now. But I didn’t mind, because I didn’t want to see nobody just yet— I only wanted to get the lay of the land. According to my plan, I was going to turn up there from the village, not from below. So I just took a look, and shoved along, straight for town. Well, the very "rst man I see, when I got there, was the duke. He was sticking up a bill for the Royal Nonesuch— three- night performance— like that other time. They had the cheek, them frauds! I was right on him, before I could shirk. He looked astonished, and says:

“Hel- lo! Where’d you come from?” Then he says, kind of glad and eager, “Where’s the raft?— got her in a good place?”

I says: “Why, that’s just what I was agoing to ask your grace.” Then he didn’t look so joyful— and says: “What was your idea for asking me?” he says. “Well,” I says, “when I see the king in that doggery yesterday, I says to

myself, we can’t get him home for hours, till he’s soberer; so I went a loa"ng around town to put in the time, and wait. A man up and offered me ten cents to help him pull a skiff over the river and back to fetch a sheep, and so I went along; but when we was dragging him to the boat, and the man left me aholt of the rope and went behind him to shove him along, he was too strong for me, and jerked loose and run, and we after him. We didn’t have no dog, and so we had to chase him all over the country till we tired him out. We never got him till dark, then we fetched him over, and I started down for the raft. When I got there and see it was gone, I says to myself, ‘ they’ve got into trou ble and had to leave; and they’ve took my nigger, which is the only nigger I’ve got in the world, and now I’m in a strange country, and ain’t got no property no more, nor nothing, and no way to make my living’; so I set down and cried. I slept in the woods all night. But what did become of the raft then?— and Jim, poor Jim!”

“Blamed if I know— that is, what’s become of the raft. That old fool had made a trade and got forty dollars, and when we found him in the doggery the loafers had matched half dollars with him and got every cent but what he’d spent for whiskey; and when I got him home late last night and found the raft gone, we said, ‘That little rascal has stole our raft and shook us, and run off down the river.’ ”

“I wouldn’t shake my nigger, would I?— the only nigger I had in the world, and the only property.”

“We never thought of that. Fact is, I reckon we’d come to consider him our nigger; yes, we did consider him so— goodness knows we had trou ble enough for him. So when we see the raft was gone, and we `at broke, there warn’t anything for it but to try the Royal Nonesuch another shake. And I’ve pegged along ever since, dry as a powderhorn. Where’s that ten cents? Give it here.”

I had considerable money, so I give him ten cents, but begged him to spend it for something to eat, and give me some, because it was all the money I had, and I hadn’t had nothing to eat since yesterday. He never said nothing. The next minute he whirls on me and says:

“Do you reckon that nigger would blow on us? We’d skin him if he done that!”

“How can he blow? Hain’t he run off?” “No! That old fool sold him, and never divided with me, and the money’s

gone.” “Sold him?” I says, and begun to cry; “why, he was my nigger, and that

was my money. Where is he?— I want my nigger.” “Well, you can’t get your nigger, that’s all—so dry up your blubbering.

Looky here—do you think you’d venture to blow on us? Blamed if I think I’d trust you. Why, if you was to blow on us—”

He stopped, but I never see the duke look so ugly out of his eyes before. I went on a- whimpering, and says:

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“I don’t want to blow on nobody; and I ain’t got no time to blow, nohow. I got to turn out and "nd my nigger.”

He looked kinder bothered, and stood there with his bills `uttering on his arm, thinking, and wrinkling up his forehead. At last he says:

“I’ll tell you something. We got to be here three days. If you’ll promise you won’t blow, and won’t let the nigger blow, I’ll tell you where to "nd him.”

So I promised, and he says: “A farmer by the name of Silas Ph—” and then he stopped. You see he

started to tell me the truth; but when he stopped, that way, and begun to study and think again, I reckoned he was changing his mind. And so he was. He wouldn’t trust me; he wanted to make sure of having me out of the way the whole three days. So pretty soon he says: “The man that bought him is named Abram Foster— Abram G. Foster— and he lives forty mile back here in the country, on the road to Lafayette.”

“All right,” I says, “I can walk it in three days. And I’ll start this very after- noon.”

“No you won’t, you’ll start now; and don’t you lose any time about it, nei- ther, nor do any gabbling by the way. Just keep a tight tongue in your head and move right along, and then you won’t get into trou ble with us, d’ye hear?”

That was the order I wanted, and that was the one I played for. I wanted to be left free to work my plans.

“So clear out,” he says; “and you can tell Mr. Foster what ever you want to. Maybe you can get him to believe that Jim is your nigger— some idiots don’t require documents— leastways I’ve heard there’s such down South here. And when you tell him the handbill and the reward’s bogus, maybe he’ll believe you when you explain to him what the idea was for getting ’em out. Go ’long, now, and tell him anything you want to; but mind you don’t work your jaw any between here and there.”

So I left, and struck for the back country. I didn’t look around, but I kinder felt like he was watching me. But I knowed I could tire him out at that. I went straight out in the country as much as a mile, before I stopped; then I doubled back through the woods towards Phelps’s. I reckoned I better start in on my plan straight off, without fooling around, because I wanted to stop Jim’s mouth till these fellows could get away. I didn’t want no trou ble with their kind. I’d seen all I wanted to of them, and wanted to get entirely shut of them.

Chapter XXXII

When I got there it was all still and Sunday- like, and hot and sunshiny— the hands was gone to the "elds; and there was them kind of faint dronings of bugs and `ies in the air that makes it seem so lonesome and like every- body’s dead and gone; and if a breeze fans along and quivers the leaves, it makes you feel mournful, because you feel like it’s spirits whispering— spirits that’s been dead ever so many years— and you always think they’re talking about you. As a general thing it makes a body wish he was dead, too, and done with it all.

Phelps’s was one of these little one- horse cotton plantations; and they all look alike. A rail fence round a two- acre yard; a stile, made out of logs sawed off and up- ended, in steps, like barrels of a dif fer ent length, to climb over

7. A container for lye used in making soap.

the fence with, and for the women to stand on when they are going to jump onto a horse; some sickly grass- patches in the big yard, but mostly it was bare and smooth, like an old hat with the nap rubbed off; big double log house for the white folks— hewed logs, with the chinks stopped up with mud or mortar, and these mud- stripes been whitewashed some time or another; round- log kitchen, with a big broad, open but roofed passage joining it to the house; log smoke- house back of the kitchen; three little log nigger- cabins in a row t’other side the smoke house; one little hut all by itself away down against the back fence, and some outbuildings down a piece the other side; ash- hopper,7 and big kettle to bile soap in, by the little hut; bench by the kitchen door, with bucket of water and a gourd; hound asleep there, in the sun; more hounds asleep, round about; about three shade- trees away off in a corner; some currant bushes and gooseberry bushes in one place by the fence; outside of the fence a garden and a water- melon patch; then the cotton "elds begins; and after the "elds, the woods.

I went around and clumb over the back stile by the ash- hopper, and started for the kitchen. When I got a little ways, I heard the dim hum of a spinning- wheel wailing along up and sinking along down again; and then I knowed for certain I wished I was dead— for that is the lonesomest sound in the whole world.

I went right along, not "xing up any par tic u lar plan, but just trusting to Providence to put the right words in my mouth when the time come; for I’d noticed that Providence always did put the right words in my mouth, if I left it alone.

When I got half- way, "rst one hound and then another got up and went for me, and of course I stopped and faced them, and kept still. And such another pow- wow as they made! In a quarter of a minute I was a kind of a hub of a wheel, as you may say— spokes made out of dogs— circle of "fteen of them packed together around me, with their necks and noses stretched up towards me, a barking and howling; and more a coming; you could see them sailing over fences and around corners from everywheres.

A nigger woman come tearing out of the kitchen with a rolling- pin in her hand, singing out, “Begone! you Tige! you Spot! begone, sah!” and she fetched "rst one and then another of them a clip and sent him howling, and then the rest followed; and the next second, half of them come back, wagging their tails around me and making friends with me. There ain’t no harm in a hound, nohow.

And behind the woman comes a little nigger girl and two little nigger boys, without anything on but tow- linen shirts, and they hung onto their mother’s gown, and peeped out from behind her at me, bashful, the way they always do. And here comes the white woman running from the house, about forty- "ve or "fty year old, bare- headed, and her spinning- stick in her hand; and behind her comes her little white children, acting the same way the little niggers was doing. She was smiling all over so she could hardly stand— and says:

“It’s you, at last!— ain’t it?” I out with a “Yes’m,” before I thought.

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8. “Lalla Rookh” (1817), a popu lar Romantic poem by the Irish poet Thomas Moore (1779–1852).

9. Gangrene.

She grabbed me and hugged me tight; and then gripped me by both hands and shook and shook; and the tears come in her eyes, and run down over; and she couldn’t seem to hug and shake enough, and kept saying, “You don’t look as much like your mother as I reckoned you would, but law sakes, I don’t care for that, I’m so glad to see you! Dear, dear, it does seem like I could eat you up! Children, it’s your cousin Tom!— tell him howdy.”

But they ducked their heads, and put their "n gers in their mouths, and hid behind her. So she run on:

“Lize, hurry up and get him a hot breakfast, right away—or did you get your breakfast on the boat?”

I said I had got it on the boat. So then she started for the house, leading me by the hand, and the children tagging after. When we got there, she set me down in a split- bottomed chair, and set herself down on a little low stool in front of me, holding both of my hands, and says:

“Now I can have a good look at you; and laws- a-me, I’ve been hungry for it a many and a many a time, all these long years, and it’s come at last! We been expecting you a couple of days and more. What’s kep’ you?— boat get aground?”

“Yes’m— she—” “ Don’t say yes’m— say Aunt Sally. Where’d she get aground?” I didn’t rightly know what to say, because I didn’t know whether the boat

would be coming up the river or down. But I go a good deal on instinct; and my instinct said she would be coming up— from down toward Orleans. That didn’t help me much, though; for I didn’t know the names of bars down that way. I see I’d got to invent a bar, or forget the name of the one we got aground on— or— Now I struck an idea, and fetched it out:

“It warn’t the grounding— that didn’t keep us back but a little. We blowed out a cylinder- head.”

“Good gracious! anybody hurt?” “No’m. Killed a nigger.” “Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt. Two years ago last

Christmas, your uncle Silas was coming up from Newrleans on the old Lally Rook,8 and she blowed out a cylinder- head and crippled a man. And I think he died afterwards. He was a Babtist. Your uncle Silas knowed a family in Baton Rouge that knowed his people very well. Yes, I remember, now he did die. Morti"cation9 set in, and they had to amputate him. But it didn’t save him. Yes, it was morti"cation— that was it. He turned blue all over, and died in the hope of a glorious resurrection. They say he was a sight to look at. Your uncle’s been up to the town every day to fetch you. And he’s gone again, not more’n an hour ago; he’ll be back any minute, now. You must a met him on the road, didn’t you?— oldish man, with a—”

“No, I didn’t see nobody, Aunt Sally. The boat landed just at daylight, and I left my baggage on the wharf- boat and went looking around the town and out a piece in the country, to put in the time and not get here too soon; and so I come down the back way.”

“Who’d you give the baggage to?”

“Nobody.” “Why, child, it’ll be stole!” “Not where I hid it I reckon it won’t,” I says. “How’d you get your breakfast so early on the boat?” It was kinder thin ice, but I says: “The captain see me standing around, and told me I better have some-

thing to eat before I went ashore; so he took me in the texas to the of"cers’ lunch, and give me all I wanted.”

I was getting so uneasy I couldn’t listen good. I had my mind on the children all the time; I wanted to get them out to one side, and pump them a little, and "nd out who I was. But I couldn’t get no show, Mrs. Phelps kept it up and run on so. Pretty soon she made the cold chills streak all down my back, because she says:

“But here we’re a running on this way, and you hain’t told me a word about Sis, nor any of them. Now I’ll rest my works a little, and you start up yourn; just tell me every thing— tell me all about ’m all— every one of ’m; and how they are, and what they’re doing, and what they told you to tell me; and every last thing you can think of.”

Well, I see I was up a stump— and up it good. Providence had stood by me this fur, all right, but I was hard and tight aground, now. I see it warn’t a bit of use to try to go ahead— I’d got to throw up my hand. So I says to myself, here’s another place where I got to resk the truth. I opened my mouth to begin; but she grabbed me and hustled me in behind the bed, and says:

“ Here he comes! stick your head down lower— there, that’ll do; you can’t be seen, now. Don’t you let on you’re here. I’ll play a joke on him. Children, don’t you say a word.”

I see I was in a "x, now. But it warn’t no use to worry; there warn’t noth- ing to do but just hold still, and try to be ready to stand from under when the lightning struck.

I had just one little glimpse of the old gentleman when he come in, then the bed hid him. Mrs. Phelps she jumps for him and says:

“Has he come?” “No,” says her husband. “Good- ness gracious!” she says, “what in the world can have become of him?” “I can’t imagine,” says the old gentleman; “and I must say, it makes me

dreadful uneasy.” “Uneasy!” she says, “I’m ready to go distracted! He must a come; and you’ve

missed him along the road. I know it’s so— something tells me so.” “Why Sally, I couldn’t miss him along the road— you know that.” “But oh, dear, dear, what will Sis say! He must a come! You must a missed

him. He—” “Oh, don’t distress me any more’n I’m already distressed. I don’t know what

in the world to make of it. I’m at my wit’s end, and I don’t mind acknowledg- ing ’t I’m right down scared. But there’s no hope that he’s come; for he couldn’t come and me miss him. Sally, it’s terrible— just terrible— something’s hap- pened to the boat, sure!”

“Why, Silas! Look yonder!—up the road!— ain’t that somebody coming?” He sprung to the win dow at the head of the bed, and that give Mrs. Phelps

the chance she wanted. She stooped down quick, at the foot of the bed, and give me a pull, and out I come; and when he turned back from the win dow,

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1. I.e., change plans. 2. The White River meets the Mississippi in Desha County, Arkansas.

there she stood, a- beaming and a- smiling like a house a"re, and I standing pretty meek and sweaty alongside. The old gentleman stared, and says:

“Why, who’s that?” “Who do you reckon ’t is?” “I hain’t no idea. Who is it?” “It’s Tom Sawyer!” By jings, I most slumped through the `oor. But there warn’t no time to

swap knives;1 the old man grabbed me by the hand and shook, and kept on shaking; and all the time, how the woman did dance around and laugh and cry; and then how they both did "re off questions about Sid, and Mary, and the rest of the tribe.

But if they was joyful, it warn’t nothing to what I was; for it was like being born again, I was so glad to "nd out who I was. Well, they froze to me for two hours; and at last when my chin was so tired it couldn’t hardly go, any more, I had told them more about my family— I mean the Sawyer family— than ever happened to any six Sawyer families. And I explained all about how we blowed out a cylinder- head at the mouth of the White River2 and it took us three days to "x it. Which was all right, and worked "rst rate; because they didn’t know but what it would take three days to "x it. If I’d a called it a bolt- head it would a done just as well.

Now I was feeling pretty comfortable all down one side, and pretty uncom- fortable all up the other. Being Tom Sawyer was easy and comfortable; and it stayed easy and comfortable till by- and-by I hear a steamboat coughing along down the river— then I says to myself, spose Tom Sawyer come down on that boat?— and spose he steps in here, any minute, and sings out my name before I can throw him a wink to keep quiet? Well, I couldn’t have it that way—it wouldn’t do at all. I must go up the road and waylay him. So I told the folks I reckoned I would go up to the town and fetch down my bag- gage. The old gentleman was for going along with me, but I said no, I could drive the horse myself, and I druther he wouldn’t take no trou ble about me.

Chapter XXXIII

So I started for town, in the wagon, and when I was half- way I see a wagon coming, and sure enough it was Tom Sawyer, and I stopped and waited till he come along. I says “Hold on!” and it stopped alongside, and his mouth opened up like a trunk, and staid so; and he swallowed two or three times like a person that’s got a dry throat, and then says:

“I hain’t ever done you no harm. You know that. So then, what you want to come back and ha’nt me for?”

I says: “I hain’t come back— I hain’t been gone.” When he heard my voice, it righted him up some, but he warn’t quite sat-

is"ed yet. He says: “ Don’t you play nothing on me, because I wouldn’t on you. Honest injun,

now, you ain’t a ghost?”

“Honest injun, I ain’t,” I says. “Well— I— I— well, that ought to settle it, of course; but I can’t somehow

seem to understand it, no way. Looky here, warn’t you ever murdered at all?” “No. I warn’t ever murdered at all— I played it on them. You come in here

and feel of me if you don’t believe me.” So he done it; and it satis"ed him; and he was that glad to see me again,

he didn’t know what to do. And he wanted to know all about it right off; because it was a grand adventure, and mysterious, and so it hit him where he lived. But I said, leave it along till by- and- by; and told his driver to wait, and we drove off a little piece, and I told him the kind of a "x I was in, and what did he reckon we better do? He said, let him alone a minute, and don’t disturb him. So he thought and thought, and pretty soon he says:

“It’s all right, I’ve got it. Take my trunk in your wagon, and let on it’s your’n; and you turn back and fool along slow, so as to get to the house about the time you ought to; and I’ll go towards town a piece, and take a fresh start, and get there a quarter or a half an hour after you; and you needn’t let on to know me, at "rst.”

I says: “All right; but wait a minute. There’s one more thing— a thing that nobody

don’t know but me. And that is, there’s a nigger here that I’m trying to steal out of slavery— and his name is Jim— old Miss Watson’s Jim.”

He says: “What! Why Jim is—” He stopped and went to studying. I says: “I know what you’ll say. You’ll say it’s dirty low- down business; but what

if it is?— I’m low down; and I’m agoing to steal him, and I want you to keep mum and not let on. Will you?”

His eye lit up, and he says: “I’ll help you steal him!” Well, I let go all holts then, like I was shot. It was the most astonishing

speech I ever heard— and I’m bound to say Tom Sawyer fell, considerable, in my estimation. Only I couldn’t believe it. Tom Sawyer a nigger stealer!

“Oh, shucks,” I says, “ you’re joking.” “I ain’t joking, either.” “Well, then,” I says, “ joking or no joking, if you hear anything said about

a runaway nigger, don’t forget to remember that you don’t know nothing about him, and I don’t know nothing about him.”

Then we took the trunk and put it in my wagon, and he drove off his way, and I drove mine. But of course I forgot all about driving slow, on accounts of being glad and full of thinking; so I got home a heap too quick for that length of trip. The old gentleman was at the door, and he says:

“Why, this is wonderful. Who ever would a thought it was in that mare to do it. I wish we’d a timed her. And she hain’t sweated a hair— not a hair. It’s wonderful. Why, I wouldn’t take a hundred dollars for that horse now; I wouldn’t, honest; and yet I’d a sold her for "fteen before, and thought ’twas all she was worth.”

That’s all he said. He was the innocentest, best old soul I ever see. But it warn’t surprising; because he warn’t only just a farmer, he was a preacher, too, and had a little one- horse log church down back of the plantation, which he built it himself at his own expense, for a church and school- house, and

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never charged nothing for his preaching, and it was worth it, too. There was plenty other farmer- preachers like that, and done the same way, down South.

In about half an hour Tom’s wagon drove up to the front stile, and Aunt Sally she see it through the win dow because it was only about "fty yards, and says:

“Why, there’s somebody come! I won der who ’tis? Why, I do believe it’s a stranger. Jimmy” (that’s one of the children), “run and tell Lize to put on another plate for dinner.”

Every body made a rush for the front door, because, of course, a stranger don’t come every year, and so he lays over the yaller fever, for interest, when he does come. Tom was over the stile and starting for the house; the wagon was spinning up the road for the village, and we was all bunched in the front door. Tom had his store clothes on, and an audience— and that was always nuts for Tom Sawyer. In them circumstances it warn’t no trou ble to him to throw in an amount of style that was suitable. He warn’t a boy to meeky along up that yard like a sheep; no, he come ca’m and impor tant, like the ram. When he got afront of us, he lifts his hat ever so gracious and dainty, like it was the lid of a box that had butter`ies asleep in it and he didn’t want to disturb them, and says:

“Mr. Archibald Nichols, I presume?” “No, my boy,” says the old gentleman, “I’m sorry to say ’t your driver has

deceived you; Nichols’s place is down a matter of three mile more. Come in, come in.”

Tom he took a look back over his shoulder, and says, “Too late— he’s out of sight.”

“Yes, he’s gone, my son, and you must come in and eat your dinner with us; and then we’ll hitch up and take you down to Nichols’s.”

“Oh, I can’t make you so much trou ble; I couldn’t think of it. I’ll walk— I don’t mind the distance.”

“But we won’t let you walk—it wouldn’t be Southern hospitality to do it. Come right in.”

“Oh, do,” says Aunt Sally; “it ain’t a bit of trou ble to us, not a bit in the world. You must stay. It’s a long, dusty three mile, and we can’t let you walk. And besides, I’ve already told ’em to put on another plate, when I see you coming; so you mustn’t disappoint us. Come right in, and make yourself at home.”

So Tom he thanked them very hearty and handsome, and let himself be persuaded, and come in; and when he was in, he said he was a stranger from Hicksville, Ohio, and his name was William Thompson— and he made another bow.

Well, he run on, and on, and on, making up stuff about Hicksville and every body in it he could invent, and I getting a little nervious, and wonder- ing how this was going to help me out of my scrape; and at last, still talking along, he reached over and kissed Aunt Sally right on the mouth, and then settled back again in his chair, comfortable, and was going on talking; but she jumped up and wiped it off with the back of her hand, and says:

“You owdacious puppy!” He looked kind of hurt, and says: “I’m surprised at you, m’am.” “ You’re s’rp— Why, what do you reckon I am? I’ve a good notion to take

and— say, what do you mean by kissing me?”

3. Methuselah was a biblical patriarch said to have lived 969 years.

He looked kind of humble, and says: “I didn’t mean nothing, m’am. I didn’t mean no harm. I— I— thought you’d

like it.” “Why, you born fool!” She took up the spinning- stick, and it looked like it

was all she could do to keep from giving him a crack with it. “What made you think I’d like it?”

“Well, I don’t know. Only, they— they— told me you would.” “They told you I would. Whoever told you’s another lunatic. I never heard

the beat of it. Who’s they?” “Why— every body. They all said so, m’am.” It was all she could do to hold in; and her eyes snapped, and her "n gers

worked like she wanted to scratch him; and she says: “Who’s every body? Out with their names—or ther’ll be an idiot short.” He got up and looked distressed, and fumbled his hat, and says: “I’m sorry, and I warn’t expecting it. They told me to. They all told me to.

They all said kiss her; and said she’ll like it. They all said it— every one of them. But I’m sorry, m’am, and I won’t do it no more— I won’t, honest.”

“You won’t, won’t you? Well, I sh’d reckon you won’t!” “No’m, I’m honest about it; I won’t ever do it again. Till you ask me.” “Till I ask you! Well, I never see the beat of it in my born days! I lay you’ll

be the Methusalem- numskull3 of creation before ever I ask you—or the likes of you.”

“Well,” he says, “it does surprise me so. I can’t make it out, somehow. They said you would, and I thought you would. But—” He stopped and looked around slow, like he wished he could run across a friendly eye, somewhere’s; and fetched up on the old gentleman’s, and says, “ Didn’t you think she’d like me to kiss her, sir?”

“Why, no, I— I— well, no, I b’lieve I didn’t.” Then he looks on around, the same way, to me— and says: “Tom, didn’t you think Aunt Sally ’d open out her arms and say, ‘Sid

Sawyer—’ ” “My land!” she says, breaking in and jumping for him, “you impudent young

rascal, to fool a body so—” and was going to hug him, but he fended her off, and says:

“No, not till you’ve asked me, "rst.” So she didn’t lose no time, but asked him; and hugged him and kissed him,

over and over again, and then turned him over to the old man, and he took what was left. And after they got a little quiet again, she says:

“Why, dear me, I never see such a surprise. We warn’t looking for you, at all, but only Tom. Sis never wrote to me about anybody coming but him.”

“It’s because it warn’t intended for any of us to come but Tom,” he says; “but I begged and begged, and at the last minute she let me come, too; so, coming down the river, me and Tom thought it would be a "rst- rate surprise for him to come here to the house "rst, and for me to by- and-by tag along and drop in and let on to be a stranger. But it was a mistake, Aunt Sally. This ain’t no healthy place for a stranger to come.”

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4. Petri"ed or stunned.

“No— not impudent whelps, Sid. You ought to had your jaws boxed; I hain’t been so put out since I don’t know when. But I don’t care, I don’t mind the terms— I’d be willing to stand a thousand such jokes to have you here. Well, to think of that per for mance! I don’t deny it, I was most putri"ed4 with aston- ishment when you give me that smack.”

We had dinner out in that broad open passage betwixt the house and the kitchen; and there was things enough on that table for seven families— and all hot, too; none of your `abby tough meat that’s laid in a cupboard in a damp cellar all night and tastes like a hunk of old cold cannibal in the morn- ing. Uncle Silas he asked a pretty long blessing over it, but it was worth it; and it didn’t cool it a bit, neither, the way I’ve seen them kind of interrup- tions do, lots of times.

There was a considerable good deal of talk, all the after noon, and me and Tom was on the lookout all the time, but it warn’t no use, they didn’t hap- pen to say nothing about any runaway nigger, and we was afraid to try to work up to it. But at supper, at night, one of the little boys says:

“Pa, mayn’t Tom and Sid and me go to the show?” “No,” says the old man, “I reckon there ain’t going to be any; and you

couldn’t go if there was; because the runaway nigger told Burton and me all about that scandalous show, and Burton said he would tell the people; so I reckon they’ve drove the owdacious loafers out of town before this time.”

So there it was!— but I couldn’t help it. Tom and me was to sleep in the same room and bed; so, being tired, we bid good- night and went up to bed, right after supper, and clumb out of the win dow and down the lightning- rod, and shoved for the town; for I didn’t believe anybody was going to give the king and the duke a hint, and so, if I didn’t hurry up and give them one they’d get into trou ble sure.

On the road Tom he told me all about how it was reckoned I was mur- dered, and how pap dis appeared, pretty soon, and didn’t come back no more, and what a stir there was when Jim run away; and I told Tom all about our Royal Nonesuch rapscallions, and as much of the raft- voyage as I had time to; and as we struck into the town and up through the middle of it—it was as much as half- after eight, then— here comes a raging rush of people, with torches, and an awful whooping and yelling, and banging tin pans and blow- ing horns; and we jumped to one side to let them go by; and as they went by, I see they had the king and the duke astraddle of a rail— that is, I knowed it was the king and the duke, though they was all over tar and feathers, and didn’t look like nothing in the world that was human— just looked like a couple of monstrous big soldier- plumes. Well, it made me sick to see it; and I was sorry for them poor pitiful rascals, it seemed like I couldn’t ever feel any hardness against them any more in the world. It was a dreadful thing to see. Human beings can be awful cruel to one another.

We see we was too late— couldn’t do no good. We asked some stragglers about it, and they said every body went to the show looking very innocent; and laid low and kept dark till the poor old king was in the middle of his cavortings on the stage; then somebody give a signal, and the house rose up and went for them.

So we poked along back home, and I warn’t feeling so brash as I was before, but kind of ornery, and humble, and to blame, somehow— though I hadn’t done anything. But that’s always the way; it don’t make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person’s conscience ain’t got no sense, and just goes for him anyway. If I had a yaller dog that didn’t know no more than a person’s conscience does, I would pison him. It takes up more room than all the rest of a person’s insides, and yet ain’t no good, nohow. Tom Sawyer he says the same.

Chapter XXXIV

We stopped talking, and got to thinking. By- and-by Tom says: “Looky here, Huck, what fools we are, to not think of it before! I bet I

know where Jim is.” “No! Where?” “In that hut down by the ash- hopper. Why, looky here. When we was at

dinner, didn’t you see a nigger man go in there with some vittles?” “Yes.” “What did you think the vittles was for?” “For a dog.” “So’d I. Well, it wasn’t for a dog.” “Why?” “ Because part of it was watermelon.” “So it was— I noticed it. Well, it does beat all, that I never thought about

a dog not eating watermelon. It shows how a body can see and don’t see at the same time.”

“Well, the nigger unlocked the padlock when he went in, and he locked it again when he come out. He fetched uncle a key, about the time we got up from table— same key, I bet. Watermelon shows man, lock shows prisoner; and it ain’t likely there’s two prisoners on such a little plantation, and where the people’s all so kind and good. Jim’s the prisoner. All right— I’m glad we found it out detective fashion; I wouldn’t give shucks for any other way. Now you work your mind and study out a plan to steal Jim, and I will study out one, too; and we’ll take the one we like the best.”

What a head for just a boy to have! If I had Tom Sawyer’s head, I wouldn’t trade it off to be a duke, nor mate of a steamboat, nor clown in a circus, nor nothing I can think of. I went to thinking out a plan, but only just to be doing something; I knowed very well where the right plan was going to come from. Pretty soon, Tom says:

“Ready?” “Yes,” I says. “All right— bring it out.” “My plan is this,” I says. “We can easy "nd out if it’s Jim in there. Then get

up my canoe to- morrow night, and fetch my raft over from the island. Then the "rst dark night that comes, steal the key out of the old man’s britches, after he goes to bed, and shove off down the river on the raft, with Jim, hiding daytimes and running nights, the way me and Jim used to do before. Wouldn’t that plan work?”

“Work? Why cert’nly, it would work, like rats a "ghting. But it’s too blame’ simple; there ain’t nothing to it. What’s the good of a plan that ain’t no more

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trou ble than that? It’s as mild as goose- milk. Why, Huck, it wouldn’t make no more talk than breaking into a soap factory.”

I never said nothing, because I warn’t expecting nothing dif fer ent; but I knowed mighty well that whenever he got his plan ready it wouldn’t have none of them objections to it.

And it didn’t. He told me what it was, and I see in a minute it was worth "fteen of mine, for style, and would make Jim just as free a man as mine would, and maybe get us all killed besides. So I was satis"ed, and said we would waltz in on it. I needn’t tell what it was, here, because I knowed it wouldn’t stay the way it was. I knowed he would be changing it around, every which way, as we went along, and heaving in new bullinesses wher- ever he got a chance. And that is what he done.

Well, one thing was dead sure; and that was, that Tom Sawyer was in ear- nest and was actuly going to help steal that nigger out of slavery. That was the thing that was too many for me. Here was a boy that was respectable, and well brung up; and had a character to lose; and folks at home that had char- acters; and he was bright and not leather- headed; and knowing and not ignorant; and not mean, but kind; and yet here he was, without any more pride, or rightness, or feeling, than to stoop to this business, and make him- self a shame, and his family a shame, before every body. I couldn’t under- stand it, no way at all. It was outrageous, and I knowed I ought to just up and tell him so; and so be his true friend, and let him quit the thing right where he was, and save himself. And I did start to tell him; but he shut me up, and says:

“ Don’t you reckon I know what I’m about? Don’t I generly know what I’m about?”

“Yes.” “ Didn’t I say I was going to help steal the nigger?” “Yes.” “Well then.” That’s all he said, and that’s all I said. It warn’t no use to say any more;

because when he said he’d do a thing, he always done it. But I couldn’t make out how he was willing to go into this thing; so I just let it go, and never bothered no more about it. If he was bound to have it so, I couldn’t help it.

When we got home, the house was all dark and still; so we went on down to the hut by the ash- hopper, for to examine it. We went through the yard, so as to see what the hounds would do. They knowed us, and didn’t make no more noise than country dogs is always doing when anything comes by in the night. When we got to the cabin, we took a look at the front and the two sides; and on the side I warn’t acquainted with— which was the north side—we found a square win dow- hole, up tolerable high, with just one stout board nailed across it. I says:

“ Here’s the ticket. This hole’s big enough for Jim to get through, if we wrench off the board.”

Tom says: “It’s as simple as tit- tat- toe, three- in- a- row, and as easy as playing hooky.

I should hope we can "nd a way that’s a little more complicated than that, Huck Finn.”

“Well, then,” I says, “how’ll it do to saw him out, the way I done before I was murdered, that time?”

“That’s more like,” he says, “It’s real mysterious, and troublesome, and good,” he says; “but I bet we can "nd a way that’s twice as long. There ain’t no hurry; le’s keep on looking around.”

Betwixt the hut and the fence, on the back side, was a lean-to, that joined the hut at the eaves, and was made out of plank. It was as long as the hut, but narrow— only about six foot wide. The door to it was at the south end, and was padlocked. Tom he went to the soap kettle, and searched around and fetched back the iron thing they lift the lid with; so he took it and prized out one of the staples. The chain fell down, and we opened the door and went in, and shut it, and struck a match, and see the shed was only built against the cabin and hadn’t no connection with it; and there warn’t no `oor to the shed, nor nothing in it but some old rusty played- out hoes, and spades, and picks, and a crippled plow. The match went out, and so did we, and shoved in the staple again, and the door was locked as good as ever. Tom was joy- ful. He says:

“Now we’re all right. We’ll dig him out. It’ll take about a week!” Then we started for the house, and I went in the back door— you only have

to pull a buckskin latch- string, they don’t fasten the doors— but that warn’t romantical enough for Tom Sawyer: no way would do him but he must climb up the lightning- rod. But after he got up half- way about three times, and missed "re and fell every time, and the last time most busted his brains out, he thought he’d got to give it up; but after he rested, he allowed he would give her one more turn for luck, and this time he made the trip.

In the morning we was up at break of day, and down to the nigger cabins to pet the dogs and make friends with the nigger that fed Jim—if it was Jim that was being fed. The niggers was just getting through breakfast and start- ing for the "elds; and Jim’s nigger was piling up a tin pan with bread and meat and things; and whilst the other was leaving, the key come from the house.

This nigger had a good- natured, chuckle- headed face, and his wool was all tied up in little bunches with thread. That was to keep witches off. He said the witches was pestering him awful, these nights, and making him see all kinds of strange things, and hear all kinds of strange words and noises, and he didn’t believe he was ever witched so long, before, in his life. He got so worked up, and got to running on so about his trou bles, he forgot all about what he’d been agoing to do. So Tom says:

“What’s the vittles for? Going to feed the dogs?” The nigger kind of smiled around graduly over his face, like when you

heave a brickbat in a mud puddle, and he says: “Yes, Mars Sid, a dog. Cur’us dog too. Does you want to go en look at ’im?” “Yes.” I hunched Tom, and whispers: “You going, right here in the day- break? That warn’t the plan.” “No, it warn’t— but it’s the plan now.” So, drat him, we went along, but I didn’t like it much. When we got in, we

couldn’t hardly see anything, it was so dark; but Jim was there, sure enough, and could see us; and he sings out:

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“Why, Huck! En good lan’! ain’ dat Misto Tom?” I just knowed how it would be; I just expected it. I didn’t know nothing to

do; and if I had, I couldn’t done it; because that nigger busted in and says: “Why, de gracious sakes! do he know you genlmen?” We could see pretty well, now. Tom he looked at the nigger, steady and

kind of wondering, and says: “Does who know us?” “Why, dish- yer runaway nigger.” “I don’t reckon he does; but what put that into your head?” “What put it dar? Didn’ he jis’ dis minute sing out like he knowed you?” Tom says, in a puzzled-up kind of way: “Well, that’s mighty curious. Who sung out? When did he sing out? What

did he sing out?” And turns to me, perfectly ca’m, and says, “Did you hear anybody sing out?”

Of course there warn’t nothing to be said but the one thing; so I says: “No; I ain’t heard nobody say nothing.” Then he turns to Jim, and looks him over like he never see him before;

and says: “Did you sing out?” “No, sah,” says Jim; “I hain’t said nothing, sah.” “Not a word?” “No, sah, I hain’t said a word.” “Did you ever see us before?” “No, sah; not as I knows on.” So Tom turns to the nigger, which was looking wild and distressed, and

says, kind of severe: “What do you reckon’s the matter with you, anyway? What made you think

somebody sung out?” “Oh, it’s de dad- blame’ witches, sah, en I wisht I was dead, I do. Dey’s

awluz at it, sah, en dey do mos’ kill me, dey sk’yers me so. Please to don’t tell nobody ’bout it sah, er old Mars Silas he’ll scole me; ’kase he say dey ain’t no witches. I jis’ wish to goodness he was heah now— den what would he say! I jis’ bet he couldn’ "ne no way to git aroun’ it dis time. But it’s awluz jis’ so; people dat’s sot, stays sot; dey won’t look into nothn’ en "ne it out f’r deyselves, en when you "ne it out en tell um ’bout it, dey doan’ b’lieve you.”

Tom give him a dime, and said we wouldn’t tell nobody; and told him to buy some more thread to tie up his wool with; and then looks at Jim, and says:

“I won der if Uncle Silas is going to hang this nigger. If I was to catch a nigger that was ungrateful enough to run away, I wouldn’t give him up, I’d hang him.” And whilst the nigger stepped to the door to look at the dime and bite it to see if it was good, he whispers to Jim and says:

“ Don’t ever let on to know us. And if you hear any digging going on nights, it’s us: we’re going to set you free.”

Jim only had time to grab us by the hand and squeeze it, then the nigger come back, and we said we’d come again some time if the nigger wanted us to; and he said he would, more par tic u lar if it was dark, because the witches went for him mostly in the dark, and it was good to have folks around then.

5. Phosphorescent glow of fungus on rotting wood. 6. Baron Friedrich von der Trenck (1726–1794), an Austrian soldier, and Henry IV of France (1553–1610), military heroes. Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571), an artist, and Giovanni Jacopo

Casanova (1725–1798) were both famous lovers. All four were involved in daring escape attempts. 7. Seneschal, power ful of"cial in the ser vice of medieval nobles.

Chapter XXXV

It would be most an hour, yet, till breakfast, so we left, and struck down into the woods; because Tom said we got to have some light to see how to dig by, and a lantern makes too much, and might get us into trou ble; what we must have was a lot of them rotten chunks that’s called fox- "re5 and just makes a soft kind of a glow when you lay them in a dark place. We fetched an armful and hid it in the weeds, and set down to rest, and Tom says, kind of dissatis"ed:

“Blame it, this whole thing is just as easy and awkard as it can be. And so it makes it so rotten dif"cult to get up a dif"cult plan. There ain’t no watch- man to be drugged— now there ought to be a watchman. There ain’t even a dog to give a sleeping- mixture to. And there’s Jim chained by one leg, with a ten- foot chain, to the leg of his bed; why, all you got to do is to lift up the bedstead and slip off the chain. And Uncle Silas he trusts every body; sends the key to the punkin- headed nigger, and don’t send nobody to watch the nigger. Jim could a got out of that win dow hole before this, only there wouldn’t be no use trying to travel with a ten- foot chain on his leg. Why, drat it, Huck, it’s the stupidest arrangement I ever see. You got to invent all the dif"cul- ties. Well, we can’t help it, we got to do the best we can with the materials we’ve got. Anyhow, there’s one thing— there’s more honor in getting him out through a lot of dif"culties and dangers, where there warn’t one of them furnished to you by the people who it was their duty to furnish them, and you had to contrive them all out of your own head. Now look at just that one thing of the lantern. When you come down to the cold facts, we simply got to let on that a lantern’s resky. Why, we could work with a torchlight pro- cession if we wanted to, I believe. Now, whilst I think of it, we got to hunt up something to make a saw out of, the "rst chance we get.”

“What do we want of a saw?” “What do we want of it? Hain’t we got to saw the leg of Jim’s bed off, so as

to get the chain loose?” “Why, you just said a body could lift up the bedstead and slip the chain off.” “Well, if that ain’t just like you, Huck Finn. You can get up the infant-

schooliest ways of going at a thing. Why, hain’t you ever read any books at all?— Baron Trenck, nor Casanova, nor Benvenuto Chelleeny, nor Henri IV.6 nor none of them heroes? Whoever heard of getting a prisoner loose in such an old- maidy way as that? No; the way all the best authorities does, is to saw the bedleg in two, and leave it just so, and swallow the sawdust, so it can’t be found, and put some dirt and grease around the sawed place so the very keenest seneskal7 can’t see no sign of it’s being sawed, and thinks the bed- leg is perfectly sound. Then, the night you’re ready, fetch the leg a kick, down she goes; slip off your chain, and there you are. Nothing to do but hitch your rope- ladder to the battlements, shin down it, break your leg in the moat— because a rope- ladder is nineteen foot too short, you know— and there’s your

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8. Provinces in France and Spain, respectively.

horses and your trusty vassles, and they scoop you up and `ing you across a saddle and away you go, to your native Langudoc, or Navarre,8 or wherever it is. It’s gaudy, Huck. I wish there was a moat to this cabin. If we get time, the night of the escape, we’ll dig one.”

I says: “What do we want of a moat, when we’re going to snake him out from

under the cabin?” But he never heard me. He had forgot me and every thing else. He had his

chin in his hand, thinking. Pretty soon, he sighs, and shakes his head; then sighs again, and says:

“No, it wouldn’t do— there ain’t necessity enough for it.” “For what?” I says. “Why, to saw Jim’s leg off,” he says. “Good land!” I says, “why, there ain’t no necessity for it. And what would

you want to saw his leg off for, anyway?” “Well, some of the best authorities has done it. They couldn’t get the chain

off, so they just cut their hand off, and shoved. And a leg would be better still. But we got to let that go. There ain’t necessity enough in this case; and besides, Jim’s a nigger and wouldn’t understand the reasons for it, and how it’s the custom in Eu rope, so we’ll let it go. But there’s one thing—he can have a rope- ladder; we can tear up our sheets and make him a rope- ladder easy enough. And we can send it to him in a pie; it’s mostly done that way. And I’ve et worse pies.”

“Why, Tom Sawyer, how you talk,” I says; “Jim ain’t got no use for a rope- ladder.”

“He has got use for it. How you talk, you better say; you don’t know noth- ing about it. He’s got to have a rope ladder; they all do.”

“What in the nation can he do with it?” “Do with it? He can hide it in his bed, can’t he? That’s what they all do;

and he’s got to, too. Huck, you don’t ever seem to want to do anything that’s regular; you want to be starting something fresh all the time. Spose he don’t do nothing with it? ain’t it there in his bed, for a clew, after he’s gone? and don’t you reckon they’ll want clews? Of course they will. And you wouldn’t leave them any? That would be a pretty howdy-do wouldn’t it! I never heard of such a thing.”

“Well,” I says, “if it’s in the regulations, and he’s got to have it, all right, let him have it; because I don’t wish to go back on no regulations; but there’s one thing, Tom Sawyer—if we go tearing up our sheets to make Jim a rope- ladder, we’re going to get into trou ble with Aunt Sally, just as sure as you’re born. Now, the way I look at it, a hickry- bark ladder don’t cost nothing, and don’t waste nothing, and is just as good to load up a pie with, and hide in a straw tick, as any rag ladder you can start; and as for Jim, he hain’t had no experience, and so he don’t care what kind of a—”

“Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, if I was as ignorant as you, I’d keep still— that’s what I’d do. Who ever heard of a state prisoner escaping by a hickry- bark ladder? Why, it’s perfectly ridicu lous.”

“Well, all right, Tom, "x it your own way; but if you’ll take my advice, you’ll let me borrow a sheet off of the clothes- line.”

9. The chief character in Alexandre Dumas’s novel Le Vicomte de Bragelonne (1848–50), part of which was translated into En glish as The Man in the Iron Mask.

He said that would do. And that give him another idea, and he says: “Borrow a shirt, too.” “What do we want of a shirt, Tom?” “Want it for Jim to keep a journal on.” “Journal your granny— Jim can’t write.” “Spose he can’t write—he can make marks on the shirt, can’t he, if we make

him a pen out of an old pewter spoon or a piece of an old iron barrel- hoop?” “Why, Tom, we can pull a feather out of a goose and make him a better

one; and quicker, too.” “Prisoners don’t have geese running around the donjon- keep to pull pens

out of, you muggins. They always make their pens out of the hardest, tough- est, troublesomest piece of old brass candlestick or something like that they can get their hands on; and it takes them weeks and weeks, and months and months to "le it out, too, because they’ve got to do it by rubbing it on the wall. They wouldn’t use a goose- quill if they had it. It ain’t regular.”

“Well, then, what’ll we make him the ink out of?” “Many makes it out of iron- rust and tears; but that’s the common sort and

women; the best authorities uses their own blood. Jim can do that; and when he wants to send any little common ordinary mysterious message to let the world know where he’s captivated, he can write it on the bottom of a tin plate with a fork and throw it out of the win dow. The Iron Mask9 always done that, and it’s a blame’ good way, too.”

“Jim ain’t got no tin plates. They feed him in a pan.” “That ain’t anything; we can get him some.” “ Can’t nobody read his plates.” “That ain’t got nothing to do with it, Huck Finn. All he’s got to do is to

write on the plate and throw it out. You don’t have to be able to read it. Why, half the time you can’t read anything a prisoner writes on a tin plate, or any- where else.”

“Well, then, what’s the sense in wasting the plates?” “Why, blame it all, it ain’t the prisoner’s plates.” “But it’s somebody’s plates, ain’t it?” “Well, spos’n it is? What does the prisoner care whose—” He broke off there, because we heard the breakfast- horn blowing. So we

cleared out for the house. Along during that morning I borrowed a sheet and a white shirt off of the

clothes- line; and I found an old sack and put them in it, and we went down and got the fox- "re, and put that in too. I called it borrowing, because that was what pap always called it; but Tom said it warn’t borrowing, it was steal- ing. He said we was representing prisoners; and prisoners don’t care how they get a thing so they get it, and nobody don’t blame them for it, either. It ain’t no crime in a prisoner to steal the thing he needs to get away with, Tom said; it’s his right; and so, as long as we was representing a prisoner, we had a perfect right to steal anything on this place we had the least use for, to get ourselves out of prison with. He said if we warn’t prisoners it would be a very dif fer ent thing, and nobody but a mean ornery person would steal when he warn’t a prisoner. So we allowed we would steal every thing there

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1. Ordinary kitchen knives. 2. The hero of Alexandre Dumas’s popu lar Romantic novel The Count of Monte Cristo (1844) was held prisoner at the Château d’If, a

castle built by Francis I in 1524 on a small island in Marseilles harbor and used for many years as a state prison.

was that come handy. And yet he made a mighty fuss, one day, after that, when I stole a watermelon out of the nigger patch and eat it; and he made me go and give the niggers a dime, without telling them what it was for. Tom said that what he meant was, we could steal anything we needed. Well, I says, I needed the watermelon. But he said I didn’t need it to get out of prison with, there’s where the difference was. He said if I’d a wanted it to hide a knife in, and smuggle it to Jim to kill the seneskal with, it would a been all right. So I let it go at that, though I couldn’t see no advantage in my repre- senting a prisoner, if I got to set down and chaw over a lot of gold- leaf dis- tinctions like that, every time I see a chance to hog a watermelon.

Well, as I was saying, we waited that morning till every body was settled down to business, and nobody in sight around the yard; then Tom he car- ried the sack into the lean-to whilst I stood off a piece to keep watch. By- and-by he come out, and we went and set down on the wood- pile, to talk. He says:

“Every thing’s all right, now, except tools; and that’s easy "xed.” “Tools?” I says. “Yes.” “Tools for what?” “Why, to dig with. We ain’t agoing to gnaw him out, are we?” “ Ain’t them old crippled picks and things in there good enough to dig a

nigger out with?” I says. He turns on me looking pitying enough to make a body cry, and says: “Huck Finn, did you ever hear of a prisoner having picks and shovels, and all

the modern con ve niences in his wardrobe to dig himself out with? Now I want to ask you—if you got any reasonableness in you at all— what kind of a show would that give him to be a hero? Why, they might as well lend him the key, and done with it. Picks and shovels— why they wouldn’t furnish ’em to a king.”

“Well, then,” I says, “if we don’t want the picks and shovels, what do we want?”

“A couple of case- knives.”1 “To dig the foundations out from under that cabin with?” “Yes.” “Confound it, it’s foolish, Tom.” “It don’t make no difference how foolish it is, it’s the right way— and it’s

the regular way. And there ain’t no other way, that ever I heard of, and I’ve read all the books that gives any information about these things. They always dig out with a case- knife— and not through dirt, mind you; generly it’s through solid rock. And it takes them weeks and weeks and weeks, and for ever and ever. Why, look at one of them prisoners in the bottom dungeon of the Castle Deef,2 in the harbor of Marseilles, that dug himself out that way; how long was he at it, you reckon?”

“I don’t know.” “Well, guess.” “I don’t know. A month and a half?”

3. Counterpane or bedspread.

“Thirty- seven year— and he come out in China. That’s the kind. I wish the bottom of this fortress was solid rock.”

“Jim don’t know nobody in China.” “What’s that got to do with it? Neither did that other fellow. But you’re

always a- wandering off on a side issue. Why can’t you stick to the main point?”

“All right— I don’t care where he comes out, so he comes out; and Jim don’t, either, I reckon. But there’s one thing, anyway— Jim’s too old to be dug out with a case- knife. He won’t last.”

“Yes he will last, too. You don’t reckon it’s going to take thirty- seven years to dig out through a dirt foundation, do you?”

“How long will it take, Tom?” “Well, we can’t resk being as long as we ought to, because it mayn’t take

very long for Uncle Silas to hear from down there by New Orleans. He’ll hear Jim ain’t from there. Then his next move will be to advertise Jim, or something like that. So we can’t resk being as long digging him out as we ought to. By rights I reckon we ought to be a couple of years; but we can’t. Things being so uncertain, what I recommend is this: that we really dig right in, as quick as we can; and after that, we can let on, to ourselves, that we was at it thirty- seven years. Then we can snatch him out and rush him away the "rst time there’s an alarm. Yes, I reckon that’ll be the best way.”

“Now, there’s sense in that,” I says. “Letting on don’t cost nothing; letting on ain’t no trou ble; and if it’s any object, I don’t mind letting on we was at it a hundred and "fty year. It wouldn’t strain me none, after I got my hand in. So I’ll mosey along now, and smouch a couple of case- knives.”

“Smouch three,” he says; “we want one to make a saw out of.” “Tom, if it ain’t unregular and irreligious to sejest it,” I says, “ there’s an

old rusty saw- blade around yonder sticking under the weatherboarding behind the smoke- house.”

He looked kind of weary and discouraged- like, and says: “It ain’t no use to try to learn you nothing, Huck. Run along and smouch

the knives— three of them.” So I done it.

Chapter XXXVI

As soon as we reckoned every body was asleep, that night, we went down the lightning- rod, and shut ourselves up in the lean-to, and got out our pile of fox- "re, and went to work. We cleared every thing out of the way, about four or "ve foot along the middle of the bottom log. Tom said he was right behind Jim’s bed now, and we’d dig in under it, and when we got through there couldn’t nobody in the cabin ever know there was any hole there, because Jim’s counterpin3 hung down most to the ground, and you’d have to raise it up and look under to see the hole. So we dug and dug, with case- knives, till most midnight; and then we was dog- tired, and our hands was blistered, and yet you couldn’t see we’d done anything, hardly. At last I says:

“This ain’t no thirty- seven year job, this is a thirty- eight year job, Tom Sawyer.”

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He never said nothing. But he sighed, and pretty soon he stopped digging, and then for a good little while I knowed he was thinking. Then he says:

“It ain’t no use, Huck, it ain’t agoing to work. If we was prisoners it would, because then we’d have as many years as we wanted, and no hurry; and we wouldn’t get but a few minutes to dig, every day, while they was changing watches, and so our hands wouldn’t get blistered, and we could keep it up right along, year in and year out, and do it right, and the way it ought to be done. But we can’t fool along, we got to rush; we ain’t got no time to spare. If we was to put in another night this way, we’d have to knock off for a week to let our hands get well— couldn’t touch a case- knife with them sooner.”

“Well, then, what we going to do, Tom?” “I’ll tell you. It ain’t right, and it ain’t moral, and I wouldn’t like it to get

out— but there ain’t only just the one way; we got to dig him out with the picks, and let on it’s case- knives.”

“Now you’re talking!” I says; “your head gets leveler and leveler all the time, Tom Sawyer,” I says. “Picks is the thing, moral or no moral; and as for me, I don’t care shucks for the morality of it, nohow. When I start in to steal a nigger, or a watermelon, or a Sunday- school book, I ain’t no ways par tic u lar how it’s done so it’s done. What I want is my nigger; or what I want is my watermelon; or what I want is my Sunday- school book; and if a pick’s the handiest thing, that’s the thing I’m agoing to dig that nigger or that water- melon or that Sunday- school book out with; and I don’t give a dead rat what the authorities thinks about it nuther.”

“Well,” he says, “ there’s excuse for picks and letting-on in a case like this; if it warn’t so, I wouldn’t approve of it, nor I wouldn’t stand by and see the rules broke— because right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better. It might answer for you to dig Jim out with a pick, without any letting-on, because you don’t know no better; but it wouldn’t for me, because I do know better. Gimme a case- knife.”

He had his own by him, but I handed him mine. He ̀ ung it down, and says: “Gimme a case- knife.” I didn’t know just what to do— but then I thought. I scratched around

amongst the old tools, and got a pick-ax and give it to him, and he took it and went to work, and never said a word.

He was always just that par tic u lar. Full of princi ple. So then I got a shovel, and then we picked and shoveled, turn about, and

made the fur `y. We stuck to it about a half an hour, which was as long as we could stand up; but we had a good deal of a hole to show for it. When I got up stairs, I looked out at the win dow and see Tom doing his level best with the lightning- rod, but he couldn’t come it, his hands was so sore. At last he says:

“It ain’t no use, it can’t be done. What you reckon I better do? Can’t you think up no way?”

“Yes,” I says, “but I reckon it ain’t regular. Come up the stairs, and let on it’s a lightning- rod.”

So he done it. Next day Tom stole a pewter spoon and a brass candlestick in the house,

for to make some pens for Jim out of, and six tallow candles; and I hung around the nigger cabins, and laid for a chance, and stole three tin plates. Tom said it wasn’t enough; but I said nobody wouldn’t ever see the plates

that Jim throwed out, because they’d fall in the dog- fennel and jimpson weeds under the win dow- hole— then we could tote them back and he could use them over again. So Tom was satis"ed. Then he says:

“Now, the thing to study out is, how to get the things to Jim.” “Take them in through the hole,” I says, “when we get it done.” He only just looked scornful, and said something about nobody ever heard

of such an idiotic idea, and then he went to studying. By- and-by he said he had ciphered out two or three ways, but there warn’t no need to decide on any of them yet. Said we’d got to post Jim "rst.

That night we went down the lightning- rod a little after ten, and took one of the candles along, and listened under the win dow- hole, and heard Jim snoring; so we pitched it in, and it didn’t wake him. Then we whirled in with the pick and shovel, and in about two hours and a half the job was done. We crept in under Jim’s bed and into the cabin, and pawed around and found the candle and lit it, and stood over Jim a while, and found him looking hearty and healthy, and then we woke him up gentle and gradual. He was so glad to see us he most cried; and called us honey, and all the pet names he could think of; and was for having us hunt up a cold chisel to cut the chain off of his leg with, right away, and clearing out without losing any time. But Tom he showed him how unregular it would be, and set down and told him all about our plans, and how we could alter them in a minute any time there was an alarm; and not to be the least afraid, because we would see he got away, sure. So Jim he said it was all right, and we set there and talked over old times a while, and then Tom asked a lot of questions, and when Jim told him Uncle Silas come in every day or two to pray with him, and Aunt Sally come in to see if he was comfortable and had plenty to eat, and both of them was kind as they could be, Tom says:

“Now I know how to "x it. We’ll send you some things by them.” I said, “ Don’t do nothing of the kind; it’s one of the most jackass ideas I

ever struck;” but he never paid no attention to me; went right on. It was his way when he’d got his plans set.

So he told Jim how we’d have to smuggle in the rope- ladder pie, and other large things, by Nat, the nigger that fed him, and he must be on the look- out, and not be surprised, and not let Nat see him open them; and we would put small things in uncle’s coat pockets and he must steal them out; and we would tie things to aunt’s apron strings or put them in her apron pocket, if we got a chance; and told him what they would be and what they was for. And told him how to keep a journal on the shirt with his blood, and all that. He told him every thing. Jim he couldn’t see no sense in the most of it, but he allowed we was white folks and knowed better than him; so he was satis- "ed, and said he would do it all just as Tom said.

Jim had plenty corn- cob pipes and tobacco; so we had a right down good sociable time; then we crawled out through the hole, and so home to bed, with hands that looked like they’d been chawed. Tom was in high spirits. He said it was the best fun he ever had in his life, and the most intellectural; and said if he only could see his way to it we would keep it up all the rest of our lives and leave Jim to our children to get out; for he believed Jim would come to like it better and better the more he got used to it. He said that in that way it could be strung out to as much as eighty year, and would be the best time on rec ord. And he said it would make us all celebrated that had a hand in it.

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In the morning we went out to the wood- pile and chopped up the brass candlestick into handy sizes, and Tom put them and the pewter spoon in his pocket. Then we went to the nigger cabins, and while I got Nat’s notice off, Tom shoved a piece of candlestick into the middle of a corn- pone that was in Jim’s pan, and we went along with Nat to see how it would work, and it just worked noble; when Jim bit into it it most mashed all his teeth out; and there warn’t ever anything could a worked better. Tom said so himself. Jim he never let on but what it was only just a piece of rock or something like that that’s always getting into bread, you know; but after that he never bit into nothing but what he jabbed his fork into it in three or four places, "rst.

And whilst we was a standing there in the dimmish light, here comes a couple of the hounds bulging in, from under Jim’s bed; and they kept on pil- ing in till there was eleven of them, and there warn’t hardly room in there to get your breath. By jings, we forgot to fasten that lean-to door. The nigger Nat he only just hollered “witches!” once, and kneeled over onto the `oor amongst the dogs, and begun to groan like he was dying. Tom jerked the door open and `ung out a slab of Jim’s meat, and the dogs went for it, and in two seconds he was out himself and back again and shut the door, and I knowed he’d "xed the other door too. Then he went to work on the nigger, coaxing him and petting him, and asking him if he’d been imagining he saw something again. He raised up, and blinked his eyes around, and says:

“Mars Sid, you’ll say I’s a fool, but if I didn’t b’lieve I see most a million dogs, er dev ils, er some’n, I wisht I may die right heah in dese tracks. I did, mos’ sholy. Mars Sid, I felt um— I felt um, sah; dey was all over me. Dad fetch it, I jis’ wisht I could git my han’s on one er dem witches jis’ wunst— on’y jis’ wunst— it’s all I’d ast. But mos’ly I wisht dey’d lemme ’lone, I does.”

Tom says: “Well, I tell you what I think. What makes them come here just at this

runaway nigger’s breakfast- time? It’s because they’re hungry; that’s the rea- son. You make them a witch pie; that’s the thing for you to do.”

“But my lan’, Mars Sid, how’s I gwyne to make ’m a witch pie? I doan’ know how to make it. I hain’t ever hearn er sich a thing b’fo.’ ”

“Well, then, I’ll have to make it myself.” “ Will you do it, honey?— will you? I’ll wusshup de groun’ und’ yo’ foot, I

will!” “All right, I’ll do it, seeing it’s you, and you’ve been good to us and showed

us the runaway nigger. But you got to be mighty careful. When we come around, you turn your back; and then what ever we’ve put in the pan, don’t you let on you see it at all. And don’t you look, when Jim unloads the pan— something might happen, I don’t know what. And above all, don’t you handle the witch- things.”

“Hannel ’m Mars Sid? What is you a talkin’ ’bout? I wouldn’ lay de weight er my "n ger on um, not f’r ten hund’d thous’n’ billion dollars, I wouldn’t.”

Chapter XXXVII

That was all "xed. So then we went away and went to the rubbage- pile in the back yard where they keep the old boots, and rags, and pieces of bottles, and wore- out tin things, and all such truck, and scratched around and found an old tin washpan and stopped up the holes as well as we could, to bake

the pie in, and took it down cellar and stole it full of `our, and started for breakfast and found a couple of shingle- nails that Tom said would be handy for a prisoner to scrabble his name and sorrows on the dungeon walls with, and dropped one of them in Aunt Sally’s apron pocket which was hanging on a chair, and t’other we stuck in the band of Uncle Silas’s hat, which was on the bureau, because we heard the children say their pa and ma was going to the runaway nigger’s house this morning, and then went to breakfast, and Tom dropped the pewter spoon in Uncle Silas’s coat pocket, and Aunt Sally wasn’t come yet, so we had to wait a little while.

And when she come she was hot, and red, and cross, and couldn’t hardly wait for the blessing; and then she went to sluicing out coffee with one hand and cracking the handiest child’s head with her thimble with the other, and says:

“I’ve hunted high, and I’ve hunted low, and it does beat all, what has become of your other shirt.”

My heart fell down amongst my lungs and livers and things, and a hard piece of corn- crust started down my throat after it and got met on the road with a cough and was shot across the table and took one of the children in the eye and curled him up like a "shing- worm, and let a cry out of him the size of a war- whoop, and Tom he turned kinder blue around the gills, and it all amounted to a considerable state of things for about a quarter of a min- ute or as much as that, and I would a sold out for half price if there was a bidder. But after that we was all right again—it was the sudden surprise of it that knocked us so kind of cold. Uncle Silas he says:

“It’s most uncommon curious, I can’t understand it. I know perfectly well I took it off, because— —”

“ Because you hain’t got but one on. Just listen at the man! I know you took it off, and know it by a better way than your wool- gethering memory, too, because it was on the clo’es- line yesterday— I see it there myself. But it’s gone— that’s the long and the short of it, and you’ll just have to change to a red `ann’l one till I can get time to make a new one. And it’ll be the third I’ve made in two years; it just keeps a body on the jump to keep you in shirts; and what ever you do manage to do with ’m all, is more’n I can make out. A body’d think you would learn to take some sort of care of ’em, at your time of life.”

“I know it, Sally, and I do try all I can. But it oughtn’t to be altogether my fault, because you know I don’t see them nor have nothing to do with them except when they’re on me; and I don’t believe I’ve ever lost one of them off of me.”

“Well, it ain’t your fault if you haven’t, Silas— you’d a done it if you could, I reckon. And the shirt ain’t all that’s gone, nuther. Ther’s a spoon gone; and that ain’t all. There was ten, and now ther’s only nine. The calf got the shirt I reckon, but the calf never took the spoon, that’s certain.”

“Why, what else is gone, Sally?” “Ther’s six candles gone— that’s what. The rats could a got the candles,

and I reckon they did; I won der they don’t walk off with the whole place, the way you’re always going to stop their holes and don’t do it; and if they warn’t fools they’d sleep in your hair, Silas— you’d never "nd it out; but you can’t lay the spoon on the rats, and that I know.”

“Well, Sally, I’m in fault, and I acknowledge it; I’ve been remiss; but I won’t let to- morrow go by without stopping up them holes.”

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4. In Acts 17, Paul’s preaching to the Athenians berates both their false gods and snobbery; verse 29 declares that “we are all God’s offspring.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t hurry, next year’ll do. Matilda Angelina Araminta Phelps!” Whack comes the thimble, and the child snatches her claws out of the

sugar- bowl without fooling around any. Just then, the nigger woman steps onto the passage, and says:

“Missus, dey’s a sheet gone.” “A sheet gone! Well, for land’s sake!” “I’ll stop up them holes to- day,” says Uncle Silas, looking sorrowful. “Oh, do shet up!— spose the rats took the sheet? Where’s it gone, Lize?” “Clah to goodness I hain’t no notion, Miss Sally. She wuz on de clo’s- line

yistiddy, but she done gone; she ain’ dah no mo’, now.” “I reckon the world is coming to an end. I never see the beat of it, in all

my born days. A shirt, and a sheet, and a spoon, and six can—” “Missus,” comes a young yaller wench, “dey’s a brass candlestick miss’n.” “Cler out from here, you hussy, er I’ll take a skillet to ye!” Well, she was just a biling. I begun to lay for a chance; I reckoned I would

sneak out and go for the woods till the weather moderated. She kept a rag- ing right along, running her insurrection all by herself, and every body else mighty meek and quiet; and at last Uncle Silas, looking kind of foolish, "shes up that spoon out of his pocket. She stopped, with her mouth open and her hands up, and as for me, I wished I was in Jeruslem or somewheres. But not long; because she says:

“It’s just as I expected. So you had it in your pocket all the time; and like as not you’ve got the other things there, too. How’d it get there?”

“I reely don’t know, Sally,” he says, kind of apologizing, “or you know I would tell. I was a- studying over my text in Acts Seventeen,4 before break- fast, and I reckon I put it in there, not noticing, meaning to put my Testa- ment in, and it must be so, because my Testament ain’t in, but I’ll go and see, and if the Testament is where I had it, I’ll know I didn’t put it in, and that will show that I laid the Testament down and took up the spoon, and— —”

“Oh, for the land’s sake! Give a body a rest! Go ’long now, the whole kit and biling of ye; and don’t come nigh me again till I’ve got back my peace of mind.”

I’d a heard her, if she’d a said it to herself, let alone speaking it out; and I’d a got up and obeyed her, if I’d a been dead. As we was passing through the setting- room, the old man he took up his hat, and the shingle- nail fell out on the `oor, and he just merely picked it up and laid it on the mantel- shelf, and never said nothing, and went out. Tom see him do it, and remem- bered about the spoon, and says:

“Well, it ain’t no use to send things by him no more, he ain’t reliable.” Then he says: “But he done us a good turn with the spoon, anyway, without know- ing it, and so we’ll go and do him one without him knowing it— stop up his rat- holes.”

There was a noble good lot of them, down cellar, and it took us a whole hour, but we done the job tight and good, and ship- shape. Then we heard steps on the stairs, and blowed out our light, and hid; and here comes the old man, with a candle in one hand and a bundle of stuff in t’other, looking as absent- minded as year before last. He went a mooning around, "rst to

5. Into confusion.

one rat- hole and then another, till he’d been to them all. Then he stood about "ve minutes, picking tallow- drip off of his candle and thinking. Then he turns off slow and dreamy towards the stairs, saying:

“Well, for the life of me I can’t remember when I done it. I could show her now that I warn’t to blame on account of the rats. But never mind— let it go. I reckon it wouldn’t do no good.”

And so he went on a mumbling up stairs, and then we left. He was a mighty nice old man. And always is.

Tom was a good deal bothered about what to do for a spoon, but he said we’d got to have it; so he took a think. When he had ciphered it out, he told me how we was to do; then we went and waited around the spoon- basket till we see Aunt Sally coming, and then Tom went to counting the spoons and laying them out to one side, and I slip one of them up my sleeve, and Tom says:

“Why, Aunt Sally, there ain’t but nine spoons, yet.” She says: “Go ’long to your play, and don’t bother me. I know better, I counted ’m

myself.” “Well, I’ve counted them twice, Aunty, and I can’t make but nine.” She looked out of all patience, but of course she come to count— anybody

would. “I declare to gracious ther’ ain’t but nine!” she says. “Why, what in the

world— plague take the things, I’ll count ’m again.” So I slipped back the one I had, and when she got done counting, she says: “Hang the troublesome rubbage, ther’s ten now!” and she looked huffy and

bothered both. But Tom says: “Why, Aunty I don’t think there’s ten.” “You numskull, didn’t you see me count ’m?” “I know, but—” “Well, I’ll count ’m again.” So I smouched one, and they come out nine same as the other time. Well,

she was in a tearing way— just a trembling all over, she was so mad. But she counted and counted, till she got that addled she’d start to count-in the basket for a spoon, sometimes; and so, three times they come out right, and three times they come out wrong. Then she grabbed up the basket and slammed it across the house and knocked the cat galley- west;5 and she said cle’r out and let her have some peace, and if we come bothering around her again betwixt that and dinner, she’d skin us. So we had the odd spoon; and dropped it in her apron pocket whilst she was giving us our sailing- orders, and Jim got it all right, along with her shingle- nail, before noon. We was very well satis"ed with the business, and Tom allowed it was worth twice the trou ble it took, because he said now she couldn’t ever count them spoons twice alike again to save her life; and wouldn’t believe she’d counted them right, if she did; and said that after she’d about counted her head off, for the last three days, he judged she’d give it up and offer to kill anybody that wanted her to ever count them any more.

So we put the sheet back on the line, that night, and stole one out of her closet; and kept on putting it back and stealing it again, for a couple of days,

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6. To nag mercilessly. 7. William the Conqueror lived in the 11th

century. The May#ower made its crossing in 1620.

till she didn’t know how many sheets she had, any more, and said she didn’t care, and warn’t agoing to bullyrag6 the rest of her soul out about it, and wouldn’t count them again not to save her life, she druther die "rst.

So we was all right now, as to the shirt and the sheet and the spoon and the candles, by the help of the calf and the rats and the mixed-up counting; and as to the candlestick, it warn’t no consequence, it would blow over by- and-by.

But that pie was a job; we had no end of trou ble with that pie. We "xed it up away down in the woods, and cooked it there; and we got it done at last, and very satisfactory, too; but not all in one day; and we had to use up three washpans full of `our, before we got through, and we got burnt pretty much all over, in places, and eyes put out with the smoke; because, you see, we didn’t want nothing but a crust, and we couldn’t prop it up right, and she would always cave in. But of course we thought of the right way at last; which was to cook the ladder, too, in the pie. So then we laid in with Jim, the sec- ond night, and tore up the sheet all in little strings, and twisted them together, and long before daylight we had a lovely rope, that you could a hung a per- son with. We let on it took nine months to make it.

And in the forenoon we took it down to the woods, but it wouldn’t go in the pie. Being made of a whole sheet, that way, there was rope enough for forty pies, if we’d a wanted them, and plenty left over for soup, or sausage, or anything you choose. We could a had a whole dinner.

But we didn’t need it. All we needed was just enough for the pie, and so we throwed the rest away. We didn’t cook none of the pies in the washpan, afraid the solder would melt; but Uncle Silas he had a noble brass warming- pan which he thought considerable of, because it belonged to one of his ancestors with a long wooden handle that come over from Eng land with Wil- liam the Conqueror in the May#ower7 or one of them early ships and was hid away up garret with a lot of other old pots and things that was valuable, not on account of being any account because they warn’t, but on account of them being relicts, you know, and we snaked her out, private, and took her down there, but she failed on the "rst pies, because we didn’t know how, but she come up smiling on the last one. We took and lined her with dough, and set her in the coals, and loaded her up with rag- rope, and put on a dough roof, and shut down the lid, and put hot embers on top, and stood off "ve foot, with the long handle, cool and comfortable, and in "fteen minutes she turned out a pie that was a satisfaction to look at. But the person that et it would want to fetch a couple of kags of toothpicks along, for if that rope- ladder wouldn’t cramp him down to business, I don’t know nothing what I’m talking about, and lay him in enough stomach- ache to last him till next time, too.

Nat didn’t look, when we put the witch- pie in Jim’s pan; and we put the three tin plates in the bottom of the pan under the vittles; and so Jim got every thing all right, and as soon as he was by himself he busted into the pie and hid the rope- ladder inside of his straw tick, and scratched some marks on a tin plate and throwed it out of the win dow- hole.

8. The story of Lady Jane Grey (1537–1554), her husband, Guildford Dudley, and his father, the duke of North umberland, was told in W. H. Ains- worth’s romance The Tower of London (1840). The duke was at work carving a poem on the wall of his cell when the executioners came for him.

9. A fragment of brick. 1. An escutcheon is the shield- shaped surface on which a coat of arms is inscribed. The details are expressed in the technical terminology of heraldry.

Chapter XXXVIII

Making them pens was a distressid- tough job, and so was the saw; and Jim allowed the inscription was going to be the toughest of all. That’s the one which the prisoner has to scrabble on the wall. But we had to have it; Tom said we’d got to; there warn’t no case of a state prisoner not scrabbling his inscription to leave behind, and his coat of arms.

“Look at Lady Jane Grey,” he says; “look at Gilford Dudley; look at old North umberland!8 Why, Huck, spose it is considerable trou ble?— what you going to do?— how you going to get around it? Jim’s got to do his inscription and coat of arms. They all do.”

Jim says: “Why, Mars Tom, I hain’t got no coat o’ arms; I hain’t got nuffn but dish-

yer old shirt, en you knows I got to keep de journal on dat.” “Oh, you don’t understand, Jim; a coat of arms is very dif fer ent.” “Well,” I says, “Jim’s right, anyway, when he says he hain’t got no coat of

arms, because he hain’t.” “I reckon I knowed that,” Tom says, “but you bet he’ll have one before he

goes out of this— because he’s going out right, and there ain’t going to be no `aws in his rec ord.”

So whilst me and Jim "led away at the pens on a brickbat9 apiece, Jim a making his’n out of the brass and I making mine out of the spoon, Tom set to work to think out the coat of arms. By- and-by he said he’d struck so many good ones he didn’t hardly know which to take, but there was one which he reckoned he’d decide on. He says:

“On the scutcheon1 we’ll have a bend or in the dexter base, a saltire mur- rey in the fess, with a dog, couchant, for common charge, and under his foot a chain embattled, for slavery, with a chevron vert in a chief engrailed, and three invected lines on a "eld azure, with the nombril points rampant on a dancette indented; crest, a runaway nigger, sable, with his bundle over his shoulder on a bar sinister: and a couple of gules for supporters, which is you and me; motto, Maggiore fretta, minore atto. Got it out of a book— means, the more haste, the less speed.”

“Geewhillikins,” I says, “but what does the rest of it mean?” “We ain’t got no time to bother over that,” he says, “we got to dig in like

all git- out.” “Well, anyway,” I says, “what’s some of it? What’s a fess?” “A fess— a fess is— you don’t need to know what a fess is. I’ll show him

how to make it when he gets to it.” “Shucks, Tom,” I says, “I think you might tell a person. What’s a bar sin-

ister?” “Oh, I don’t know. But he’s got to have it. All the nobility does.” That was just his way. If it didn’t suit him to explain a thing to you, he

wouldn’t do it. You might pump at him a week, it wouldn’t make no difference.

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He’d got all that coat of arms business "xed, so now he started in to "n- ish up the rest of that part of the work, which was to plan out a mournful inscription— said Jim got to have one, like they all done. He made up a lot, and wrote them out on a paper, and read them off, so:

1. Here a captive heart busted. 2. Here a poor prisoner, forsook by the world and friends, fretted out his

sorrowful life. 3. Here a lonely heart broke, and a worn spirit went to its rest, after thirty-

seven years of solitary captivity. 4. Here, homeless and friendless, after thirty- seven years of bitter captivity,

perished a noble stranger, natu ral son of Louis XIV.

Tom’s voice trembled, whilst he was reading them, and he most broke down. When he got done, he couldn’t no way make up his mind which one for Jim to scrabble onto the wall, they was all so good; but at last he allowed he would let him scrabble them all on. Jim said it would take him a year to scrabble such a lot of truck onto the logs with a nail, and he didn’t know how to make letters, besides; but Tom said he would block them out for him, and then he wouldn’t have nothing to do but just follow the lines. Then pretty soon he says:

“Come to think, the logs ain’t agoing to do; they don’t have log walls in a dungeon: we got to dig the inscriptions into a rock. We’ll fetch a rock.”

Jim said the rock was worse than the logs; he said it would take him such a pison long time to dig them into a rock, he wouldn’t ever get out. But Tom said he would let me help him do it. Then he took a look to see how me and Jim was getting along with the pens. It was most pesky tedious hard work and slow, and didn’t give my hands no show to get well of the sores, and we didn’t seem to make no headway, hardly. So Tom says:

“I know how to "x it. We got to have a rock for the coat of arms and mournful inscriptions, and we can kill two birds with that same rock. There’s a gaudy big grindstone down at the mill, and we’ll smouch it, and carve the things on it, and "le out the pens and the saw on it, too.”

It warn’t no slouch of an idea; and it warn’t no slouch of a grindstone nuther; but we allowed we’d tackle it. It warn’t quite midnight, yet, so we cleared out for the mill, leaving Jim at work. We smouched the grindstone, and set out to roll her home, but it was a most nation tough job. Some- times, do what we could, we couldn’t keep her from falling over, and she come mighty near mashing us, every time. Tom said she was going to get one of us, sure, before we got through. We got her half way; and then we was plumb played out, and most drownded with sweat. We see it warn’t no use, we got to go and fetch Jim. So he raised up his bed and slid the chain off of the bed- leg, and wrapt it round and round his neck, and we crawled out through our hole and down there, and Jim and me laid into that grindstone and walked her along like nothing; and Tom superintended. He could out- superintend any boy I ever see. He knowed how to do every- thing.

Our hole was pretty big, but it warn’t big enough to get the grindstone through; but Jim he took the pick and soon made it big enough. Then Tom marked out them things on it with the nail, and set Jim to work on them,

with the nail for a chisel and an iron bolt from the rubbage in the lean-to for a hammer, and told him to work till the rest of his candle quit on him, and then he could go to bed, and hide the grindstone under his straw tick and sleep on it. Then we helped him "x his chain back on the bed- leg, and was ready for bed ourselves. But Tom thought of something, and says:

“You got any spiders in here, Jim?” “No, sah, thanks to goodness I hain’t, Mars Tom.” “All right, we’ll get you some.” “But bless you, honey, I doan’ want none. I’s afeard un um. I jis’ ’s soon

have rattlesnakes aroun’.” Tom thought a minute or two, and says: “It’s a good idea. And I reckon it’s been done. It must a been done; it stands

to reason. Yes, it’s a prime good idea. Where could you keep it?” “Keep what, Mars Tom?” “Why, a rattlesnake.” “De goodness gracious alive, Mars Tom! Why, if dey was a rattlesnake to

come in heah, I’d take en bust right out thoo dat log wall, I would, wid my head.” “Why, Jim, you wouldn’t be afraid of it, after a little. You could tame it.” “Tame it!” “Yes— easy enough. Every animal is grateful for kindness and petting, and

they wouldn’t think of hurting a person that pets them. Any book will tell you that. You try— that’s all I ask; just try for two or three days. Why, you can get him so, in a little while, that he’ll love you; and sleep with you; and won’t stay away from you a minute; and will let you wrap him round your neck and put his head in your mouth.”

“Please, Mars Tom— doan’ talk so! I can’t stan’ it! He’d let me shove his head in my mouf— fer a favor, hain’t it? I lay he’d wait a pow’ful long time ’fo’ I ast him. En mo’ en dat, I doan’ want him to sleep wid me.”

“Jim, don’t act so foolish. A prisoner’s got to have some kind of a dumb pet, and if a rattlesnake hain’t ever been tried, why, there’s more glory to be gained in your being the "rst to ever try it than any other way you could ever think of to save your life.”

“Why, Mars Tom, I doan’ want no sich glory. Snake take ’n bite Jim’s chin off, den whah is de glory? No, sah, I doan’ want no sich doin’s.”

“Blame it, can’t you try? I only want you to try— you needn’t keep it up if it don’t work.”

“But de trou ble all done, ef de snake bite me while I’s a tryin’ him. Mars Tom, I’s willin’ to tackle mos’ anything ’at ain’t onreasonable, but ef you en Huck fetches a rattlesnake in heah for me to tame, I’s gwyne to leave, dat’s shore.”

“Well, then, let it go, let it go, if you’re so bullheaded about it. We can get you some garter- snakes and you can tie some buttons on their tails, and let on they’re rattlesnakes, and I reckon that’ll have to do.”

“I k’n stan’ dem, Mars Tom, but blame’ ’f I couldn’t get along widout um, I tell you dat. I never knowed b’fo’, ’t was so much bother and trou ble to be a prisoner.”

“Well, it always is, when it’s done right. You got any rats around here?” “No, sah, I hain’t seed none.” “Well, we’ll get you some rats.” “Why, Mars Tom, I doan’ want no rats. Dey’s de dad- blamedest creturs to

sturb a body, en rustle roun’ over ’im, en bite his feet, when he’s tryin’ to

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2. Also known as a mouth harp and by other names, a small instrument that the player holds between his or her teeth and produces notes by striking a metal tongue. Despite this name, it has no par tic u lar connection to Judaism or the Jewish people; rather, the name is a corruption

of jaw’s harp. 3. A popu lar love song of this time. 4. Picciola (1836) was a popu lar romantic novel by Xavier Saintine (pseudonym for Joseph Xavier Boniface, 1798–1865), in which a plant helps a prisoner survive.

sleep, I ever see. So, sah, gimme g’yarter- snakes, ’f I’s got to have ’m, but doan’ gimme no rats. I ain’ got not use f’r um, skasely.”

“But Jim, you got to have ’em— they all do. So don’t make no more fuss about it. Prisoners ain’t ever without rats. There ain’t no instance of it. And they train them, and pet them, and learn them tricks, and they get to be as sociable as `ies. But you got to play music to them. You got anything to play music on?”

“I ain’t got nuffn but a coase comb en a piece o’ paper, en a juice- harp; but I reck’n dey wouldn’t take no stock in a juice- harp.”

“Yes, they would. They don’t care what kind of music ’tis. A jews- harp’s2 plenty good enough for a rat. All animals likes music—in a prison they dote on it. Specially, painful music; and you can’t get no other kind out of a jews- harp. It always interests them; they come out to see what’s the matter with you. Yes, you’re all right; you’re "xed very well. You want to set on your bed, nights, before you go to sleep, and early in the mornings, and play your jews- harp; play The Last Link is Broken3— that’s the thing that’ll scoop a rat, quicker’n anything else: and when you’ve played about two minutes, you’ll see all the rats, and the snakes, and spiders, and things begin to feel wor- ried about you, and come. And they’ll just fairly swarm over you, and have a noble good time.”

“Yes, dey will, I reck’n, Mars Tom, but what kine er time is Jim havin’? Blest if I kin see de pint. But I’ll do it ef I got to. I reck’n I better keep de animals satis"ed, en not have no trou ble in de house.”

Tom waited to think over, and see if there wasn’t nothing else; and pretty soon he says:

“Oh— there’s one thing I forgot. Could you raise a `ower here, do you reckon?”

“I doan’ know but maybe I could, Mars Tom; but it’s tolable dark in heah, en I ain’ got no use f’r no `ower, nohow, en she’d be a pow’ful sight o’ trou ble.”

“Well, you try it, anyway. Some other prisoners has done it.” “One er dem big cat- tail- lookin’ mullen- stalks would grow in heah, Mars

Tom, I reck’n, but she wouldn’ be wuth half de trou ble she’d coss.” “ Don’t you believe it. We’ll fetch you a little one, and you plant it in the cor-

ner, over there, and raise it. And don’t call it mullen, call it Pitchiola— that’s its right name, when it’s in a prison.4 And you want to water it with your tears.”

“Why, I got plenty spring water, Mars Tom.” “You don’t want spring water; you want to water it with your tears. It’s the

way they always do.” “Why, Mars Tom, I lay I kin raise one er dem mullen- stalks twyste wid

spring water whiles another man’s a start’n one wid tears.” “That ain’t the idea. You got to do it with tears.” “ She’ll die on my han’s, Mars Tom, she sholy will; kase I doan’ skasely

ever cry.”

5. Elecampane is an herb that Tom and Huck are using to relieve the pain of the hornet stings.

So Tom was stumped. But he studied it over, and then said Jim would have to worry along the best he could with an onion. He promised he would go to the nigger cabins and drop one, private, in Jim’s coffee- pot, in the morning. Jim said he would “ jis’ ’s soon have tobacker in his coffee;” and found so much fault with it, and with the work and bother of raising the mullen, and jews- harping the rats, and petting and `attering up the snakes and spiders and things, on top of all the other work he had to do on pens, and inscrip- tions, and journals, and things, which made it more trou ble and worry and responsibility to be a prisoner than anything he ever undertook, that Tom most lost all patience with him; and said he was just loadened down with more gaudier chances than a prisoner ever had in the world to make a name for himself, and yet he didn’t know enough to appreciate them, and they was just about wasted on him. So Jim he was sorry, and said he wouldn’t behave so no more, and then me and Tom shoved for bed.

Chapter XXXIX

In the morning we went up to the village and bought a wire rat trap and fetched it down, and unstopped the best rat hole, and in about an hour we had "fteen of the bulliest kind of ones; and then we took it and put it in a safe place under Aunt Sally’s bed. But while we was gone for spiders, little Thomas Franklin Benjamin Jefferson Elexander Phelps found it there, and opened the door of it to see if the rats would come out, and they did; and Aunt Sally she come in, and when we got back she was standing on top of the bed raising Cain, and the rats was doing what they could to keep off the dull times for her. So she took and dusted us both with the hickry, and we was as much as two hours catching another "fteen or sixteen, drat that meddlesome cub, and they warn’t the likeliest, nuther, because the "rst haul was the pick of the `ock. I never see a likelier lot of rats than what that "rst haul was.

We got a splendid stock of sorted spiders, and bugs, and frogs, and cater- pillars, and one thing or another; and we like-to got a hornet’s nest, but we didn’t. The family was at home. We didn’t give it right up, but staid with them as long as we could; because we allowed we’d tire them out or they’d got to tire us out, and they done it. Then we got allycumpain5 and rubbed on the places, and was pretty near all right again, but couldn’t set down con- ve nient. And so we went for the snakes, and grabbed a couple of dozen garters and house- snakes, and put them in a bag, and put it in our room, and by that time it was supper time, and a rattling good honest day’s work; and hungry?—oh, no I reckon not! And there warn’t a blessed snake up there, when we went back—we didn’t half tie the sack, and they worked out, somehow, and left. But it didn’t matter much, because they was still on the premises somewheres. So we judged we could get some of them again. No, there warn’t no real scarcity of snakes about the house for a considerble spell. You’d see them dripping from the raf ters and places, every now and then; and they generly landed in your plate, or down the back of your neck, and most of the time where you didn’t want them. Well, they was handsome, and striped, and there warn’t no harm in a million of them; but that never

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made no difference to Aunt Sally, she despised snakes, be the breed what they might, and she couldn’t stand them no way you could "x it; and every time one of them `opped down on her, it didn’t make no difference what she was doing, she would just lay that work down and light out. I never see such a woman. And you could hear her whoop to Jericho. You couldn’t get her to take aholt of one of them with the tongs. And if she turned over and found one in bed, she would scramble out and lift a howl that you would think the house was a"re. She disturbed the old man so, that he said he could most wish there hadn’t ever been no snakes created. Why, after every last snake had been gone clear out of the house for as much as a week, Aunt Sally warn’t over it yet; she warn’t near over it; when she was setting thinking about something, you could touch her on the back of her neck with a feather and she would jump right out of her stockings. It was very curious. But Tom said all women was just so. He said they was made that way; for some rea- son or other.

We got a licking every time one of our snakes come in her way; and she allowed these lickings warn’t nothing to what she would do if we ever loaded up the place again with them. I didn’t mind the lickings, because they didn’t amount to nothing; but I minded the trou ble we had, to lay in another lot. But we got them laid in, and all the other things; and you never see a cabin as blithesome as Jim’s was when they’d all swarm out for music and go for him. Jim didn’t like the spiders, and the spiders didn’t like Jim; and so they’d lay for him and make it mighty warm for him. And he said that between the rats, and the snakes, and the grindstone, there warn’t no room in bed for him, skasely; and when there was, a body couldn’t sleep, it was so lively, and it was always lively, he said, because they never all slept at one time, but took turn about, so when the snakes was asleep the rats was on deck, and when the rats turned in the snakes come on watch, so he always had one gang under him, in his way, and t’other gang having a circus over him, and if he got up to hunt a new place, the spiders would take a chance at him as he crossed over. He said if he ever got out, this time, he wouldn’t ever be a pris- oner again, not for a salary.

Well, by the end of three weeks, every thing was in pretty good shape. The shirt was sent in early, in a pie, and every time a rat bit Jim he would get up and write a little in his journal whilst the ink was fresh; the pens was made, the inscriptions and so on was all carved on the grindstone; the bed- leg was sawed in two, and we had et up the sawdust, and it give us a most amazing stomach- ache. We reckoned we was all going to die, but didn’t. It was the most undigestible sawdust I ever see; and Tom said the same. But as I was saying, we’d got all the work done, now, at last; and we was all pretty much fagged out, too, but mainly Jim. The old man had wrote a couple of times to the plantation below Orleans to come and get their runaway nigger, but hadn’t got no answer, because there warn’t no such plantation; so he allowed he would advertise Jim in the St. Louis and New Orleans papers; and when he mentioned the St. Louis ones, it give me the cold shivers, and I see we hadn’t no time to lose. So Tom said, now for the nonnamous letters.

“What’s them?” I says. “Warnings to the people that something is up. Sometimes it’s done one

way, sometimes another. But there’s always somebody spying around, that gives notice to the governor of the castle. When Louis XVI was going to light

6. Twain prob ably read this episode of the Tuileries, a palace in Paris, in Thomas Carlyle’s French Revo- lution (1837).

out of the Tooleries,6 a servant girl done it. It’s a very good way, and so is the nonnamous letters. We’ll use them both. And it’s usual for the prisoner’s mother to change clothes with him, and she stays in, and he slides out in her clothes. We’ll do that too.”

“But looky here, Tom, what do we want to warn anybody for, that some- thing’s up? Let them "nd it out for themselves— it’s their lookout.”

“Yes, I know; but you can’t depend on them. It’s the way they’ve acted from the very start— left us to do every thing. They’re so con"ding and mullet- headed they don’t take notice of nothing at all. So if we don’t give them notice, there won’t be nobody nor nothing to interfere with us, and so after all our hard work and trou ble this escape ’ll go off perfectly ̀ at: won’t amount to nothing— won’t be nothing to it.”

“Well, as for me, Tom, that’s the way I’d like.” “Shucks,” he says, and looked disgusted. So I says: “But I ain’t going to make no complaint. Anyway that suits you suits me.

What you going to do about the servant- girl?” “You’ll be her. You slide in, in the middle of the night, and hook that yaller

girl’s frock.” “Why, Tom, that’ll make trou ble next morning; because of course she

prob’bly hain’t got any but that one.” “I know; but you don’t want it but "fteen minutes, to carry the nonna-

mous letter and shove it under the front door.” “All right, then, I’ll do it; but I could carry it just as handy in my own togs.” “You wouldn’t look like a servant- girl then, would you?” “No, but there won’t be nobody to see what I look like, anyway.” “That ain’t got nothing to do with it. The thing for us to do, is just to do

our duty, and not worry about whether anybody sees us do it or not. Hain’t you got no princi ple at all?”

“All right, I ain’t saying nothing; I’m the servant- girl. Who’s Jim’s mother?” “I’m his mother. I’ll hook a gown from Aunt Sally.” “Well, then, you’ll have to stay in the cabin when me and Jim leaves.” “Not much. I’ll stuff Jim’s clothes full of straw and lay it on his bed to

represent his mother in disguise: and Jim ’ll take Aunt Sally’s gown off of me and wear it, and we’ll all evade together. When a prisoner of style escapes, it’s called an evasion. It’s always called so when a king escapes, f’rinstance. And the same with a king’s son; it don’t make no difference whether he’s a natu ral one or an unnatural one.”

So Tom he wrote the nonnamous letter, and I smouched the yaller wench’s frock, that night, and put it on, and shoved it under the front door, the way Tom told me to. It said:

Beware, Trou ble is brewing. Keep a sharp lookout. Unknown Friend.

Next night we stuck a picture which Tom drawed in blood, of a skull and crossbones, on the front door; and next night another one of a cof"n, on the back door. I never see a family in such a sweat. They couldn’t a been worse scared if the place had a been full of ghosts laying for them behind

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7. Indian country; part of Oklahoma reserved for Native Americans beginning in the 1830s. Because federal law did not apply there, outlaws used it as a base of operations throughout the 19th century.

every thing and under the beds and shivering through the air. If a door banged, Aunt Sally she jumped, and said “ouch!” if anything fell, she jumped and said “ouch!” if you happened to touch her, when she warn’t noticing, she done the same; she couldn’t face noway and be satis"ed, because she allowed there was something behind her every time—so she was always a whirling around, sudden, and saying “ouch,” and before she’d get two- thirds around, she’d whirl back again, and say it again; and she was afraid to go to bed, but she dasn’t set up. So the thing was working very well, Tom said; he said he never see a thing work more satisfactory. He said it showed it was done right.

So he said, now for the grand bulge! So the very next morning at the streak of dawn we got another letter ready, and was wondering what we better do with it, because we heard them say at supper they was going to have a nig- ger on watch at both doors all night. Tom he went down the lightning- rod to spy around; and the nigger at the back door was asleep, and he stuck it in the back of his neck and come back. This letter said:

Don’t betray me, I wish to be your friend. There is a desprate gang of cut- throats from over in the Ingean Territory7 going to steal your runaway nigger to- night, and they have been trying to scare you so as you will stay in the house and not bother them. I am one of the gang, but have got religgion and wish to quit it and lead a honest life again, and will betray the helish design. They will sneak down from northards, along the fence, at midnight exact, with a false key, and go in the nigger’s cabin to get him. I am to be off a piece and blow a tin horn if I see any danger; but stead of that, I will ba like a sheep soon as they get in and not blow at all; then whilst they are getting his chains loose, you slip there and lock them in, and can kill them at your leasure. Don’t do anything but just the way I am telling you, if you do they will suspicion something and raise whoopjamboreehoo. I do not wish any reward but to know I have done the right thing.

Unknown Friend.

Chapter XL

We was feeling pretty good, after breakfast, and took my canoe and went over the river a "shing, with a lunch, and had a good time, and took a look at the raft and found her all right, and got home late to supper, and found them in such a sweat and worry they didn’t know which end they was stand- ing on, and made us go right off to bed the minute we was done supper, and wouldn’t tell us what the trou ble was, and never let on a word about the new letter, but didn’t need to, because we knowed as much about it as anybody did, and as soon as we was half up stairs and her back was turned, we slid for the cellar cupboard and loaded up a good lunch and took it up to our room and went to bed, and got up about half- past eleven, and Tom put on Aunt Sally’s dress that he stole and was going to start with the lunch, but says:

“Where’s the butter?” “I laid out a hunk of it,” I says, “on a piece of a corn- pone.” “Well, you left it laid out, then—it ain’t here.”

“We can get along without it,” I says. “We can get along with it, too,” he says; “ just you slide down cellar and

fetch it. And then mosey right down the lightning- rod and come along. I’ll go and stuff the straw into Jim’s clothes to represent his mother in disguise, and be ready to ba like a sheep and shove soon as you get there.”

So out he went, and down cellar went I. The hunk of butter, big as a per- son’s "st, was where I had left it, so I took up the slab of corn- pone with it on, and blowed out my light, and started up stairs, very stealthy, and got up to the main `oor all right, but here comes Aunt Sally with a candle, and I clapped the truck in my hat, and clapped my hat on my head, and the next second she see me; and she says:

“You been down cellar?” “Yes’m.” “What you been doing down there?” “Noth’n.” “Noth’n!” “No’m.” “Well, then, what possessed you to go down there, this time of night?” “I don’t know’m.” “You don’t know? Don’t answer me that way, Tom, I want to know what

you been doing down there?” “I hain’t been doing a single thing, Aunt Sally, I hope to gracious if I have.” I reckoned she’d let me go, now, and as a generl thing she would; but I spose

there was so many strange things going on she was just in a sweat about every little thing that warn’t yard- stick straight; so she says, very deci ded:

“You just march into that setting- room and stay there till I come. You been up to something you no business to, and I lay I’ll "nd out what it is before I’m done with you.”

So she went away as I opened the door and walked into the setting- room. My, but there was a crowd there! Fifteen farmers, and every one of them had a gun. I was most power ful sick, and slunk to a chair and set down. They was setting around, some of them talking a little, in a low voice, and all of them "dgety and uneasy, but trying to look like they warn’t; but I knowed they was, because they was always taking off their hats, and putting them on, and scratching their heads, and changing their seats, and fumbling with their buttons. I warn’t easy myself, but I didn’t take my hat off, all the same.

I did wish Aunt Sally would come, and get done with me, and lick me, if she wanted to, and let me get away and tell Tom how we’d overdone this thing, and what a thundering hornet’s nest we’d got ourselves into, so we could stop fooling around, straight off, and clear out with Jim before these rips got out of patience and come for us.

At last she come, and begun to ask me questions, but I couldn’t answer them straight, I didn’t know which end of me was up; because these men was in such a "dget now, that some was wanting to start right now and lay for them desperadoes, and saying it warn’t but a few minutes to midnight; and others was trying to get them to hold on and wait for the sheep- signal; and here was aunty pegging away at the questions, and me a shaking all over and ready to sink down in my tracks I was that scared; and the place getting hotter and hotter, and the butter beginning to melt and run down my neck and behind my ears: and pretty soon, when one of them says, “I’m for going

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8. A common term for diseases related to in`ammation of the brain.

and getting in the cabin "rst, and right now, and catching them when they come,” I most dropped; and a streak of butter came a trickling down my fore- head, and Aunt Sally she see it, and turns white as a sheet, and says:

“For the land’s sake what is the matter with the child!— he’s got the brain fever8 as shore as you’re born, and they’re oozing out!”

And every body runs to see, and she snatches off my hat, and out comes the bread, and what was left of the butter, and she grabbed me, and hugged me, and says:

“Oh, what a turn you did give me! and how glad and grateful I am it ain’t no worse; for luck’s against us, and it never rains but it pours, and when I see that truck I thought we’d lost you, for I knowed by the color and all, it was just like your brains would be if— Dear, dear, whyd’nt you tell me that was what you’d been down there for, I wouldn’t a cared. Now cler out to bed, and don’t lemme see no more of you till morning!”

I was up stairs in a second, and down the lightning- rod in another one, and shinning through the dark for the lean-to. I couldn’t hardly get my words out, I was so anxious; but I told Tom as quick as I could, we must jump for it, now, and not a minute to lose— the house full of men, yonder, with guns!

His eyes just blazed; and he says: “No!—is that so? Ain’t it bully! Why, Huck, if it was to do over again, I bet

I could fetch two hundred! If we could put it off till—” “Hurry! Hurry!” I says. “Where’s Jim?” “Right at your elbow; if you reach out your arm you can touch him. He’s

dressed, and every thing’s ready. Now we’ll slide out and give the sheep- signal.”

But then we heard the tramp of men, coming to the door, and heard them begin to fumble with the padlock; and heard a man say:

“I told you we’d be too soon; they haven’t come— the door is locked. Here, I’ll lock some of you into the cabin and you lay for ’em in the dark and kill ’em when they come; and the rest scatter around a piece, and listen if you can hear ’em coming.”

So in they come, but couldn’t see us in the dark, and most trod on us whilst we was hustling to get under the bed. But we got under all right, and out through the hole, swift but soft— Jim "rst, me next, and Tom last, which was according to Tom’s orders. Now we was in the lean-to, and heard trampings close by outside. So we crept to the door, and Tom stopped us there and put his eye to the crack, but couldn’t make out nothing, it was so dark; and whis- pered and said he would listen for the steps to get further, and when he nudged us Jim must glide out "rst, and him last. So he set his ear to the crack and lis- tened, and listened, and listened, and the steps a scraping around, out there, all the time; and at last he nudged us, and we slid out, and stooped down, not breathing, and not making the least noise, and slipped stealthy towards the fence, in Injun "le, and got to it, all right, and me and Jim over it; but Tom’s britches catched fast on a splinter on the top rail, and then he hear the steps coming, so he had to pull loose, which snapped the splinter and made a noise; and as he dropped in our tracks and started, somebody sings out:

“Who’s that? Answer, or I’ll shoot!”

9. Taken from the Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle’s rendering of the king’s execution in The French Revolution (1837).

But we didn’t answer; we just unfurled our heels and shoved. Then there was a rush, and a bang, bang, bang! and the bullets fairly whizzed around us! We heard them sing out:

“ Here they are! They’ve broke for the river! after ’em, boys! And turn loose the dogs!”

So here they come, full tilt. We could hear them, because they wore boots, and yelled, but we didn’t wear no boots, and didn’t yell. We was in the path to the mill; and when they got pretty close onto us, we dodged into the bush and let them go by, and then dropped in behind them. They’d had all the dogs shut up, so they wouldn’t scare off the robbers; but by this time some- body had let them loose, and here they come, making pow- wow enough for a million; but they was our dogs; so we stopped in our tracks till they catched up; and when they see it warn’t nobody but us, and no excitement to offer them, they only just said howdy, and tore right ahead towards the shouting and clattering; and then we up steam again and whizzed along after them till we was nearly to the mill, and then struck up through the bush to where my canoe was tied, and hopped in and pulled for dear life towards the middle of the river, but didn’t make no more noise than we was obleeged to. Then we struck out, easy and comfortable, for the island where my raft was; and we could hear them yelling and barking at each other all up and down the bank, till we was so far away the sounds got dim and died out. And when we stepped onto the raft, I says:

“Now, old Jim, you’re a free man again, and I bet you won’t ever be a slave no more.”

“En a mighty good job it wuz, too, Huck. It ’uz planned beautiful, en it ’uz done beautiful; en dey aint’ nobody kin git up a plan dat’s mo’ mixed-up en splendid den what dat one wuz.”

We was all as glad as we could be, but Tom was the gladdest of all, because he had a bullet in the calf of his leg.

When me and Jim heard that, we didn’t feel so brash as what we did before. It was hurting him considerble, and bleeding; so we laid him in the wigwam and tore up one of the duke’s shirts for to ban dage him, but he says:

“Gimme the rags, I can do it myself. Don’t stop, now; don’t fool around here, and the evasion booming along so handsome; man the sweeps, and set her loose! Boys, we done it elegant!—’deed we did. I wish we’d a had the handling of Louis XVI, there wouldn’t a been no ‘Son of Saint Louis, ascend to heaven!’9 wrote down in his biography: no, sir, we’d a whooped him over the border— that’s what we’d a done with him— and done it just as slick as nothing at all, too. Man the sweeps— man the sweeps!”

But me and Jim was consulting— and thinking. And after we’d thought a minute, I says:

“Say it, Jim.” So he says: “Well, den, dis is de way it look to me, Huck. Ef it wuz him dat ’uz bein’

sot free, en one er de boys wuz to git shot, would he say, ‘Go on en save me, nemmine ’bout a doctor f’r to save dis one?’ Is dat like Mars Tom Sawyer? Would he say dat? You bet he wouldn’t! Well, den, is Jim gwyne to say it?

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No, sah— I doan’ budge a step out’n dis place, ’dout a doctor; not if its forty year!”

I knowed he was white inside, and I reckoned he’d say what he did say— so it was all right, now, and I told Tom I was agoing for a doctor. He raised considerble row about it, but me and Jim stuck to it and wouldn’t budge; so he was for crawling out and setting the raft loose himself; but we wouldn’t let him. Then he give us a piece of his mind— but it didn’t do no good.

So when he see me getting the canoe ready, he says: “Well, then, if you’re bound to go, I’ll tell you the way to do, when you get

to the village. Shut the door, and blindfold the doctor tight and fast, and make him swear to be silent as the grave, and put a purse full of gold in his hand, and then take and lead him all around the back alleys and everywheres, in the dark, and then fetch him here in the canoe, in a roundabout way amongst the islands, and search him and take his chalk away from him, and don’t give it back to him till you get him back to the village, or else he will chalk this raft so he can "nd it again. It’s the way they all do.”

So I said I would, and left, and Jim was to hide in the woods when he see the doctor coming, till he was gone again.

Chapter XLI

The doctor was an old man; a very nice, kind- looking old man, when I got him up. I told him me and my brother was over on Spanish Island hunting, yesterday after noon, and camped on a piece of a raft we found, and about midnight he must a kicked his gun in his dreams, for it went off and shot him in the leg, and we wanted him to go over there and "x it and not say nothing about it, nor let anybody know, because we wanted to come home this eve ning, and surprise the folks.

“Who is your folks?” he says. “The Phelpses, down yonder.” “Oh,” he says. And after a minute, he says: “How’d you say he got shot?” “He had a dream,” I says, “and it shot him.” “Singular dream,” he says. So he lit up his lantern, and got his saddle- bags, and we started. But when

he see the canoe, he didn’t like the look of her— said she was big enough for one, but didn’t look pretty safe for two. I says:

“Oh, you needn’t be afeard, sir, she carried the three of us, easy enough.” “What three?” “Why, me and Sid, and— and— and the guns; that’s what I mean.” “Oh,” he says. But he put his foot on the gunnel, and rocked her; and shook his head,

and said he reckoned he’d look around for a bigger one. But they was all locked and chained; so he took my canoe, and said for me to wait till he come back, or I could hunt around further, or maybe I better go down home and get them ready for the surprise, if I wanted to. But I said I didn’t; so I told him just how to "nd the raft, and then he started.

I struck an idea, pretty soon. I says to myself, spos’n he can’t "x that leg just in three shakes of a sheep’s tail, as the saying is? spos’n it takes him three or four days? What are we going to do?— lay around there till he lets the cat out of the bag? No, sir, I know what I’ll do. I’ll wait, and when he

1. Nebuchadnezzar (605–562 b.c.e.), king of Babylon, is described in Daniel 4.33 as going mad and eat- ing grass.

comes back, if he says he’s got to go any more, I’ll get him down there, too, if I swim; and we’ll take and tie him, and keep him, and shove out down the river; and when Tom’s done with him, we’ll give him what it’s worth, or all we got, and then let him get shore.

So then I crept into a lumber pile to get some sleep; and next time I waked up the sun was away up over my head! I shot out and went for the doctor’s house, but they told me he’d gone away in the night, some time or other, and warn’t back yet. Well, thinks I, that looks power ful bad for Tom, and I’ll dig out for the island, right off. So away I shoved, and turned the corner, and nearly rammed my head into Uncle Silas’s stomach! He says:

“Why, Tom! Where you been, all this time, you rascal?” “I hain’t been nowheres,” I says, “only just hunting for the runaway nig-

ger—me and Sid.” “Why, where ever did you go?” he says. “Your aunt’s been mighty uneasy.” “She needn’t,” I says, “ because we was all right. We followed the men

and the dogs, but they out- run us, and we lost them; but we thought we heard them on the water, so we got a canoe and took out after them, and crossed over but couldn’t "nd nothing of them; so we cruised along up- shore till we got kind of tired and beat out; and tied up the canoe and went to sleep, and never waked up till about an hour ago, then we paddled over here to hear the news, and Sid’s at the post- of"ce to see what he can hear, and I’m a branching out to get something to eat for us, and then we’re going home.”

So then we went to the post- of"ce to get “Sid”; but just as I suspicioned, he warn’t there; so the old man he got a letter out of the of"ce, and we waited a while longer but Sid didn’t come; so the old man said come along, let Sid foot it home, or canoe-it, when he got done fooling around— but we would ride. I couldn’t get him to let me stay and wait for Sid; and he said there warn’t no use in it, and I must come along, and let Aunt Sally see we was all right.

When we got home, Aunt Sally was that glad to see me she laughed and cried both, and hugged me, and give me one of them lickings of hern that don’t amount to shucks, and said she’d serve Sid the same when he come.

And the place was plumb full of farmers and farmers’ wives, to dinner; and such another clack a body never heard. Old Mrs. Hotchkiss was the worst; her tongue was agoing all the time. She says:

“Well, Sister Phelps, I’ve ransacked that- air cabin over an’ I b’lieve the nig- ger was crazy. I says so to Sister Damrell— didn’t I, Sister Damrell?— s’I, he’s crazy, s’I— them’s the very words I said. You all hearn me: he’s crazy, s’I; every thing shows it, s’I. Look at that- air grindstone, s’I; want to tell me’t any cretur ’ts in his right mind ’s agoin’ to scrabble all them crazy things onto a grindstone, s’I? Here sich ’n’ sich a person busted his heart; ’n’ here so ’n’ so pegged along for thirty- seven year, ’n’ all that— natcherl son o’ Louis some- body, ’n’ sich everlast’n rubbage. He’s plumb crazy, s’I; it’s what I says in the fust place, it’s what I says in the middle, ’n’ it’s what I says last ’n’ all the time— the nigger’s crazy— crazy’s Nebokoodneezer,1 s’I.”

“An’ look at that- air ladder made out’n rags, Sister Hotchkiss,” says old Mrs. Damrell, “what in the name o’goodness could he ever want of—”

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“The very words I was a- sayin’ no longer ago th’n this minute to Sister Utterback, ’n’ she’ll tell you so herself. Sh- she, look at that- air rag ladder, sh- she; ’n’ s’I, yes, look at it, s’I— what could he a wanted of it, s’I. Sh- she, Sister Hotchkiss, sh- she—”

“But how in the nation’d they ever git that grindstone in there, anyway? ’n’ who dug that- air hole? ’n’ who—”

“My very words, Brer Penrod! I was a- sayin’— pass that- air sasser o’ m’lasses, won’t ye?— I was a- sayin’ to Sister Dunlap, jist this minute, how did they git that grindstone in there, s’I. Without help, mind you—’thout help! Thar’s wher’ tis. Don’t tell me, s’I; there wuz help, s’I; ’n’ ther’ wuz a plenty help, too, s’I; ther’s ben a dozen a- helpin’ that nigger, ’n’ I lay I’d skin every last nigger on this place, but I’d "nd out who done it, s’I; ’n’ moreover, s’I—”

“A dozen says you!— forty couldn’t a done every thing that’s been done. Look at them case- knife saws and things, how tedious they’ve been made; look at that bed- leg sawed off with ’em, a week’s work for six men; look at that nigger made out’n straw on the bed; and look at—”

“You may well say it, Brer High tower! It’s jist as I was a- sayin’ to Brer Phelps, his own self. S’e, what do you think of it, Sister Hotchkiss, s’e? think o’ what, Brer Phelps, s’I? think o’ that bed- leg sawed off that a way, s’e? think of it, s’I? I lay it never sawed itself off, s’I— somebody sawed it, s’I; that’s my opinion, take it or leave it, it mayn’t be no ’count, s’I, but sich as ’t is, it’s my opinion, s’I, ’n’ if anybody k’n start a better one, s’I, let him do it, s’I, that’s all. I says to Sister Dunlap, s’I—”

“Why, dog my cats, they must a ben a house- full o’ niggers in there every night for four weeks, to a done all that work, Sister Phelps. Look at that shirt— every last inch of it kivered over with secret African writ’n done with blood! Must a ben a raft uv ’m at it right along, all the time, amost. Why, I’d give two dollars to have it read to me; ’n’ as for the niggers that wrote it, I ’low I’d take ’n’ lash ’m t’ll—”

“ People to help him, Brother Marples! Well, I reckon you’d think so, if you’d a been in this house for a while back. Why, they’ve stole every thing they could lay their hands on— and we a watching, all the time, mind you. They stole that shirt right off o’ the line! and as for that sheet they made the rag ladder out of ther’ ain’t no telling how many times they didn’t steal that; and `our, and candles, and candlesticks, and spoons, and the old- warming- pan, and most a thousand things that I disremember, now, and my new calico dress; and me, and Silas, and my Sid and Tom on the constant watch day and night, as I was a telling you, and not a one of us could catch hide nor hair, nor sight nor sound of them; and here at the last minute, lo and behold you, they slides right in under our noses, and fools us, and not only fools us but the Injun Territory robbers too, and actuly gets away with that nigger, safe and sound, and that with sixteen men and twenty- two dogs right on their very heels at that very time! I tell you, it just bangs anything I ever heard of. Why, sperits couldn’t a done better, and been no smarter. And I reckon they must a been sperits— because, you know our dogs, and ther’ ain’t no better; well, them dogs never even got on the track of ’m, once! You explain that to me, if you can!— any of you!”

“Well, it does beat—” “Laws alive, I never—” “So help me, I wouldn’t a be—”

“House thieves as well as—” “Goodnessgracioussakes, I’d a ben afeard to live in sich a—” “ ’Fraid to live!— why, I was that scared I dasn’t hardly go to bed, or get

up, or lay down, or set down, Sister Ridgeway. Why, they’d steal the very— why, goodness sakes, you can guess what kind of a `uster I was in by the time midnight come, last night. I hope to gracious if I warn’t afraid they’d steal some o’ the family! I was just to that pass, I didn’t have no reasoning faculties no more. It looks foolish enough, now, in the day- time; but I says to myself, there’s my two poor boys asleep, ’way up stairs in that lonesome room, and I declare to goodness I was that uneasy ’t I crep’ up there and locked ’em in! I did. And anybody would. Because, you know, when you get scared, that way, and it keeps running on, and getting worse and worse, all the time, and your wits gets to addling, and you get to doing all sorts o’ wild things, and by- and-by you think to yourself, spos’n I was a boy, and was away up there, and the door ain’t locked, and you—” She stopped, looking kind of wondering, and then she turned her head around slow, and when her eye lit on me— I got up and took a walk.

Says I to myself, I can explain better how we come to not be in that room this morning, if I go out to one side and study over it a little. So I done it. But I dasn’t go fur, or she’d a sent for me. And when it was late in the day, the people all went, and then I come in and told her the noise and shooting waked up me and “Sid,” and the door was locked, and we wanted to see the fun, so we went down the lightning- rod, and both of us got hurt a little, and we didn’t never want to try that no more. And then I went on and told her all what I told Uncle Silas before; and then she said she’d forgive us, and maybe it was all right enough anyway, and about what a body might expect of boys, for all boys was a pretty harum- scarum lot, as fur as she could see; and so, as long as no harm hadn’t come of it, she judged she better put in her time being grateful we was alive and well and she had us still, stead of fretting over what was past and done. So then she kissed me, and patted me on the head, and dropped into a kind of a brown study; and pretty soon jumps up, and says:

“Why, lawsamercy, it’s most night, and Sid not come yet! What has become of that boy?”

I see my chance; so I skips up and says: “I’ll run right up to town and get him,” I says. “No, you won’t,” she says. “You’ll stay right wher’ you are; one’s enough to

be lost at a time. If he ain’t here to supper, your uncle ’ll go.” Well, he warn’t there to supper; so right after supper uncle went. He come back about ten, a little bit uneasy; hadn’t run across Tom’s track.

Aunt Sally was a good deal uneasy; but Uncle Silas he said there warn’t no occasion to be— boys will be boys, he said, and you’ll see this one turn up in the morning, all sound and right. So she had to be satis"ed. But she said she’d set up for him a while, anyway, and keep a light burning, so he could see it.

And then when I went up to bed she come up with me and fetched her candle, and tucked me in, and mothered me so good I felt mean, and like I couldn’t look her in the face; and she set down on the bed and talked with me a long time, and said what a splendid boy Sid was, and didn’t seem to want to ever stop talking about him; and kept asking me every now and then, if I reckoned he could a got lost, or hurt, or maybe drownded, and might be

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laying at this minute, somewheres, suffering or dead, and she not by him to help him, and so the tears would drip down, silent, and I would tell her that Sid was all right, and would be home in the morning, sure; and she would squeeze my hand, or maybe kiss me, and tell me to say it again, and keep on saying it, because it done her good, and she was in so much trou- ble. And when she was going away, she looked down in my eyes, so steady and gentle, and says:

“The door ain’t going to be locked, Tom; and there’s the win dow and the rod; but you’ll be good, won’t you? And you won’t go? For my sake.”

Laws knows I wanted to go, bad enough, to see about Tom, and was all intending to go; but after that, I wouldn’t a went, not for kingdoms.

But she was on my mind, and Tom was on my mind; so I slept very rest- less. And twice I went down the rod, away in the night, and slipped around front, and see her setting there by her candle in the win dow with her eyes towards the road and the tears in them; and I wished I could do something for her, but I couldn’t, only to swear that I wouldn’t never do nothing to grieve her any more. And the third time, I waked up at dawn, and slid down, and she was there yet, and her candle was most out, and her old gray head was resting on her hand, and she was asleep.

Chapter XLII

The old man was up town again, before breakfast, but couldn’t get no track of Tom; and both of them set at the table, thinking, and not saying nothing, and looking mournful, and their coffee getting cold, and not eating anything. And by- and-by the old man says:

“Did I give you the letter?” “What letter?” “The one I got yesterday out of the post- of"ce.” “No, you didn’t give me no letter.” “Well, I must a forgot it.” So he rummaged his pockets, and then went off somewheres where he

had laid it down, and fetched it, and give it to her. She says: “Why, it’s from St. Petersburg— it’s from Sis.” I allowed another walk would do me good; but I couldn’t stir. But before

she could break it open, she dropped it and run— for she see something. And so did I. It was Tom Sawyer on a mattress; and that old doctor; and Jim, in her calico dress, with his hands tied behind him; and a lot of people. I hid the letter behind the "rst thing that come handy, and rushed. She `ung her- self at Tom, crying, and says:

“Oh, he’s dead, he’s dead, I know he’s dead!” And Tom he turned his head a little, and muttered something or other, which

showed he warn’t in his right mind; then she `ung up her hands and says: “He’s alive, thank God! And that’s enough!” and she snatched a kiss of him,

and `ew for the house to get the bed ready, and scattering orders right and left at the niggers and every body else, as fast as her tongue could go, every jump of the way.

I followed the men to see what they was going to do with Jim; and the old doctor and Uncle Silas followed after Tom into the house. The men was very huffy, and some of them wanted to hang Jim, for an example to all the other

niggers around there, so they wouldn’t be trying to run away, like Jim done, and making such a raft of trou ble, and keeping a whole family scared most to death for days and nights. But the others said, don’t do it, it wouldn’t answer at all, he ain’t our nigger, and his owner would turn up and make us pay for him, sure. So that cooled them down a little, because the people that’s always the most anxious for to hang a nigger that hain’t done just right, is always the very ones that ain’t the most anxious to pay for him when they’ve got their satisfaction out of him.

They cussed Jim considerble, though, and give him a cuff or two, side the head, once in a while, but Jim never said nothing, and he never let on to know me, and they took him to the same cabin, and put his own clothes on him, and chained him again, and not to no bed- leg, this time, but to a big staple drove into the bottom log, and chained his hands, too, and both legs, and said he warn’t to have nothing but bread and water to eat, after this, till his owner come or he was sold at auction, because he didn’t come in a cer- tain length of time, and "lled up our hole, and said a couple of farmers with guns must stand watch around about the cabin every night, and a bull- dog tied to the door in the day time; and about this time they was through with the job and was tapering off with a kind of generl good- bye cussing, and then the old doctor comes and takes a look and says:

“ Don’t be no rougher on him than you’re obleeged to, because he ain’t a bad nigger. When I got to where I found the boy, I see I couldn’t cut the bullet out without some help, and he warn’t in no condition for me to leave, to go and get help; and he got a little worse and a little worse, and after a long time he went out of his head, and wouldn’t let me come anigh him, any more, and said if I chalked his raft he’d kill me, and no end of wild foolish- ness like that, and I see I couldn’t do anything at all with him; so I says, I got to have help, somehow; and the minute I says it, out crawls this nigger from somewheres, and says he’ll help, and he done it, too, and done it very well. Of course I judged he must be a runaway nigger, and there I was! and there I had to stick, right straight along all the rest of the day, and all night. It was a "x, I tell you! I had a couple of patients with the chills, and of course I’d of liked to run up to town and see them, but I dasn’t, because the nigger might get away, and then I’d be to blame; and yet never a skiff come close enough for me to hail. So there I had to stick, plumb till daylight this morn- ing; and I never see a nigger that was a better nuss or faithfuller, and yet he was resking his freedom to do it, and was all tired out, too, and I see plain enough he’d been worked main hard, lately. I liked the nigger for that; I tell you, gentlemen, a nigger like that is worth a thousand dollars— and kind treatment, too. I had every thing I needed, and the boy was doing as well there as he would a done at home— better, maybe, because it was so quiet; but there I was, with both of ’m on my hands; and there I had to stick, till about dawn this morning; then some men in a skiff come by, and as good luck would have it, the nigger was setting by the pallet with his head propped on his knees, sound asleep; so I motioned them in, quiet, and they slipped up on him and grabbed him and tied him before he knowed what he was about, and we never had no trou ble. And the boy being in a kind of a `ighty sleep, too, we muf`ed the oars and hitched the raft on, and towed her over very nice and quiet, and the nigger never made the least row nor said a word, from the start. He ain’t no bad nigger, gentlemen; that’s what I think about him.”

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Somebody says: “Well, it sounds very good, doctor, I’m obleeged to say.” Then the others softened up a little, too, and I was mighty thankful to

that old doctor for doing Jim that good turn; and I was glad it was according to my judgment of him, too; because I thought he had a good heart in him and was a good man, the "rst time I see him. Then they all agreed that Jim had acted very well, and was deserving to have some notice took of it, and reward. So every one of them promised, right out and hearty, that they wouldn’t cuss him no more.

Then they come out and locked him up. I hoped they was going to say he could have one or two of the chains took off, because they was rotten heavy, or could have meat and greens with his bread and water, but they didn’t think of it, and I reckoned it warn’t best for me to mix in, but I judged I’d get the doctor’s yarn to Aunt Sally, somehow or other, as soon as I’d got through the breakers that was laying just ahead of me. Explanations, I mean, of how I forgot to mention about Sid being shot, when I was telling how him and me put in that dratted night paddling around hunting the runaway nigger.

But I had plenty time. Aunt Sally she stuck to the sick- room all day and all night; and every time I see Uncle Silas mooning around, I dodged him.

Next morning I heard Tom was a good deal better, and they said Aunt Sally was gone to get a nap. So I slips to the sick- room, and if I found him awake I reckoned we could put up a yarn for the family that would wash. But he was sleeping, and sleeping very peaceful, too; and pale, not "re- faced the way he was when he come. So I set down and laid for him to wake. In about a half an hour, Aunt Sally comes gliding in, and there I was, up a stump again! She motioned me to be still, and set down by me, and begun to whis- per, and said we could all be joyful now, because all the symptoms was "rst rate, and he’d been sleeping like that for ever so long, and looking better and peacefuller all the time, and ten to one he’d wake up in his right mind.

So we set there watching, and by- and-by he stirs a bit, and opened his eyes very natu ral, and takes a look, and says:

“Hello, why I’m at home! How’s that? Where’s the raft?” “It’s all right,” I says. “And Jim?” “The same,” I says, but couldn’t say it pretty brash. But he never noticed,

but says: “Good! Splendid! Now we’re all right and safe! Did you tell Aunty?” I was about to say yes; but she chipped in and says: “About what, Sid?” “Why, about the way the whole thing was done.” “What whole thing?” “Why, the whole thing. There ain’t but one; how we set the runaway nig-

ger free—me and Tom.” “Good land! Set the run— What is the child talking about! Dear, dear, out

of his head again!” “No, I ain’t out of my head; I know all what I’m talking about. We did set

him free—me and Tom. We laid out to do it, and we done it. And we done it elegant, too.” He’d got a start, and she never checked him up, just set and stared and stared, and let him clip along, and I see it warn’t no use for me to put in. “Why, Aunty, it cost us a power of work— weeks of it— hours and

2. The devil.

hours, every night, whilst you was all asleep. And we had to steal candles, and the sheet, and the shirt, and your dress, and spoons, and tin plates, and case- knives, and the warming- pan, and the grindstone, and `our, and just no end of things, and you can’t think what work it was to make the saws, and pens, and inscriptions, and one thing or another, and you can’t think half the fun it was. And we had to make up the pictures of cof"ns and things, and nonnamous letters from the robbers, and get up and down the lightning- rod, and dig the hole into the cabin, and make the rope- ladder and send it in cooked up in a pie, and send in spoons and things to work with, in your apron pocket”—

“Mercy sakes!” — “and load up the cabin with rats and snakes and so on, for com pany for

Jim; and then you kept Tom here so long with the butter in his hat that you come near spiling the whole business, because the men come before we was out of the cabin, and we had to rush, and they heard us and let drive at us, and I got my share, and we dodged out of the path and let them go by, and when the dogs come they warn’t interested in us, but went for the most noise, and we got our canoe, and made for the raft, and was all safe, and Jim was a free man, and we done it all by ourselves, and wasn’t it bully, Aunty!”

“Well, I never heard the likes of it in all my born days! So it was you, you little rapscallions, that’s been making all this trou ble, and turn every body’s wits clean inside out and scared us all most to death. I’ve as good a notion as ever I had in my life, to take it out o’ you this very minute. To think, here I’ve been, night after night, a— you just get well once, you young scamp, and I lay I’ll tan the Old Harry2 out o’ both o’ ye!”

But Tom, he was so proud and joyful, he just couldn’t hold in, and his tongue just went it— she a- chipping in, and spitting "re all along, and both of them going it at once, like a cat- convention; and she says:

“Well, you get all the enjoyment you can out of it now, for mind I tell you if I catch you meddling with him again—”

“Meddling with who?” Tom says, dropping his smile and looking surprised. “With who? Why, the runaway nigger, of course. Who’d you reckon?” Tom looks at me very grave, and says: “Tom, didn’t you just tell me he was all right? Hasn’t he got away?” “Him?” says Aunt Sally; “the runaway nigger? ’Deed he hasn’t. They’ve got

him back, safe and sound, and he’s in that cabin again, on bread and water, and loaded down with chains, till he’s claimed or sold!”

Tom rose square up in bed, with his eye hot, and his nostrils opening and shutting like gills, and sings out to me:

“They hain’t no right to shut him up! Shove!— and don’t you lose a min- ute. Turn him loose! he ain’t no slave; he’s as free as any cretur that walks this earth!”

“What does the child mean?” “I mean every word I say, Aunt Sally, and if somebody don’t go, I’ll go. I’ve

knowed him all his life, and so has Tom, there. Old Miss Watson died two months ago, and she was ashamed she ever was going to sell him down the river, and said so; and she set him free in her will.”

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“Then what on earth did you want to set him free for, seeing he was already free?”

“Well, that is a question, I must say; and just like women! Why, I wanted the adventure of it; and I’d a waded neck- deep in blood to— goodness alive, aunt polly!”3

If she warn’t standing right there, just inside the door, looking as sweet and contented as an angel half- full of pie, I wish I may never!

Aunt Sally jumped for her, and most hugged the head off of her, and cried over her, and I found a good enough place for me under the bed, for it was getting pretty sultry for us, seemed to me. And I peeped out, and in a little while Tom’s Aunt Polly shook herself loose and stood there looking across at Tom over her spectacles— kind of grinding him into the earth, you know. And then she says:

“Yes, you better turn y’r head away— I would if I was you, Tom.” “Oh, deary me!” says Aunt Sally; “is he changed so? Why, that ain’t Tom

it’s Sid; Tom’s— Tom’s— why, where is Tom? He was here a minute ago.” “You mean where’s Huck Finn— that’s what you mean! I reckon I hain’t

raised such a scamp as my Tom all these years, not to know him when I see him. That would be a pretty howdy-do. Come out from under the bed, Huck Finn.”

So I done it. But not feeling brash. Aunt Sally she was one of the mixed- upest looking persons I ever see;

except one, and that was Uncle Silas, when he come in, and they told it all to him. It kind of made him drunk, as you may say, and he didn’t know noth- ing at all the rest of the day, and preached a prayer- meeting sermon that night that give him a rattling ruputation, because the oldest man in the world couldn’t a understood it. So Tom’s Aunt Polly, she told all about who I was, and what; and I had to up and tell how I was in such a tight place that when Mrs. Phelps took me for Tom Sawyer— she chipped in and says, “Oh, go on and call me Aunt Sally, I’m used to it, now, and ’tain’t no need to change”— that when Aunt Sally took me for Tom Sawyer, I had to stand it— that warn’t no other way, and I knowed he wouldn’t mind, because it would be nuts for him, being a mystery, and he’d make an adventure out of it and be perfectly satis"ed. And so it turned out, and he let on to be Sid, and made things as soft as he could for me.

And his Aunt Polly she said Tom was right about old Miss Watson setting Jim free in her will; and so, sure enough, Tom Sawyer had gone and took all that trou ble and bother to set a free nigger free! and I couldn’t ever under- stand, before, until that minute and that talk, how he could help a body set a nigger free, with his bringing-up.

Well, Aunt Polly she said that when Aunt Sally wrote to her that Tom and Sid had come, all right and safe, she says to herself:

“Look at that, now! I might have expected it, letting him go off that way without anybody to watch him. So now I got to go and trapse all the way down the river, eleven hundred mile, and "nd out what that creetur’s up to, this time; as long as I couldn’t seem to get any answer out of you about it.”

3. Tom Sawyer’s aunt and guardian, who appears in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

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“Why, I never heard nothing from you,” says Aunt Sally. “Well, I won der! Why, I wrote to you twice, to ask you what you could

mean by Sid being here.” “Well, I never got ’em, Sis.” Aunt Polly, she turns around slow and severe, and says: “You, Tom!” “Well— what?” he says, kind of pettish. “ Don’t you what me, you impudent thing— hand out them letters.” “What letters?” “Them letters. I be bound, if I have to take aholt of you I’ll—” “ They’re in the trunk. There, now. And they’re just the same as they was

when I got them out of the of"ce. I hain’t looked into them, I hain’t touched them. But I knowed they’d make trou ble, and I thought if you warn’t in no hurry, I’d—”

“Well, you do need skinning, there ain’t no mistake about it. And I wrote another one to tell you I was coming; and I spose he—”

“No, it come yesterday; I hain’t read it yet, but it’s all right, I’ve got that one.” I wanted to offer to bet two dollars she hadn’t, but I reckoned maybe it

was just as safe to not to. So I never said nothing.

Chapter the Last

The "rst time I catched Tom, private, I asked him what was his idea, time of the evasion?— what it was he’d planned to do if the evasion worked all right and he managed to set a nigger free that was already free before? And he said, what he had planned in his head, from the start, if we got Jim out all safe, was for us to run him down the river, on the raft, and have adventures plumb to the mouth of the river, and then tell him about his being free, and take him back up home on a steamboat, in style, and pay him for his lost time, and write word ahead and get out all the niggers around, and have them waltz him into town with a torchlight pro cession and a brass band, and then he would be a hero, and so would we. But I reckoned it was about as well the way it was.

We had Jim out of the chains in no time, and when Aunt Polly and Uncle Silas and Aunt Sally found out how good he helped the doctor nurse Tom, they made a heap of fuss over him, and "xed him up prime, and give him all he wanted to eat, and a good time, and nothing to do. And we had him up to the sickroom; and had a high talk; and Tom give Jim forty dollars for being prisoner for us so patient, and doing it up so good, and Jim was pleased most to death, and busted out, and says:

“Dah, now, Huck, what I tell you?— what I tell you up dah on Jackson islan’? I tole you I got a hairy breas’, en what’s de sign un it; en I tole you I ben rich wunst, en gwineter to be rich agin; en it’s come true; en heah she is! Dah, now! doan’ talk to me— signs is signs, mine I tell you; en I knowed jis’ ’s well ’at I ’uz gwineter be rich agin as I’s a stannin’ heah dis minute!”

And then Tom he talked along, and talked along, and says, le’s all three slide out of here, one of these nights, and get an out"t, and go for howling adven- tures amongst the Injuns, over in the Territory, for a couple of weeks or two; and I says, all right, that suits me, but I ain’t got no money for to buy the out"t, and I reckon I couldn’t get none from home, because it’s likely pap’s been back before now, and got it all away from Judge Thatcher and drunk it up.

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“No he hain’t,” Tom says; “it’s all there, yet— six thousand dollars and more; and your pap hain’t ever been back since. Hadn’t when I come away, anyhow.”

Jim says, kind of solemn: “He ain’t a comin’ back no mo’, Huck.” I says: “Why, Jim?” “Nemmine why, Huck— but he ain’t comin’ back no mo’.” But I kept at him; so at last he says: “Doan’ you ’member de house dat was `oat’n down de river, en dey wuz a

man in dah, kivered up, en I went in en unkivered him and didn’ let you come in? Well, den, you k’n git yo’ money when you wants it; kase dat wuz him.”

Tom’s most well, now, and got his bullet around his neck on a watch- guard for a watch, and is always seeing what time it is, and so there ain’t nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I’d a knowed what a trou ble it was to make a book I wouldn’t a tackled it and ain’t agoing to no more. But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can’t stand it. I been there before.

the end. yours truly, huck finn.

1876–83 1884

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Critical Controversy: Race and the Ending of

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Celebrated by Ernest Hemingway as the source of all modern American lit er a-ture, and regarded by many as a great American novel, Adventures of Huckle- berry Finn has always been controversial. In Twain’s day it was criticized for taking as its hero a boy who smoked, loafed, and preferred the com pany of a runaway slave to Sunday School. Banned in some school districts and denounced by some schol- ars and teachers as racist, it has been defended by others as a power ful attack on racism. Its lengthy and ambiguous "nal section, when the plot to free Jim gives way to an account of Tom Sawyer’s pranks, has also provoked controversy. This short se lection of critical writings provides a sampling of modern debate on the novel.

Below are the con`icting voices of literary critics and novelists on Jim as a char- acter, on Huck’s relationship with Jim, on the use of the “n- word,” on race in gen- eral, and on the problematic ending. Some of the writers here are sharply critical of the book for what they see as its failure to follow through on its initial premise, that Jim is an admirable character whose drive for freedom expresses a basic human need. Others argue that there is no such failure, that the book maintains its attack on those who deny Jim’s status as a human being. The controversy is pos si ble because Twain’s ironic humor makes his own position dif"cult to identify. Leo Marx thinks Jim’s drive for freedom is trivialized by an ending in which Huck becomes Tom Sawyer’s yes- man. Julius Lester criticizes the book’s depiction of Jim along the same lines, argu- ing that Jim becomes more of a minstrel- show "gure than the admirable person he had earlier been. Jane Smiley, also disturbed by Twain’s depiction of this black char- acter, proposes Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) as a better model for American lit er a ture. In contrast, David L. Smith argues that the novel under- cuts racist discourse with a trenchant critique of nineteenth- century conceptions of “the Negro.” Toni Morrison offers insights into her own experience of reading the novel a number of times over many years, concluding that Huckleberry Finn is a clas- sic in part because of the power ful way that it raises but does not answer questions about race, culture, character, and nation. Fi nally, Alan Gribben explains his deci- sion to create a new edition of the novel, published in 2011, that replaces its most infamous racial epithet with the word “slave”; Michiko Kakutani, writing in the New York Times, argues that Gribben’s substitution whitewashes the “harsh historical realities” that Twain’s novel portrays.

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1. From American Scholar 22 (1953): 423–40. A pioneering scholar in the "eld of American stud- ies, Leo Marx (b. 1919) is best known as the author of The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in Amer i ca (1964). The title

of this essay refers to admiring introductions to Huckleberry Finn (1948 and  1950, respectively) written by the critic Lionel Trilling (1905–1975) and the poet T. S. Eliot (1888–1965).

LEO M AR X

From Mr. Eliot, Mr. Trilling, and Huckleberry Finn1

* * * I believe that the ending of Huckleberry Finn makes so many readers uneasy because they rightly sense that it jeopardizes the signi"cance of the entire novel. To take seriously what happens at the Phelps farm is to take lightly the entire downstream journey. What is the meaning of the journey? With this question all discussion of Huckleberry Finn must begin. It is true that the voyage down the river has many aspects of a boy’s idyl. We owe much of its hold upon our imagination to the enchanting image of the raft’s unhurried drift with the current. The leisure, the absence of constraint, the beauty of the river— all these things delight us. “It’s lovely to live on a raft.” And the multitudinous life of the great valley we see through Huck’s eyes has a fascination of its own. Then, of course, there is humor— laughter so spontaneous, so free of the bitterness pres ent almost everywhere in Ameri- can humor that readers often forget how grim a spectacle of human exis- tence Huck contemplates. Humor in this novel `ows from a bright joy of life as remote from our world as living on a raft.

Yet along with the idyllic and the epical and the funny in Huckleberry Finn, there is a coil of meaning which does for the disparate ele ments of the novel what a spring does for a watch. The meaning is not in the least obscure. It is made explicit again and again. The very words with which Cle- mens launches Huck and Jim upon their voyage indicate that theirs is not a boy’s lark but a quest for freedom. From the electrifying moment when Huck comes back to Jackson’s Island and rouses Jim with the news that a search party is on the way, we are meant to believe that Huck is enlisted in the cause of freedom. “Git up and hump yourself, Jim!” he cries. “ There ain’t a minute to lose. They’re after us!” What particularly counts here is the us. No one is after Huck; no one but Jim knows he is alive. In that small word Clem- ens compresses the exhilarating power of Huck’s instinctive humanity. His unpremeditated identi"cation with Jim’s `ight from slavery is an unforgettable moment in American experience, and it may be said at once that any culmination of the journey which detracts from the urgency and dignity with which it begins will necessarily be unsatisfactory. Huck real- izes this himself, and says so when, much later, he comes back to the raft after discovering that the Duke and the King have sold Jim:

After all this long journey . . . here it was all come to nothing, every- thing all busted up and ruined, because they could have the heart to serve Jim such a trick as that, and make him a slave again all his life, and amongst strangers, too, for forty dirty dollars.

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Huck knows that the journey will have been a failure unless it takes Jim to freedom. It is true that we do discover, in the end, that Jim is free, but we also "nd out that the journey was not the means by which he " nally reached freedom.

The most obvious thing wrong with the ending, then, is the `imsy con- trivance by which Clemens frees Jim. In the end we not only discover that Jim has been a free man for two months, but that his freedom has been granted by old Miss Watson. If this were only a mechanical device for ter- minating the action, it might not call for much comment. But it is more than that: it is a signi"cant clue to the import of the last ten chapters. Remember who Miss Watson is. She is the Widow’s sister whom Huck introduces in the "rst pages of the novel. It is she who keeps “pecking” at Huck, who tries to teach him to spell and to pray and to keep his feet off the furniture. She is an ardent proselytizer for piety and good manners, and her greed provides the occasion for the journey in the "rst place. She is Jim’s owner, and he decides to `ee only when he realizes that she is about to break her word (she cannot resist a slave trader’s offer of eight hundred dollars) and sell him down the river away from his family.

Out of bondage. E. W. Kemble’s illustration for the "nal chapter of the "rst edition (1884).

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Miss Watson, in short, is the Enemy. If we except a predilection for phys- ical vio lence, she exhibits all the outstanding traits of the valley society. She pronounces the polite lies of civilization that suffocate Huck’s spirit. The freedom which Jim seeks, and which Huck and Jim temporarily enjoy aboard the raft, is accordingly freedom from every thing for which Miss Watson stands. Indeed, the very intensity of the novel derives from the dis- cordance between the aspirations of the fugitives and the respectable code for which she is a spokesman. Therefore her regeneration, of which the deathbed freeing of Jim is the unconvincing sign, hints a resolution of the novel’s essential con`ict. Perhaps because this device most transparently reveals that shift in point of view which he could not avoid, and which is less easily discerned elsewhere in the concluding chapters, Clemens plays it down. He makes little attempt to account for Miss Watson’s change of heart, a change particularly surprising in view of Jim’s brazen escape.

* * * Huckleberry Finn is a masterpiece because it brings Western humor to perfection and yet transcends the narrow limits of its conventions. But the ending does not. During the "nal extravaganza we are forced to put aside many of the mature emotions evoked earlier by the vivid rendering of Jim’s fear of capture, the tenderness of Huck’s and Jim’s regard for each other, and Huck’s excruciating moments of wavering between honesty and respectabil- ity. None of these emotions are called forth by the anticlimactic "nal sequence. I do not mean to suggest that the inclusion of low comedy per se is a `aw in Huckleberry Finn. One does not object to the shenanigans of the rogues; there is ample pre ce dent for the place of extravagant humor even in works of high seriousness. But here the case differs from most which come to mind: the major characters themselves are forced to play low comedy roles. Moreover, the most serious motive in the novel, Jim’s yearning for freedom, is made the object of nonsense. The conclusion, in short, is farce, but the rest of the novel is not.

* * * Tom reappears. Soon Huck has fallen almost completely under his sway once more, and we are asked to believe that the boy who felt pity for the rogues is now capable of making Jim’s capture the occasion for a game. He becomes Tom’s helpless accomplice, submissive and gullible. No won der that Clem- ens has Huck remark, when Huck "rst realizes Aunt Sally has mistaken him for Tom, that “it was like being born again.” Exactly. In the end, Huck regresses to the subordinate role in which he had "rst appeared in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Most of those traits which made him so appeal- ing a hero now dis appear. He had never, for example, found pain or misfor- tune amusing.

* * * What I have been saying is that the `imsy devices of plot, the discordant farcical tone, and the disintegration of the major characters all betray the failure of the ending.

* * *

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JULIUS LESTER

From Morality and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn1

* * * The novel plays with black real ity from the moment Jim runs away and does not immediately seek his freedom. It de"es logic that Jim did not know Illi- nois was a free state. Yet, Twain wants us not only to believe he didn’t, but to accept as credible that a runaway slave would sail south down the Missis- sippi River, the only route to freedom he knew being at Cairo, Illinois, where the Ohio River meets the Mississippi. If Jim knew that the Ohio met the Mississippi at Cairo, how could he not have known of the closer proximity of freedom to the east in Illinois or north in Iowa? If the reader must sus- pend intelligence to accept this, intelligence has to be dispensed with alto- gether to believe that Jim, having unknowingly passed the con`uence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, would continue down the river and go deeper and deeper into the heart of slave country. A century of white readers have accepted this as credible, a grim reminder of the abysmal feelings of supe- riority with which whites are burdened.

The least we expect of a novel is that it be credible, if not wholly in fact then in emotion, for it is emotions that are the true subject matter of "c- tion. As Jim `oats down the river further and further into slave country with- out anxiety about his fate, without making the least effort to reverse matters, we leave the realm of factual and emotional credibility and enter the all too familiar one of white fantasy in which blacks have all the human- ity of Cabbage Patch dolls.

* * * The depth of Twain’s contempt for blacks is not revealed fully until Tom Sawyer clears up something that had confused Huck. When Huck "rst proposed freeing Jim, he was surprised that Tom agreed readily. The reason Tom did so is because he knew all the while that Miss Watson had freed Jim when she died two months before.

Once again credibility is slain. Early in the novel Jim’s disappearance from the town coincides with Huck’s. Huck, having manufactured “evidence” of his “murder” to cover his escape, learns that the townspeople believe that Jim killed him. Yet, we are now to believe that an old white lady would free a black slave suspected of murdering a white child. White people might want to believe such fairy tales about themselves, but blacks know better.

But this is not the nadir of Twain’s contempt, because when Aunt Sally asks Tom why he wanted to free Jim, knowing he was already free, Tom replies: “Well, that is a question, I must say; and just like women! Why, I wanted the adventure of it . . .” (Ch. 42). Now Huck understands why Tom was so eager to help Jim “escape.”

1. From the Mark Twain Journal 22 (1984): 43–46. A professor at the University of Mas sa chu setts for over thirty years, Julius Lester (b. 1939) is an award- winning author of books for children and adults.

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1. From Satire or Evasion? Black Perspectives on Huckleberry Finn, ed. James S. Leonard, Thomas A. Tenney, and Thadious M. Davis (1992), 103–20. David L. Smith is a professor at Williams College.

Tom goes on to explain that his plan was “for us to run him down the river on the raft, and have adventures plumb to the mouth of the river.” Then he and Huck would tell Jim he was free and take him “back up home on a steamboat, in style, and pay him for his lost time.” They would tell every one they were coming and “get out all the niggers around, and have them waltz him into town with a torchlight pro cession and a brass- band, and then he would be a hero, and so would we” (“Chapter the Last”).

There is no honor here: * * * Jim is a plaything, an excuse for “the adventure of it,” to be used as it suits the fancies of the white folk, whether that fancy be a journey on a raft down the river or a torch- light parade. What Jim clearly is not is a human being, and this is emphasized by the fact that Miss Watson’s will frees Jim but makes no mention of his wife and children.

Twain doesn’t care about the lives the slaves actually lived. Because he doesn’t care, he devalues the world.

DAVID L. SMITH

From Huck, Jim, and American Racial Discourse1

In July 1876, exactly one century after the American Declaration of In de- pen dence, Mark Twain began writing Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a novel that illustrates trenchantly the social limitations that American “civi- lization” imposes on individual freedom. The book takes special note of ways in which racism impinges upon the lives of Afro- Americans, even when they are legally “ free.” It is therefore ironic that Huckleberry Finn has often been attacked and even censored as a racist work. I would argue, on the contrary, that except for Melville’s work, Huckleberry Finn is without peer among major Euro- American novels for its explic itly antiracist stance. Those who brand the book racist generally do so without having considered the speci"c form of racial discourse to which the novel responds. Furthermore, Huckle- berry Finn offers much more than the typical liberal defenses of “ human dignity” and protests against cruelty. Though it contains some such ele ments, it is more fundamentally a critique of those socially constituted "ctions— most notably romanticism, religion, and the concept of “the Negro”— which serve to justify and disguise sel"sh, cruel, and exploitative be hav ior.

When I speak of “racial discourse,” I mean more than simply attitudes about race or conventions of talking about race. Most importantly, I mean that race itself is a discursive formation which delimits social relations on the basis of alleged physical differences. “Race” is a strategy for relegating a segment of the population to a permanent inferior status. It functions by insisting that each “race” has speci"c, de"nitive, inherent behavioral tendencies and capacities which distinguish it from other races. Though scienti"cally specious, race has

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2. A reference to Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia (1787), Query XIV.

been powerfully effective as an ideology and as a form of social de"nition that serves the interests of Euro- American hegemony. In Amer i ca, race has been deployed against numerous groups, including Native Americans, Jews, Asians, and even— for brief periods—an assortment of Eu ro pean immigrants.

For obvious reasons, however, the primary emphasis historically has been on de"ning “the Negro” as a deviant from Euro- American norms. “Race” in Amer i ca means white supremacy and black inferiority, and “the Negro,” a socially constituted "ction, is a generalized, one- dimensional surrogate for the historical real ity of Afro- American people. It is this rei"ed "ction that Twain attacks in Huckleberry Finn.

Twain adopts a strategy of subversion in his attack on race. That is, he focuses on a number of commonplaces associated with “the Negro” and then systematically dramatizes their inadequacy. He uses the term “nigger,” and he shows Jim engaging in superstitious be hav ior. Yet he portrays Jim as a compassionate, shrewd, thoughtful, self- sacri"cing, and even wise man. Indeed, his portrayal of Jim contradicts every claim presented in Jefferson’s description of “the Negro.”2 Jim is cautious, he gives excellent advice, he suf- fers per sis tent anguish over separation from his wife and children, and he even sacri"ces his own sleep so that Huck may rest. Jim, in short, exhibits all the qualities that “the Negro” supposedly lacks. Twain’s conclusions do more than merely subvert the justi"cations of slavery, which was already long since abolished. Twain began his book during the "nal disintegration of Reconstruction, and his satire on antebellum southern bigotry is also an implicit response to the Negrophobic climate of the post- Reconstruction era. It is troubling, therefore, that so many readers have completely misunder- stood Twain’s subtle attack on racism.

Twain’s use of the term “nigger” has provoked some readers to reject the novel. As one of the most offensive words in our vocabulary, “nigger” remains heavi ly shrouded in taboo. A careful assessment of this term within the context of American racial discourse, however, will allow us to understand the par tic u lar way in which the author uses it. If we attend closely to Twain’s use of the word, we may "nd in it not just a trigger to outrage but, more impor tant, a means of understanding the precise nature of American racism and Mark Twain’s attack on it.

Most obviously, Twain uses “nigger” throughout the book as a synonym for “slave.” There is ample evidence from other sources that this corresponds to one usage common during the antebellum period. We "rst encounter it in reference to “Miss Watson’s big nigger, named Jim” (chap. 2). This usage, like the term “nigger stealer,” clearly designates the “nigger” as an item of property: a commodity, a slave. This passage also provides the only appar- ent textual justi"cation for the common critical practice of labeling Jim “Nig- ger Jim,” as if “nigger” were a part of his proper name. This loathsome habit goes back at least as far as Albert Bigelow Paine’s biography of Twain (1912). In any case, “nigger” in this sense connotes an inferior, even subhuman, creature who is properly owned by and subservient to Euro- Americans.

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Both Huck and Jim use the word in this sense. For example, when Huck fabricates his tale about the riverboat accident, the following exchange occurs between him and Aunt Sally:

“Good gracious! anybody hurt?” “No’m. Killed a nigger.” “Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt.” (Chap. 32)

Huck has never met Aunt Sally prior to this scene, and in spinning a lie which this stranger will "nd unobjectionable, he correctly assumes that the common notion of Negro subhumanity will be appropriate. Huck’s offhand remark is intended to exploit Aunt Sally’s attitudes, not to express Huck’s own. A nigger, Aunt Sally con"rms, is not a person. Yet this exchange is hilarious precisely because we know that Huck is playing on her glib and conventional bigotry. We know that Huck’s relationship to Jim has already invalidated for him such obtuse racial notions. The conception of the “nig- ger” is a socially constituted and sanctioned "ction, and it is just as false and absurd as Huck’s explicit fabrication, which Aunt Sally also swallows whole.

In fact, the exchange between Huck and Aunt Sally reveals a great deal about how racial discourse operates. Its function is to promulgate a concep- tion of “the Negro” as a subhuman and expendable creature who is by de"- nition feeble- minded, immoral, lazy, and superstitious. One crucial purpose of this social "ction is to justify the abuse and exploitation of Afro- American people by substituting the essentialist "ction of “Negroism” for the actual character of individual Afro- Americans. Hence, in racial discourse every Afro- American becomes just another instance of “the Negro”— just another “nigger.” Twain recognizes this invidious tendency of race thinking, however, and he takes every opportunity to expose the mismatch between racial abstractions and real human beings.

* * * As a serious critic of American society, Twain recognized that racial dis- course depends upon the deployment of a system of ste reo types which constitute “the Negro” as fundamentally dif fer ent from and inferior to Euro- Americans. As with his handling of “nigger,” Twain’s strategy with racial ste reo types is to elaborate them in order to undermine them. To be sure, those critics are correct who have argued that Twain uses this narra- tive to reveal Jim’s humanity. Jim, however, is just one individual. Twain uses the narrative to expose the cruelty and hollowness of that racial discourse which exists only to obscure the humanity of all Afro- American people.

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1. From Harper’s Magazine (January 1996): 61–67. Jane Smiley (b. 1949) won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel A Thousand Acres (1991).

2. See  T.  S. Eliot’s “The Boy and the River: Without Beginning or End,” his introduction to a 1950 edition of Huckleberry Finn.

JANE SMILEY

From Say It Ain’t So, Huck: Second Thoughts on Mark Twain’s “Masterpiece”1

* * * As with all bad endings, the prob lem really lies at the beginning, and at the beginning of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn neither Huck nor Twain takes Jim’s desire for freedom at all seriously; that is, they do not accord it the res pect that a man’s passion deserves. The sign of this is that not only do the two never cross the Mississippi to Illinois, a free state, but they hardly even consider it. In both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, the Jackson’s Island scenes show that such a crossing, even in secret, is both pos si ble and routine, and even though it would pres ent legal dif"culties for an escaped slave, these would certainly pose no more hardship than locating the mouth of the Ohio and then "nding passage up it. It is true that there could have been slave catchers in pursuit (though the novel ostensibly takes place in the 1840s and the Fugitive Slave Act was not passed until 1850), but Twain’s moral failure, once Huck and Jim link up, is never even to account for their choice to go down the river rather than across it. What this reveals is that for all his lip ser vice to real attachment between white boy and black man, Twain really saw Jim as no more than Huck’s sidekick, homoerotic or other- wise. All the claims that are routinely made for the book’s humanitarian power are, in the end, simply absurd. Jim is never autonomous, never has a vote, always "nds his purposes subordinate to Huck’s, and, like every good sidekick, he never minds. He grows ever more passive and also more affec- tionate as Huck and the Duke and the Dauphin and Tom (and Twain) make ever more use of him for their own purposes. But this use they make of him is not supplementary; it is integral to Twain’s whole conception of the novel. Twain thinks that Huck’s affection is a good enough reward for Jim.

The sort of meretricious critical reasoning that has raised Huck’s paltry good intentions to a “strategy of subversion” (David L. Smith) and a “con- vincing indictment of slavery” (Eliot)2 precisely mirrors the same sort of mer- etricious reasoning that white people use to convince themselves that they are not “racist.” If Huck feels positive toward Jim, and loves him, and thinks of him as a man, then that’s enough. He doesn’t actually have to act in accor- dance with his feelings. White Americans always think racism is a feeling, and they reject it or they embrace it. To most Americans, it seems more hon- orable and nicer to reject it, so they do, but they almost invariably fail to understand that how they feel means very little to black Americans, who understand racism as a way of structuring American culture, American pol- itics, and the American economy. To invest The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with “greatness” is to underwrite a very simplistic and evasive theory

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of what racism is and to promulgate it, philosophically, in schools and the media as well as in academic journals. Surely the discomfort of many read- ers, black and white, and the censorship battles that have dogged Huck Finn in the last twenty years are understandable in this context. No matter how often the critics “place in context” Huck’s use of the word “nigger,” they can never excuse or fully hide the deeper racism of the novel— the way Twain and Huck use Jim because they really don’t care enough about his desire for freedom to let that desire change their plans. And to give credit to Huck suggests that the only racial insight Americans of the nineteenth or twentieth century are capable of is a recognition of the obvious— that blacks, slave and free, are human.

Ernest Hemingway, thinking of himself, as always, once said that all Ameri- can lit er a ture grew out of Huck Finn. It undoubtedly would have been better for American lit er a ture, and American culture, if our lit er a ture had grown out of one of the best- selling novels of all time, another American work of the nineteenth century, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which for its portrayal of an array of thoughtful, autonomous, and passionate black characters leaves Huck Finn far behind. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published in 1852, when Twain was sev- enteen, still living in Hannibal and contributing to his brother’s newspapers.

* * * I would rather my children read Uncle Tom’s Cabin, even though it is far more vivid in its depiction of cruelty than Huck Finn, and this is because Stowe’s novel is clearly and unmistakably a tragedy. No whitewash, no secrets, but evil, suffering, imagination, endurance, and redemption— just like life. Like little Eva, who eagerly but fearfully listens to the stories of the slaves that her family tries to keep from her, our children want to know what is going on, what has gone on, and what we intend to do about it. If “ great” lit- er a ture has any purpose, it is to help us face up to our responsibilities instead of enabling us to avoid them once again by lighting out for the territory.

TONI MORRISON

From Introduction to Adventures of Huckleberry Finn1

* * * In the early eighties I read Huckleberry Finn again, provoked, I believe, by demands to remove the novel from the libraries and required reading lists of public schools. These efforts were based, it seemed to me, on a narrow notion of how to handle the offense Mark Twain’s use of the term “nigger” would occasion for black students and the corrosive effect it would have on white ones. It struck me as a purist yet elementary kind of censorship

1. From “Introduction,” Adventures of Huckle- berry Finn (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), xxxi– xli. Toni Morrison (b. 1931) is the

author of Beloved (1987) and other novels; in 1993 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Lit er- a ture.

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designed to appease adults rather than educate children. Amputate the prob- lem, band- aid the solution. A serious comprehensive discussion of the term by an intelligent teacher certainly would have bene"ted my eighth- grade class and would have spared all of us (a few blacks, many whites— mostly second- generation immigrant children) some grief. Name calling is a plague of childhood and a learned activity ripe for discussion as soon as it surfaces. Embarrassing as it had been to hear the dread word spoken, and therefore sanctioned, in class, my experience of Jim’s epithet had little to do with my initial ner vous ness the book had caused. Reading “nigger” hundreds of times embarrassed, bored, annoyed— but did not faze me. In this latest reading I was curious about the source of my alarm—my sense that danger lingered after the story ended. I was powerfully attracted to the combination of delight and fearful agitation lying entwined like crossed "n gers in the pages. And it was signi"cant that this novel which had given so much plea sure to young readers was also complicated territory for sophisticated scholars.

Usually the divide is substantial: if a story that pleased us as novice read- ers does not disintegrate as we grow older, it maintains its value only in its retelling for other novices or to summon uncapturable plea sure as playback. Also, the books that academic critics "nd consistently rewarding are works only partially available to the minds of young readers. Adventures of Huckle- berry Finn manages to close that divide, and one of the reasons it requires no leap is that in addition to the reverence the novel stimulates is its ability to transform its contradictions into fruitful complexities and to seem to be deliberately cooperating in the controversy it has excited. The brilliance of Huckleberry Finn is that it is the argument it raises.

My 1980s reading, therefore, was an effort to track the unease, nail it down, and learn in so doing the nature of my troubled relationship to this classic American work. * * *

If the emotional environment into which Twain places his protagonist is dangerous, then the leading question the novel poses for me is, What does Huck need to live without terror, melancholy and suicidal thoughts? The answer, of course, is Jim. When Huck is among society— whether respectable or deviant, rich or poor—he is alert to and consumed by its deception, its illogic, its scariness. Yet he is depressed by himself and sees nature more often as fearful. But when he and Jim become the only “we,” the anxiety is outside, not within. “. . . we would watch the lonesomeness of the river . . . for about an hour . . . just solid lonesomeness.” Unmanageable terror gives way to a pastoral, idyllic, intimate timelessness minus the hierarchy of age, status or adult control. It has never seemed to me that, in contrast to the entrapment and menace of the shore, the river itself provides this solace. The consolation, the healing properties Huck longs for, is made pos si ble by Jim’s active, highly vocal affection. It is in Jim’s com pany that the dread of contem- plated nature dis appears, that even storms are beautiful and sublime, that real talk— comic, pointed, sad— takes place. Talk so free of lies it produces an aura of restfulness and peace unavailable anywhere else in the novel.* * *

So there will be no “adventures” without Jim. The risk is too great. To Huck and to the novel. When the end does come, when Jim is " nally, tortu- ously, unnecessarily freed, able now to be a father to his own children, Huck runs. Not back to the town— even if it is safe now— but a further run, for the “territory.” And if there are complications out there in the world, Huck,

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1. From the Introduction to the NewSouth edi- tion of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckle- berry Finn, published in 2011. Alan Gribben, a professor of En glish at Auburn University in Montgomery, Alabama, produced an edition of Twain’s most famous novels that replaced racial

slurs with language that is more acceptable by twenty- "rst- century standards. For instance, he substituted “slave” for “nigger” and “Indian” for “Injun.” Gribben’s edition was deeply controver- sial and widely criticized for its alteration of Twain’s language.

we are to assume, is certainly ready for them. He has had a "rst- rate educa- tion in social and individual responsibility, and it is in ter est ing to note that the lessons of his growing but secret activism begin to be punctuated by speech, not silence, by moves toward truth, rather than quick lies.

* * * The source of my unease reading this amazing, troubling book now seems clear: an imperfect coming to terms with three matters Twain addresses— Huck Finn’s estrangement, soleness and morbidity as an outcast child; the disproportionate sadness at the center of Jim’s and his relationship; and the secrecy in which Huck’s engagement with (rather than escape from) a rac- ist society is necessarily conducted. It is also clear that the rewards of my effort to come to terms have been abundant. My alarm, aroused by Twain’s precise rendering of childhood’s fear of death and abandonment, remains— as it should. It has been extremely worthwhile slogging through Jim’s shame and humiliation to recognize the sadness, the tragic implications at the center of his relationship with Huck. My fury at the maze of deceit, the risk of personal harm that a white child is forced to negotiate in a race- in`ected society, is dissipated by the exquisite uses to which Twain puts that maze, that risk.

Yet the larger question, the danger that sifts from the novel’s last page, is whether Huck, minus Jim, will be able to stay those three monsters as he enters the “territory.” Will that unde"ned space, so falsely imagined as “open,” be free of social chaos, personal morbidity, and further moral com- plications embedded in adulthood and citizenship? Will it be free not only of nightmare fathers but of dream fathers too? Twain did not write Huck there. He imagined instead a reunion— Huck, Jim and Tom, soaring in a balloon over Egypt.

For a hundred years, the argument that this novel is has been identi"ed, reidenti"ed, examined, waged and advanced. What it cannot be is dismissed. It is classic lit er a ture, which is to say it heaves, manifests and lasts.

ALAN GRIBBEN

From Introduction to the NewSouth Edition1

* * * The n- word possessed, then as now, demeaning implications more vile than almost any insult that can be applied to other racial groups. There is no equivalent slur in the En glish language. As a result, with every passing de cade this affront appears to gain rather than lose its impact. Even at the

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level of college and gradu ate school, students are capable of resenting tex- tual encounters with this racial appellative. In the 1870s and  1880s, of course, Twain scarcely had to concern himself about the feelings of African American or Native American readers. These population groups were too occupied with trying, in the one case, to recover from the degradation of slavery and the institution of Jim Crow segregation policies, and, in the other case, to survive the onslaught of settlers and buffalo- hunters who had deci- mated their ways of life, than to bother about objectionable vocabulary choices in two popu lar books.

* * * Through a succession of "rsthand experiences, this editor gradually con- cluded that an epithet- free edition of Twain’s books is necessary today. For nearly forty years I have led college classes, bookstore forums, and library reading groups in detailed discussions of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in California, Texas, New York, and Alabama, and I always refrained from utter- ing the racial slurs spoken by numerous characters, including Tom and Huck. I invariably substituted the word “slave” for Twain’s ubiquitous n- word when- ever I read any passages aloud. Students and audience members seemed to prefer this expedient, and I could detect a vis i ble sense of relief each time, as though a nagging prob lem with the text had been addressed. Indeed, numer- ous communities currently ban Huckleberry Finn as required reading in pub- lic schools owing to its offensive racial language and have quietly moved the title to voluntary reading lists. The American Library Association lists the novel as one of the most frequently challenged books across the nation.

* * * During the 1980s, educator John H. Wallace unleashed a "erce and pro- tracted dispute by denouncing Huckleberry Finn as “the most grotesque example of racist trash ever written.” In 1984 I had to walk past a picket line of African American parents outside a scholarly conference in Pennsyl- vania that was commemorating, among other achievements in American humor, the upcoming centenary anniversary of Twain’s Adventures of Huckle- berry Finn. James  S. Leonard, then the editor of the newsletter for the Mark Twain Circle of Amer i ca, conceded in 2001 that the racist language and un`attering ste reo types of slaves in Huckleberry Finn can constitute “real prob lems” in certain classroom settings. Another scholar, Jonathan Arac, has urged that students be prompted to read other, more unequivo- cally abolitionist works rather than this one novel that has been consecrated as the mandatory literary statement about American slavery. The once- incontestable belief that the reading of this book at multiple levels of schooling ought to be essential for every American citizen’s education is cracking around the edges.

My personal turning point on the journey toward this pres ent NewSouth Edition was a lecture tour I undertook in Alabama in 2009. I had written the introduction for an edition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer designed to interest younger readers in older American lit er a ture. The volume was published by NewSouth Books for a consortium of Alabama libraries in connection with the “Big Read,” an initiative sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts. As I traveled around the state and spoke about the

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1. Michiko Kakutani is a Pulitzer Prize– winning book critic for the New York Times, where this article appeared in 2011.

novel to reading groups of adults and teen agers in small towns like Valley, Dade v ille, Prattville, Eufaula, Wetumpka, and Talladega, and in larger cities like Montgomery and Birmingham, I followed my customary habit of substi- tuting the word “slave” when reading the characters’ dialogue aloud. In sev- eral towns I was taken aside after my talk by earnest middle and high school teachers who lamented the fact that they no longer felt justi"ed in assigning either of Twain’s boy books because of the hurtful n- word. Here was further proof that this single debasing label is overwhelming every other consider- ation about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, whereas what these novels have to offer readers hardly depends upon that one indefensible slur.

MICHIKO KAKUTANI

Light Out, Huck, They Still Want to Sivilize You1

“All modern American lit er a ture,” Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.”

Being an iconic classic, however, hasn’t protected Adventures of Huckle- berry Finn from being banned, bowdlerized, and bleeped. It hasn’t protected the novel from being cleaned up, updated, and “improved.”

A new effort to sanitize Huckleberry Finn comes from Alan Gribben, a professor of En glish at Auburn University, at Montgomery, Alabama, who has produced a new edition of Twain’s novel that replaces the word “nigger” with “slave.” Nigger, which appears in the book more than 200 times, was a common racial epithet in the antebellum South, used by Twain as part of his characters’ vernacular speech and as a re`ection of mid- nineteenth- century social attitudes along the Mississippi River.

Mr. Gribben has said he worried that the N- word had resulted in the novel falling off reading lists, and that he thought his edition would be welcomed by schoolteachers and university instructors who wanted to spare “the reader from a racial slur that never seems to lose its vitriol.” Never mind that today nigger is used by many rappers, who have reclaimed the word from its ugly past. Never mind that attaching the epithet slave to the character Jim— who has run away in a bid for freedom— effectively labels him as property, as the very thing he is trying to escape.

Controversies over Huckleberry Finn occur with predictable regularity. In 2009, just before Barack Obama’s inauguration, a high school teacher named John Foley wrote a guest column in the Seattle Post- Intelligencer in which he asserted that Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men don’t belong on the curriculum anymore. “The time has arrived to update the lit er a ture we use in high school classrooms,” he wrote. “Barack

Michiko Kakutani: From “Light Out, Huck, They Still Want to Sivilize You” from The New York Times, Jan. 6, 2011. Copyright © 2011 by The New York Times. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of this Content without express written permission is prohibited. www.nytimes.com

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Obama is president- elect of the United States, and novels that use the ‘N- word’ repeatedly need to go.”

Haven’t we learned by now that removing books from the curriculum just deprives children of exposure to classic works of lit er a ture? Worse, it relieves teachers of the fundamental responsibility of putting such books in context—of helping students understand that Huckleberry Finn actually stands as a power ful indictment of slavery (with Nigger Jim its most noble character), of using its contested language as an opportunity to explore the painful complexities of race relations in this country. To censor or redact books on school reading lists is a form of denial: shutting the door on harsh historical realities— whitewashing them or pretending they do not exist.

Mr. Gribben’s effort to update Huckleberry Finn (published in an edition with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by NewSouth Books), like Mr. Foley’s assertion that it’s an old book and “ we’re ready for new,” rati"es the narcis- sistic con temporary belief that art should be inoffensive and accessible; that books, plays, and poetry from other times and places should somehow be made to conform to today’s demo cratic ideals. It’s like the po liti cally correct efforts in the eighties to exile great authors like Conrad and Melville from the canon because their work does not feature enough women or proj ects colonialist attitudes.

Authors’ original texts should be sacrosanct intellectual property, whether a book is a classic or not. Tampering with a writer’s words underscores both editors’ extraordinary hubris and a cavalier attitude embraced by more and more people in this day of mash- ups, sampling, and digital books— the atti- tude that all texts are fungible, that readers are entitled to alter as they please, that the very idea of authorship is old- fashioned.

Efforts to sanitize classic lit er a ture have a long, undistinguished history. Every thing from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales to Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Choco late Factory have been challenged or have suffered at the hands of uptight editors. There have even been puri"ed versions of the Bible (all that sex and vio lence!). Sometimes the urge to expurgate (if not outright ban) comes from the right, evangelicals and conservatives, worried about blas- phemy, profane language, and sexual innuendo. Fundamentalist groups, for instance, have tried to have dictionaries banned because of de"nitions offered for words like hot, tail, ball, and nuts.

In other cases the drive to sanitize comes from the left, eager to impose its own multicultural, feminist worldviews and worried about offending religious or ethnic groups. Michael Radford’s 2004 "lm version of The Merchant of Venice (starring Al Pacino) revised the play to elide potentially offensive material, serving up a nicer, more sympathetic Shylock and blunt- ing tough questions about anti- Semitism. More absurdly, a British theater com pany in 2002 changed the title of its production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame to The Bellringer of Notre Dame.

Whether it comes from conservatives or liberals, there is a patronizing Big Brother aspect to these literary fumigations. We, the censors, need to pro- tect you, the naïve, delicate reader. We, the editors, need to police writers (even those from other eras), who might have penned something that might be offensive to someone sometime.

* * *

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1. A mixture of fact and "ction, this account was composed by Twain at the invitation of the Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, which was

publishing a series on Civil War “ Battles and Leaders.” The story appeared in the December 1885 issue of the magazine, the source of this text.

Although it’s hard to imagine a theater com pany today using one of Shakespeare adaptations— say, changing “Out, damned spot! Out, I say!” in Macbeth to “out, crimson spot!”— the language police are staging a comeback. Not just with an expurgated Huckleberry Finn but with po liti cal efforts to clamp down on objectionable language. Last year the Boston Globe reported that California lawmakers "rst voted for, then tabled a resolution declaring a No Cuss Week, that South Carolina had debated a sweeping anti- profanity bill, and that conservative groups like the Parents Tele vi sion Council have complained about vulgarities creeping into family- hour shows on network tele vi sion.

But while James  V. O’Connor, author of the book Cuss Control, argues that people can and should "nd word substitutions, even his own Web site grants Rhett Butler a “poetic license” exemption in Gone With the Wind. “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a hoot”?2 Now that’s damnable.

2. The original line of dialogue from Gone With the Wind (1936)— made famous by Clark Gable in the 1939 "lm adaptation—is “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

The Private History of a Campaign That Failed1

You have heard from a great many people who did something in the war; is it not fair and right that you listen a little moment to one who started out to do something in it, but didn’t? Thousands entered the war, got just a taste of it, and then stepped out again, permanently. These, by their very num- bers, are respectable, and are therefore entitled to a sort of voice,— not a loud one, but a modest one; not a boastful one, but an apol o getic one. They ought not to be allowed much space among better people— people who did something— I grant that; but they ought at least to be allowed to state why they didn’t do anything, and also to explain the pro cess by which they didn’t do anything. Surely this kind of light must have a sort of value.

Out West there was a good deal of confusion in men’s minds during the "rst months of the great trou ble— a good deal of unsettledness, of leaning "rst this way, then that, then the other way. It was hard for us to get our bearings. I call to mind an instance of this. I was pi loting on the Mississippi when the news came that South Carolina had gone out of the Union on the 20th of December, 1860. My pilot- mate was a New Yorker. He was strong for the Union; so was I. But he would not listen to me with any patience; my loyalty was smirched, to his eye, because my father had owned slaves. I said, in palliation of this dark fact, that I had heard my father say, some years before he died, that slavery was a great wrong, and that he would free the solitary negro he then owned if he could think it right to give away the prop- erty of the family when he was so straitened in means. My mate retorted that a mere impulse was nothing— anybody could pretend to a good impulse;

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2. A military installation on the banks of the Mississippi River. 3. Claiborne Fox Jackson (1806–1862) became

governor of Missouri in 1861. As Twain’s account suggests, he sympathized with the Confederacy and secession.

and went on decrying my Unionism and libeling my ancestry. A month later the secession atmosphere had considerably thickened on the Lower Mississippi, and I became a rebel; so did he. We were together in New Orleans, the 26th of January, when Louisiana went out of the Union. He did his full share of the rebel shouting, but was bitterly opposed to letting me do mine. He said that I came of bad stock—of a father who had been will- ing to set slaves free. In the following summer he was pi loting a Federal gun- boat and shouting for the Union again, and I was in the Con- federate army. I held his note for some borrowed money. He was one of the most upright men I ever knew; but he repudiated that note without hesitation, because I was a rebel, and the son of a man who owned slaves.

In that summer—of 1861— the "rst wash of the wave of war broke upon the shores of Missouri. Our State was invaded by the Union forces. They took possession of St. Louis, Jefferson Barracks,2 and some other points. The Governor, Claib Jackson,3 issued his proclamation calling out "fty thousand militia to repel the invader.

I was visiting in the small town where my boyhood had been spent— Hannibal, Marion County. Several of us got together in a secret place by night and formed ourselves into a military com pany. One Tom Lyman, a young fellow of a good deal of spirit but of no military experience, was made captain; I was made second lieutenant. We had no "rst lieutenant; I do not know why; it was long ago. There were "fteen of us. By the advice of an inno- cent connected with the organ ization, we called ourselves the Marion Rangers. I do not remember that any one found fault with the name. I did not; I thought it sounded quite well. The young fellow who proposed this title was perhaps a fair sample of the kind of stuff we were made of. He was young, ignorant, good- natured, well- meaning, trivial, full of romance, and given to reading chivalric novels and singing forlorn love- ditties. He had some pathetic little nickel- plated aristocratic instincts, and detested his name, which was Dunlap; detested it, partly because it was nearly as com- mon in that region as Smith, but mainly because it had a plebeian sound to

The Seat of War. Twain drew this map to accompany the original publication of his “Private History.” Narratives of the Civil War were frequently accompanied by maps to show their geographic locations.

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his ear. So he tried to ennoble it by writing it in this way: d’Unlap. That con- tented his eye, but left his ear unsatis"ed, for people gave the new name the same old pronunciation— emphasis on the front end of it. He then did the bravest thing that can be imagined,— a thing to make one shiver when one remembers how the world is given to resenting shams and affectations; he began to write his name so: d’ Un Lap. And he waited patiently through the long storm of mud that was `ung at this work of art, and he had his reward at last; for he lived to see that name accepted, and the emphasis put where he wanted it, by people who had known him all his life, and to whom the tribe of Dunlaps had been as familiar as the rain and the sunshine for forty years. So sure of victory at last is the courage that can wait. He said he had found, by consulting some ancient French chronicles, that the name was rightly and originally written d’Un Lap; and said that if it were translated into En glish it would mean Peterson: Lap, Latin or Greek, he said, for stone or rock, same as the French pierre, that is to say, Peter; d’, of or from; un, a or one; hence, d’Un Lap, of or from a stone or a Peter; that is to say, one who is the son of a stone, the son of a Peter— Peterson. Our militia com pany were not learned, and the explanation confused them; so they called him Peterson Dunlap. He proved useful to us in his way; he named our camps for us, and he generally struck a name that was “no slouch,” as the boys said.

That is one sample of us. Another was Ed Stevens, son of the town jeweler,— trim- built, handsome, graceful, neat as a cat; bright, educated, but given over entirely to fun. There was nothing serious in life to him. As far as he was concerned, this military expedition of ours was simply a holiday. I should say that about half of us looked upon it in the same way; not consciously, perhaps, but unconsciously. We did not think; we were not capable of it. As for myself, I was full of unreasoning joy to be done with turning out of bed at midnight and four in the morning, for a while; grateful to have a change, new scenes, new occupations, a new interest. In my thoughts that was as far as I went; I did not go into the details; as a rule one doesn’t at twenty- four.

Another sample was Smith, the blacksmith’s apprentice. This vast donkey had some pluck, of a slow and sluggish nature, but a soft heart; at one time he would knock a horse down for some impropriety, and at another he would get homesick and cry. However, he had one ultimate credit to his account which some of us hadn’t: he stuck to the war, and was killed in battle at last.

Jo Bowers, another sample, was a huge, good- natured, `ax- headed lub- ber; lazy, sentimental, full of harmless brag, a grumbler by nature; an expe- rienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite picturesque liar, and yet not a successful one, for he had had no intelligent training, but was allowed to come up just any way. This life was serious enough to him, and seldom sat- isfactory. But he was a good fellow anyway, and the boys all liked him. He was made orderly sergeant; Stevens was made corporal.

These samples will answer— and they are quite fair ones. Well, this herd of cattle started for the war. What could you expect of them? They did as well as they knew how, but really what was justly to be expected of them? Nothing, I should say. That is what they did.

We waited for a dark night, for caution and secrecy were necessary; then, toward midnight, we stole in couples and from vari ous directions to the Grif"th place, beyond the town; from that point we set out together on foot. Hannibal lies at the extreme southeastern corner of Marion County, on the

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4. Tired. 5. Key battles of the U.S.- Mexico War; both occurred in 1847.

Mississippi River; our objective point was the hamlet of New London, ten miles away, in Ralls County.

The "rst hour was all fun, all idle nonsense and laughter. But that could not be kept up. The steady trudging came to be like work; the play had some- how oozed out of it; the stillness of the woods and the somberness of the night began to throw a depressing in`uence over the spirits of the boys, and presently the talking died out and each person shut himself up in his own thoughts. During the last half of the second hour nobody said a word.

Now we approached a log farm- house where, according to report, there was a guard of "ve Union soldiers. Lyman called a halt; and there, in the deep gloom of the overhanging branches, he began to whisper a plan of assault upon that house, which made the gloom more depressing than it was before. It was a crucial moment; we realized, with a cold suddenness, that here was no jest—we were standing face to face with actual war. We were equal to the occasion. In our response there was no hesitation, no indecision: we said that if Lyman wanted to meddle with those soldiers, he could go ahead and do it; but if he waited for us to follow him, he would wait a long time.

Lyman urged, pleaded, tried to shame us, but it had no effect. Our course was plain, our minds were made up: we would `ank the farm- house—go out around. And that is what we did.

We struck into the woods and entered upon a rough time, stumbling over roots, getting tangled in vines, and torn by briers. At last we reached an open place in a safe region, and sat down, blown and hot, to cool off and nurse our scratches and bruises. Lyman was annoyed, but the rest of us were cheer- ful; we had `anked the farm- house, we had made our "rst military move- ment, and it was a success; we had nothing to fret about, we were feeling just the other way. Horse- play and laughing began again; the expedition was become a holiday frolic once more.

Then we had two more hours of dull trudging and ultimate silence and depression; then, about dawn, we straggled into New London, soiled, heel- blistered, fagged4 with our little march, and all of us except Stevens in a sour and raspy humor and privately down on the war. We stacked our shabby old shot- guns in Col o nel Ralls’s barn, and then went in a body and breakfasted with that veteran of the Mexican war. Afterwards he took us to a distant meadow, and there in the shade of a tree we listened to an old- fashioned speech from him, full of gunpowder and glory, full of that adjective- piling, mixed meta phor, and windy declamation which was regarded as eloquence in that ancient time and that remote region; and then he swore us on the Bible to be faithful to the State of Missouri and drive all invaders from her soil, no matter whence they might come or under what ̀ ag they might march. This mixed us considerably, and we could not make out just what ser vice we were embarked in; but Col o nel Ralls, the practiced politician and phrase- juggler, was not similarly in doubt; he knew quite clearly that he had invested us in the cause of the Southern Confederacy. He closed the solemnities by belting around me the sword which his neighbor, Col o nel Brown, had worn at Buena Vista and Molino del Rey;5 and he accompanied this act with another impressive blast.

Then we formed in line of battle and marched four miles to a shady and pleasant piece of woods on the border of the far- reaching expanses of a `ow- ery prairie. It was an enchanting region for war— our kind of war.

We pierced the forest about half a mile, and took up a strong position, with some low, rocky, and wooded hills behind us, and a purling, limpid creek in front. Straightway half the command were in swimming, and the other half "shing. The ass with the French name gave this position a romantic title, but it was too long, so the boys shortened and simpli"ed it to Camp Ralls.

We occupied an old maple- sugar camp, whose half- rotted troughs were still propped against the trees. A long corn- crib served for sleeping quarters for the battalion. On our left, half a mile away, was Mason’s farm and house; and he was a friend to the cause. Shortly after noon the farmers began to arrive from several directions, with mules and horses for our use, and these they lent us for as long as the war might last, which they judged would be about three months. The animals were of all sizes, all colors, and all breeds. They were mainly young and frisky, and nobody in the command could stay on them long at a time; for we were town boys, and ignorant of horse manship. The creature that fell to my share was a very small mule, and yet so quick and active that it could throw me without dif"culty; and it did this when- ever I got on it. Then it would bray— stretching its neck out, laying its ears back, and spreading its jaws till you could see down to its works. It was a disagreeable animal, in every way. If I took it by the bridle and tried to lead it off the grounds, it would sit down and brace back, and no one could budge it. However, I was not entirely destitute of military resources, and I did pres- ently manage to spoil this game; for I had seen many a steamboat aground in my time, and knew a trick or two which even a grounded mule would be obliged to res pect. There was a well by the corn- crib; so I substituted thirty fathom of rope for the bridle, and fetched him home with the windlass.

I will anticipate here suf"ciently to say that we did learn to ride, after some days’ practice, but never well. We could not learn to like our animals; they were not choice ones, and most of them had annoying peculiarities of one kind or another. Stevens’s horse would carry him, when he was not noticing, under the huge excrescences which form on the trunks of oak- trees, and wipe him out of the saddle; in this way Stevens got several bad hurts. Ser- geant Bowers’s horse was very large and tall, with slim, long legs, and looked like a railroad bridge. His size enabled him to reach all about, and as far as he wanted to, with his head; so he was always biting Bowers’s legs. On the march, in the sun, Bowers slept a good deal; and as soon as the horse recog- nized that he was asleep he would reach around and bite him on the leg. His legs were black and blue with bites. This was the only thing that could ever make him swear, but this always did; whenever the horse bit him he always swore, and of course Stevens, who laughed at every thing, laughed at this, and would even get into such convulsions over it as to lose his balance and fall off his horse; and then Bowers, already irritated by the pain of the horse- bite, would resent the laughter with hard language, and there would be a quarrel; so that horse made no end of trou ble and bad blood in the command.

However, I will get back to where I was— our "rst after noon in the sugar- camp. The sugar- troughs came very handy as horse- troughs, and we had plenty of corn to "ll them with. I ordered Sergeant Bowers to feed my mule; but he said that if I reckoned he went to war to be dry- nurse to a mule, it

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6. It was always my impression that that was always what the horse was there for, and I know it was the impression of at least one other of the command, for we talked about it at the time, and admired the military ingenuity of the device; but when I was out West three years ago, I was told by Mr. A. G. Fuqua, a member of our com pany, that

the horse was his, that the leaving him tied at the door was a matter of mere forgetfulness, and that to attribute it to intelligent invention was to give him quite too much credit. In support of his position, he called my attention to the suggestive fact that the arti"ce was not employed again. I had not thought of that before [Twain’s note].

wouldn’t take me very long to "nd out my mistake. I believed that this was insubordination, but I was full of uncertainties about every thing military, and so I let the thing pass, and went and ordered Smith, the blacksmith’s apprentice, to feed the mule; but he merely gave me a large, cold, sarcastic grin, such as an ostensibly seven- year- old horse gives you when you lift his lip and "nd he is fourteen, and turned his back on me. I then went to the captain, and asked if it was not right and proper and military for me to have an orderly. He said it was, but as there was only one orderly in the corps, it was but right that he himself should have Bowers on his staff. Bowers said he wouldn’t serve on anybody’s staff; and if anybody thought he could make him, let him try it. So, of course, the thing had to be dropped; there was no other way.

Next, nobody would cook; it was considered a degradation; so we had no dinner. We lazied the rest of the pleasant after noon away, some dozing under the trees, some smoking cob- pipes and talking sweethearts and war, some playing games. By late suppertime all hands were famished; and to meet the dif"culty all hands turned to, on an equal footing, and gathered wood, built "res, and cooked the meal. Afterward every thing was smooth for a while; then trou ble broke out between the corporal and the sergeant, each claim- ing to rank the other. Nobody knew which was the higher of"ce; so Lyman had to settle the matter by making the rank of both of"cers equal. The com- mander of an ignorant crew like that has many trou bles and vexations which prob ably do not occur in the regular army at all. However, with the song- singing and yarn- spinning around the camp- "re, every thing presently became serene again; and by and by we raked the corn down level in one end of the crib, and all went to bed on it, tying a horse to the door, so that he would neigh if any one tried to get in.6

We had some horse manship drill every forenoon; then, after noons, we rode off here and there in squads a few miles, and visited the farmer’s girls, and had a youthful good time, and got an honest good dinner or supper, and then home again to camp, happy and content.

For a time, life was idly delicious, it was perfect; there was nothing to mar it. Then came some farmers with an alarm one day. They said it was rumored that the enemy were advancing in our direction, from over Hyde’s prairie. The result was a sharp stir among us, and general consternation. It was a rude awakening from our pleasant trance. The rumor was but a rumor— nothing de"nite about it; so, in the confusion, we did not know which way to retreat. Lyman was for not retreating at all, in these uncertain circum- stances; but he found that if he tried to maintain that attitude he would fare badly, for the command were in no humor to put up with insubordination. So he yielded the point and called a council of war—to consist of himself and the three other of"cers; but the privates made such a fuss about being left out, that we had to allow them to be pres ent. I mean we had to allow them to remain, for they were already pres ent, and doing the most of the talking too. The question was, which way to retreat; but all were so `urried

7. Stairs straddling a fence. 8. Based in Connecticut, the Yale and Towne Com pany offered time locks for high- security

containers, such as bank vaults. Time locks will not release until a pre- set time.

that nobody seemed to have even a guess to offer. Except Lyman. He explained in a few calm words, that inasmuch as the enemy were approach- ing from over Hyde’s prairie, our course was simple: all we had to do was not to retreat toward him; any other direction would answer our needs perfectly. Every body saw in a moment how true this was, and how wise; so Lyman got a great many compliments. It was now deci ded that we should fall back on Mason’s farm.

It was after dark by this time, and as we could not know how soon the enemy might arrive, it did not seem best to try to take the horses and things with us; so we only took the guns and ammunition, and started at once. The route was very rough and hilly and rocky, and presently the night grew very black and rain began to fall; so we had a troublesome time of it, struggling and stumbling along in the dark; and soon some person slipped and fell, and then the next person behind stumbled over him and fell, and so did the rest, one after the other; and then Bowers came with the keg of powder in his arms, whilst the command were all mixed together, arms and legs, on the muddy slope; and so he fell, of course, with the keg, and this started the whole detachment down the hill in a body, and they landed in the brook at the bottom in a pile, and each that was undermost pulling the hair and scratching and biting those that were on top of him; and those that were being scratched and bitten scratching and biting the rest in their turn, and all saying they would die before they would ever go to war again if they ever got out of this brook this time, and the invader might rot for all they cared, and the country along with him— and all such talk as that, which was dis- mal to hear and take part in, in such smothered, low voices, and such a grisly dark place and so wet, and the enemy may be coming any moment.

The keg of powder was lost, and the guns too; so the growling and com- plaining continued straight along whilst the brigade pawed around the pasty hillside and slopped around in the brook hunting for these things; conse- quently we lost considerable time at this; and then we heard a sound, and held our breath and listened, and it seemed to be the enemy coming, though it could have been a cow, for it had a cough like a cow; but we did not wait, but left a couple of guns behind and struck out for Mason’s again as briskly as we could scramble along in the dark. But we got lost presently among the rugged little ravines, and wasted a deal of time "nding the way again, so it was after nine when we reached Mason’s stile7 at last; and then before we could open our mouths to give the countersign, several dogs came bound- ing over the fence, with great riot and noise, and each of them took a soldier by the slack of his trousers and began to back away with him. We could not shoot the dogs without endangering the persons they were attached to; so we had to look on, helpless, at what was perhaps the most mortifying spec- tacle of the civil war. There was light enough, and to spare, for the Masons had now run out on the porch with candles in their hands. The old man and his son came and undid the dogs without dif"culty, all but Bowers’s; but they couldn’t undo his dog, they didn’t know his combination; he was of the bull kind, and seemed to be set with a Yale time- lock;8 but they got him

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9. A guard placed apart from the main com pany of soldiers to observe a par tic u lar location.

loose at last with some scald- ing water, of which Bowers got his share and returned thanks. Peterson Dunlap afterwards made up a "ne name for this engagement, and also for the night march which preceded it, but both have long ago faded out of my memory.

We now went into the house, and they began to ask us a world of questions, whereby it presently came out that we did not know any- thing concerning who or what we were running from; so the old gentleman made himself very frank, and said we were a curious breed of soldiers, and guessed we could be depended on to end up the war in time, because no government could stand the expense of the shoe- leather we should cost it trying to follow us around. “Marion Rangers! Good name, b’gosh!” said he. And wanted to know why we hadn’t had a picket- guard9 at the place where the road entered the prairie, and why we hadn’t sent out a scouting party to spy out the enemy and bring us an account of his strength, and so on, before jumping up and stampeding out of a strong position upon a mere vague rumor— and so on and so forth, till he made us all feel shabbier than the dogs had done, not half so enthusiastically wel- come. So we went to bed shamed and low- spirited; except Stevens. Soon Stevens began to devise a garment for Bowers which could be made to automatically display his battle- scars to the grateful, or conceal them from the envious, according to his occasions; but Bowers was in no humor for this, so there was a "ght, and when it was over Stevens had some battle- scars of his own to think about.

Then we got a little sleep. But after all we had gone through, our activi- ties were not over for the night; for about two o’clock in the morning we heard a shout of warning from down the lane, accompanied by a chorus from all the dogs, and in a moment every body was up and `ying around to "nd out what the alarm was about. The alarmist was a horse man who gave notice that a detachment of Union soldiers was on its way from Hannibal with orders to capture and hang any bands like ours which it could "nd, and said we had no time to lose. Farmer Mason was in a `urry this time, himself. He hurried us out of the house with all haste, and sent one of his negroes with

Engagement at Mason’s Farm. Twain drew this illustration for the original publication of “Private History.” It mimics the diagrams of opposing forces that frequently accompanied descriptions of battle in magazines like the Century.

1. Noose. 2. Cornbread.

us to show us where to hide ourselves and our tell- tale guns among the ravines half a mile away. It was raining heavi ly.

We struck down the lane, then across some rocky pasture- land which offered good advantages for stumbling; consequently we were down in the mud most of the time, and every time a man went down he blackguarded the war, and the people that started it, and every body connected with it, and gave himself the master dose of all for being so foolish as to go into it. At last we reached the wooded mouth of a ravine, and there we huddled ourselves under the streaming trees, and sent the negro back home. It was a dismal and heart- breaking time. We were like to be drowned with the rain, deafened with the howling wind and the booming thunder, and blinded by the lightning. It was indeed a wild night. The drenching we were getting was misery enough, but a deeper misery still was the re`ection that the halter1 might end us before we were a day older. A death of this shameful sort had not occurred to us as being among the possibilities of war. It took the romance all out of the campaign, and turned our dreams of glory into a repulsive nightmare. As for doubting that so barbarous an order had been given, not one of us did that.

The long night wore itself out at last, and then the negro came to us with the news that the alarm had manifestly been a false one, and that breakfast would soon be ready. Straightway we were lighted- hearted again, and the world was bright, and life as full of hope and promise as ever— for we were young then. How long ago that was! Twenty- four years.

The mongrel child of philology named the night’s refuge Camp Devas- tation, and no soul objected. The Masons gave us a Missouri country breakfast, in Missourian abundance, and we needed it: hot biscuits; hot “wheat bread” prettily criss- crossed in a lattice pattern on top; hot corn pone;2 fried chicken; bacon, coffee, eggs, milk, buttermilk, etc.;— and the world may be con"dently challenged to furnish the equal to such a break- fast, as it is cooked in the South.

We stayed several days at Mason’s; and after all these years the memory of the dullness, the stillness and lifelessness of that slumberous farm- house still oppresses my spirit as with a sense of the presence of death and mourning. There was nothing to do, nothing to think about; there was no interest in life. The male part of the house hold were away in the "elds all day, the women were busy and out of our sight; there was no sound but the plaintive wailing of a spinning- wheel, forever moaning out from some distant room,— the most lonesome sound in nature, a sound steeped and sodden with home- sickness and the emptiness of life. The family went to bed about dark every night, and as we were not invited to intrude any new customs, we naturally followed theirs. Those nights were a hundred years long to youths accus- tomed to being up till twelve. We lay awake and miserable till that hour every time, and grew old and decrepit waiting through the still eternities for the clock- strikes. This was no place for town boys. So at last it was with some- thing very like joy that we received news that the enemy were on our track again. With a new birth of the old warrior spirit, we sprang to our places in line of battle and fell back on Camp Ralls.

Captain Lyman had taken a hint from Mason’s talk, and he now gave orders that our camp should be guarded against surprise by the posting of

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3. Antislavery activist and journalist (1833–1891) who founded an impor tant lyceum bureau— essentially a lecturer- booking agency. Twain was among his clients. 4. Twain errs in the middle initial here, as he

refers to Thomas Alexander Harris (1826–1895), who served as brigadier general of the Missouri State Guard and then represented Missouri in the First Confederate Congress.

pickets. I was ordered to place a picket at the forks of the road in Hyde’s prairie. Night shut down black and threatening. I told Sergeant Bowers to go out to that place and stay till midnight; and, just as I was expecting, he said he wouldn’t do it. I tried to get others to go, but all refused. Some excused themselves on account of the weather; but the rest were frank enough to say they wouldn’t go in any kind of weather. This kind of thing sounds odd now, and impossible, but there was no surprise in it at the time. On the con- trary, it seemed a perfectly natu ral thing to do. There were scores of little camps scattered over Missouri where the same thing was happening. These camps were composed of young men who had been born and reared to a sturdy in de pen dence, and who did not know what it meant to be ordered around by Tom, Dick, and Harry, whom they had known familiarly all their lives, in the village or on the farm. It is quite within the probabilities that this same thing was happening all over the South. James Redpath3 recog- nized the justice of this assumption, and furnished the following instance in support of it. During a short stay in East Tennessee he was in a citizen col o nel’s tent one day, talking, when a big private appeared at the door, and without salute or other circumlocution said to the col o nel:

“Say, Jim, I’m a- goin’ home for a few days.” “What for?” “Well, I hain’t b’en there for a right smart while, and I’d like to see how

things is comin’ on.” “How long are you going to be gone?” “ ’Bout two weeks.” “Well, don’t be gone longer than that; and get back sooner if you can.” That was all, and the citizen of"cer resumed his conversation where the

private had broken it off. This was in the "rst months of the war, of course. The camps in our part of Missouri were under Brigadier- General Thomas H. Harris.4 He was a townsman of ours, a "rst- rate fellow, and well liked; but we had all familiarly known him as the sole and modest- salaried operator in our telegraph of"ce, where he had to send about one dispatch a week in ordi- nary times, and two when there was a rush of business; consequently, when he appeared in our midst one day, on the wing, and delivered a military com- mand of some sort, in a large military fashion, nobody was surprised at the response which he got from the assembled soldiery:

“Oh, now, what’ll you take to don’t, Tom Harris!” It was quite the natu ral thing. One might justly imagine that we were

hopeless material for war. And so we seemed, in our ignorant state; but there were those among us who afterward learned the grim trade; learned to obey like machines; became valuable soldiers; fought all through the war, and came out at the end with excellent rec ords. One of the very boys who refused to go out on picket duty that night, and called me an ass for thinking he would expose himself to danger in such a foolhardy way, had become dis- tinguished for intrepidity before he was a year older.

I did secure my picket that night— not by authority, but by diplomacy. I got Bowers to go, by agreeing to exchange ranks with him for the time being, and go along and stand the watch with him as his subordinate. We staid out there a couple of dreary hours in the pitchy darkness and the rain, with noth- ing to modify the dreariness but Bowers’s monotonous growling at the war and the weather; then we began to nod, and presently found it next to impos- sible to stay in the saddle; so we gave up the tedious job, and went back to the camp without waiting for the relief guard. We rode into camp without interruption or objection from anybody, and the enemy could have done the same, for there were no sentries. Every body was asleep; at midnight there was nobody to send out another picket, so none was sent. We never tried to establish a watch at night again, as far as I remember, but we generally kept a picket out in the daytime.

In that camp the whole command slept on the corn in the big corn- crib; and there was usually a general row before morning, for the place was full of rats, and they would scramble over the boys’ bodies and faces, annoying and irritating every body; and now and then they would bite someone’s toe, and the person who owned the toe would start up and magnify his En glish and begin to throw corn in the dark. The ears were half as heavy as bricks, and when they struck they hurt. The persons struck would respond, and inside of "ve minutes every man would be locked in a death- grip with his neighbor. There was a grievous deal of blood shed in the corn- crib, but this was all that was spilt while I was in the war. No, that is not quite true. But for one circumstance it would have been all. I will come to that now.

Our scares were frequent. Every few days rumors would come that the enemy were approaching. In these cases we always fell back on some other camp of ours; we never staid where we were. But the rumors always turned out to be false; so at last even we began to grow indifferent to them. One night a negro was sent to our corn- crib with the same old warning: the enemy was hovering in our neighborhood. We all said let him hover. We resolved to stay still and be comfortable. It was a "ne warlike resolution, and no doubt we all felt the stir of it in our veins— for a moment. We had been having a very jolly time, that was full of horse- play and school- boy hilarity; but that cooled down now, and presently the fast- waning fire of forced jokes and forced laughs died out altogether, and the com pany became silent. Silent and ner vous. And soon uneasy— worried— apprehensive. We had said we would stay, and we were committed. We could have been persuaded to go, but there was nobody brave enough to suggest it. An almost noiseless move- ment presently began in the dark, by a general but unvoiced impulse. When the movement was completed, each man knew that he was not the only per- son who had crept to the front wall and had his eye at a crack between the logs. No, we were all there; all there with our hearts in our throats, and star- ing out toward the sugar- troughs where the forest foot- path came through. It was late, and there was a deep woodsy stillness everywhere. There was a veiled moonlight, which was only just strong enough to enable us to mark the general shape of objects. Presently a muf`ed sound caught our ears, and we recognized it as the hoof- beats of a horse or horses. And right away a "g- ure appeared in the forest path; it could have been made of smoke, its mass had so little sharpness of outline. It was a man on horse back; and it seemed to me that there were others behind him. I got hold of a gun in the dark, and

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pushed it through a crack between the logs, hardly knowing what I was doing, I was so dazed with fright. Somebody said “Fire!” I pulled the trigger. I seemed to see a hundred `ashes and hear a hundred reports, then I saw the man fall down out of the saddle. My "rst feeling was of surprised grati"ca- tion; my "rst impulse was an apprentice- sportsman’s impulse to run and pick up his game. Somebody said, hardly audibly, “Good— we’ve got him!— wait for the rest.” But the rest did not come. We waited— listened— still no more came. There was not a sound, not the whisper of a leaf; just perfect stillness; an uncanny kind of stillness, which was all the more uncanny on account of the damp, earthy, late- night smells now rising and pervading it. Then, won- dering, we crept stealthily out, and approached the man. When we got to him the moon revealed him distinctly. He was lying on his back, with his arms abroad; his mouth was open and his chest heaving with long gasps, and his white shirt- front was all splashed with blood. The thought shot through me that I was a murderer; that I had killed a man— a man who had never done me any harm. That was the coldest sensation that ever went through my mar- row. I was down by him in a moment, helplessly stroking his forehead; and I would have given anything then—my own life freely—to make him again what he had been "ve minutes before. And all the boys seemed to be feeling in the same way; they hung over him, full of pitying interest, and tried all they could to help him, and said all sorts of regretful things. They had forgot- ten all about the enemy; they thought only of this one forlorn unit of the foe. Once my imagination persuaded me that the dying man gave me a reproach- ful look out of his shadowy eyes, and it seemed to me that I could rather he had stabbed me than done that. He muttered and mumbled like a dreamer in his sleep, about his wife and his child; and I thought with a new despair, “This thing that I have done does not end with him; it falls upon them too, and they never did me any harm, any more than he.”

In a little while the man was dead. He was killed in war; killed in fair and legitimate war; killed in battle, as you may say; and yet he was as sincerely mourned by the opposing force as if he had been their brother. The boys stood there a half hour sorrowing over him, and recalling the details of the tragedy, and wondering who he might be, and if he were a spy, and saying that if it were to do over again they would not hurt him unless he attacked them "rst. It soon came out that mine was not the only shot "red; there were "ve others,— a division of the guilt which was a grateful relief to me, since it in some degree lightened and diminished the burden I was carry ing. There were six shots "red at once; but I was not in my right mind at the time, and my heated imagination had magni"ed my one shot into a volley.

The man was not in uniform, and was not armed. He was a stranger in the country; that was all we ever found out about him. The thought of him got to preying upon me every night; I could not get rid of it. I could not drive it away, the taking of that unoffending life seemed such a wanton thing. And it seemed an epitome of war; that all war must be just that— the killing of strangers against whom you feel no personal animosity; strangers whom, in other cir- cumstances, you would help if you found them in trou ble, and who would help you if you needed it. My campaign was spoiled. It seemed to me that I was not rightly equipped for this awful business; that war was intended for men, and I for a child’s nurse. I resolved to retire from this avocation of sham soldiership while I could save some remnant of my self- res pect. These morbid thoughts

5. Grimes (1834–1911) survived the war and later wrote his own memoir, published posthu- mously in 1926 as Absalom Grimes, Confederate

Mail Runner. 6. Panama. “Bowie- knives”: large hunting knives.

clung to me against reason; for at bottom I did not believe I had touched that man. The law of probabilities decreed me guiltless of his blood; for in all my small experience with guns I had never hit anything I had tried to hit, and I knew I had done my best to hit him. Yet there was no solace in the thought. Against a diseased imagination, demonstration goes for nothing.

The rest of my war experience was of a piece with what I have already told of it. We kept monotonously falling back upon one camp or another, and eating up the country. I marvel now at the patience of the farmers and their families. They ought to have shot us; on the contrary, they were as hos- pitably kind and courteous to us as if we had deserved it. In one of these camps we found Ab Grimes,5 an Upper Mississippi pi lot, who afterwards became famous as a dare- devil rebel spy, whose career bristled with desper- ate adventures. The look and style of his comrades suggested that they had not come into the war to play, and their deeds made good the conjecture later. They were "ne horse men and good revolver- shots; but their favorite arm was the lasso. Each had one at his pommel, and could snatch a man out of the saddle with it every time, on a full gallop, at any reasonable distance.

In another camp the chief was a "erce and profane old blacksmith of sixty, and he had furnished his twenty recruits with gigantic home- made bowie- knives, to be swung with the two hands, like the machetes of the Isthmus.6 It was a grisly spectacle to see that earnest band practicing their murderous cuts and slashes under the eye of that remorseless old fanatic.

The last camp which we fell back upon was in a hollow near the village of Florida, where I was born—in Monroe County. Here we were warned, one day, that a Union col o nel was sweeping down on us with a whole regiment at his heels. This looked decidedly serious. Our boys went apart and con- sulted; then we went back and told the other companies pres ent that the war was a disappointment to us and we were going to disband. They were get- ting ready, themselves, to fall back on some place or other, and were only waiting for General Tom Harris, who was expected to arrive at any moment; so they tried to persuade us to wait a little while, but the majority of us said no, we were accustomed to falling back, and didn’t need any of Tom Har- ris’s help; we could get along perfectly well without him— and save time too. So about half of our "fteen, including myself, mounted and left on the instant; the others yielded to persuasion and staid— staid through the war.

An hour later we met General Harris on the road, with two or three people in his com pany— his staff, prob ably, but we could not tell; none of them were in uniform; uniforms had not come into vogue among us yet. Harris ordered us back; but we told him there was a Union col o nel coming with a whole regiment in his wake, and it looked as if there was going to be a disturbance; so we had concluded to go home. He raged a little, but it was of no use; our minds were made up. We had done our share; had killed one man, extermi- nated one army, such as it was; let him go and kill the rest, and that would end the war. I did not see that brisk young general again until last year; then he was wearing white hair and whis kers.

In time I came to know that Union col o nel whose coming frightened me out of the war and crippled the Southern cause to that extent— General

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7. The "rst major battle of the Civil War, fought on July 21, 1861, in northern Virginia. 1. James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) is best known for his series of historical novels in which the hero is variously called Leatherstocking, Natty Bumppo, Hawkeye, and Deerslayer. The novels are The Pioneers (1823), The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Prairie (1827), The Path"nder (1840), and The Deerslayer (1841). This essay was "rst

published in July 1895 in North American Review, the source of the text, and later in the collection How to Tell a Story and Other Essays (1897). 2. William Wilkie Collins (1824–1889), En glish novelist; Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury (1838– 1915), American scholar and editor, professor at Yale University; James Brander Matthews (1852– 1929), American educator and author, professor at Columbia University.

Grant. I came within a few hours of seeing him when he was as unknown as I was myself; at a time when anybody could have said, “Grant?— Ulysses S. Grant? I do not remember hearing the name before.” It seems dif"cult to realize that there was once a time when such a remark could be rationally made; but there was, and I was within a few miles of the place and the occa- sion too, though proceeding in the other direction.

The thoughtful will not throw this war- paper of mine lightly aside as being valueless. It has this value: it is a not unfair picture of what went on in many and many a militia camp in the "rst months of the rebellion, when the green recruits were without discipline, without the steadying and heart- ening in`uence of trained leaders; when all their circumstances were new and strange, and charged with exaggerated terrors, and before the invalu- able experience of actual collision in the "eld had turned them from rabbits into soldiers. If this side of the picture of that early day has not before been put into history, then history has been to that degree incomplete, for it had and has its rightful place there. There was more Bull Run material scat- tered through the early camps of this country than exhibited itself at Bull Run.7 And yet it learned its trade presently, and helped to "ght the great battles later. I could have become a soldier myself, if I had waited. I had got part of it learned; I knew more about retreating than the man that in ven ted retreating.

1885

Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences1

The Path"nder and The Deerslayer stand at the head of Cooper’s novels as artistic creations. There are others of his works which contain parts as per- fect as are to be found in these, and scenes even more thrilling. Not one can be compared with either of them as a "nished whole.

The defects in both of these tales are comparatively slight. They were pure works of art.— Prof. Lounsbury.

The "ve tales reveal an extraordinary fulness of invention. . . . One of the very greatest characters in "ction, “Natty Bumppo.” . . . The craft of the woodsman, the tricks of the trapper, all the delicate art

of the forest, were familiar to Cooper from his youth up.— Prof. Brander Matthews.

Cooper is the greatest artist in the domain of romantic "ction yet pro- duced by Amer i ca.— Wilkie Collins.2

• • •

3. I.e., like one of the then- popu lar, expensive, illustrated literary miscellanies, or collections of writ- ings on vari ous subjects (“tree- calf ” was leather chemically treated to produce a treelike design).

It seems to me that it was far from right for the Professor of En glish Lit er- a ture in Yale, the Professor of En glish Lit er a ture in Columbia, and Wilkie Collins, to deliver opinions on Cooper’s lit er a ture without having read some of it. It would have been much more decorous to keep silent and let persons talk who have read Cooper.

Cooper’s art has some defects. In one place in Deerslayer, and in the restricted space of two- thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offences against literary art out of a pos si ble 115. It breaks the rec ord.

There are nineteen rules governing literary art in the domain of romantic "ction— some say twenty- two. In Deerslayer Cooper violated eigh teen of them. These eigh teen require:

1. That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. But the Deerslayer tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in the air.

2. They require that the episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it. But as the Deerslayer tale is not a tale, and accomplishes nothing and arrives nowhere, the episodes have no rightful place in the work, since there was nothing for them to develop.

3. They require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. But this detail has often been overlooked in the Deerslayer tale.

4. They require that the personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a suf"cient excuse for being there. But this detail also has been over- looked in the Deerslayer tale.

5. They require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject in hand, and be in ter est ing to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say. But this requirement has been ignored from the beginning of the Deerslayer tale to the end of it.

6. They require that when the author describes the character of a person- age in his tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage shall justify said description. But this law gets little or no attention in the Deerslayer tale, as “Natty Bumppo’s” case will amply prove.

7. They require that when a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt- edged, tree- calf, hand- tooled, seven- dollar Friendship’s Offering3 in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro minstrel in the end of it. But this rule is `ung down and danced upon in the Deerslayer tale.

8. They require that crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader as “the craft of the woodsman, the delicate art of the forest,” by either the author or the people in the tale. But this rule is per sis tently violated in the Deerslayer tale.

9. They require that the personages of a tale shall con"ne themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look pos si ble and reasonable. But these rules are not respected in the Deerslayer tale.

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4. Shore that is protected from the wind.

10. They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep inter- est in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. But the reader of the Deerslayer tale dislikes the good people in it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned together.

11. They require that the characters in a tale shall be so clearly de"ned that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given emergency. But in the Deerslayer tale this rule is vacated.

In addition to these large rules there are some little ones. These require that the author shall

12. Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it. 13. Use the right word, not its second cousin. 14. Eschew surplusage. 15. Not omit necessary details. 16. Avoid slovenliness of form. 17. Use good grammar. 18. Employ a simple and straightforward style. Even these seven are coldly and per sis tently violated in the Deerslayer tale. Cooper’s gift in the way of invention was not a rich endowment; but such

as it was he liked to work it, he was pleased with the effects, and indeed he did some quite sweet things with it. In his little box of stage properties he kept six or eight cunning devices, tricks, arti"ces for his savages and woods- men to deceive and circumvent each other with, and he was never so happy as when he was working these innocent things and seeing them go. A favor- ite one was to make a moccasined person tread in the tracks of the moc- casined enemy, and thus hide his own trail. Cooper wore out barrels and barrels of moccasins in working that trick. Another stage- property that he pulled out of his box pretty frequently was his broken twig. He prized his broken twig above all the rest of his effects, and worked it the hardest. It is a restful chapter in any book of his when somebody doesn’t step on a dry twig and alarm all the reds and whites for two hundred yards around. Every time a Cooper person is in peril, and absolute silence is worth four dollars a minute, he is sure to step on a dry twig. There may be a hundred handier things to step on, but that wouldn’t satisfy Cooper. Cooper requires him to turn out and "nd a dry twig; and if he can’t do it, go and borrow one. In fact the Leather Stocking Series ought to have been called the Broken Twig Series.

I am sorry there is not room to put in a few dozen instances of the deli- cate art of the forest, as practiced by Natty Bumppo and some of the other Cooperian experts. Perhaps we may venture two or three samples. Cooper was a sailor— a naval of"cer; yet he gravely tells us how a vessel, driving toward a lee shore4 in a gale, is steered for a par tic u lar spot by her skipper because he knows of an undertow there which will hold her back against the gale and save her. For just pure woodcraft, or sailor- craft, or what ever it is, isn’t that neat? For several years Cooper was daily in the society of artil- lery, and he ought to have noticed that when a cannon ball strikes the ground it either buries itself or skips a hundred feet or so; skips again a hundred

5. Natty Bumppo’s Indian friend. 6. Humorous turn of the biblical “through a glass, darkly” (1 Corinthians 13.12).

feet or so— and so on, till it " nally gets tired and rolls. Now in one place he loses some “females”—as he always calls women—in the edge of a wood near a plain at night in a fog, on purpose to give Bumppo a chance to show off the delicate art of the forest before the reader. These mislaid people are hunt- ing for a fort. They hear a cannon- blast, and a cannon- ball presently comes rolling into the wood and stops at their feet. To the females this suggests nothing. The case is very dif fer ent with the admirable Bumppo. I wish I may never know peace again if he doesn’t strike out promptly and follow the track of that cannon- ball across the plain through the dense fog and "nd the fort. Isn’t it a daisy? If Cooper had any real knowledge of Nature’s ways of doing things, he had a most delicate art in concealing the fact. For instance: one of his acute Indian experts, Chingachgook5 (pronounced Chicago, I think), has lost the trail of a person he is tracking through the forest. Apparently that trail is hopelessly lost. Neither you nor I could ever have guessed out the way to "nd it. It was very dif fer ent with Chicago. Chicago was not stumped for long. He turned a running stream out of its course, and there, in the slush in its old bed, were that person’s moccasin- tracks. The current did not wash them away, as it would have done in all other like cases—no, even the eternal laws of Nature have to vacate when Cooper wants to put up a delicate job of woodcraft on the reader.

We must be a little wary when Brander Matthews tells us that Cooper’s books “reveal an extraordinary fulness of invention.” As a rule, I am quite willing to accept Brander Matthews’s literary judgments and applaud his lucid and graceful phrasing of them; but that par tic u lar statement needs to be taken with a few tons of salt. Bless your heart, Cooper hadn’t any more invention than a horse; and I don’t mean a high- class horse, either; I mean a clothes- horse. It would be very dif"cult to "nd a really clever “situation” in Cooper’s books; and still more dif"cult to "nd one of any kind which he has failed to render absurd by his handling of it. Look at the episodes of “the caves;” and at the celebrated scuf`e between Maqua and those others on the table- land a few days later; and at Hurry Harry’s queer water- transit from the castle to the ark; and at Deerslayer’s half hour with his "rst corpse; and at the quarrel between Hurry Harry and Deerslayer later; and at— but choose for yourself; you can’t go amiss.

If Cooper had been an observer, his inventive faculty would have worked better, not more interestingly, but more rationally, more plausibly. Cooper’s proudest creations in the way of “situations” suffer noticeably from the absence of the observer’s protecting gift. Cooper’s eye was splendidly inac- curate. Cooper seldom saw anything correctly. He saw nearly all things as through a glass eye, darkly.6 Of course a man who cannot see the common- est little everyday matters accurately is working at a disadvantage when he is constructing a “situation.” In the Deerslayer tale Cooper has a stream which is "fty feet wide, where it `ows out of a lake; it presently narrows to twenty as it meanders along for no given reason, and yet, when a stream acts like that it ought to be required to explain itself. Fourteen pages later the width of the brook’s outlet from the lake has suddenly shrunk thirty feet, and become “the narrowest part of the stream.” This shrinkage is

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7. Meticulous.

not accounted for. The stream has bends in it, a sure indication that it has alluvial banks, and cuts them; yet these bends are only thirty and "fty feet long. If Cooper had been a nice7 and punctilious observer he would have noticed that the bends were oftener nine hundred feet long than short of it.

Cooper made the exit of that stream "fty feet wide in the "rst place, for no par tic u lar reason; in the second place, he narrowed it to less than twenty to accommodate some Indians. He bends a “sapling” to the form of an arch over this narrow passage, and conceals six Indians in its fo liage. They are “laying” for a settler’s scow or ark which is coming up the stream on its way to the lake; it is being hauled against the stiff current by a rope whose sta- tionary end is anchored in the lake; its rate of pro gress cannot be more than a mile an hour. Cooper describes the ark, but pretty obscurely. In the matter of dimensions “it was little more than a modern canal boat.” Let us guess, then, that it was about 140 feet long. It was of “greater breadth than com- mon.” Let us guess, then, that it was about sixteen feet wide. This leviathan had been prowling down bends which were but a third as long as itself, and scraping between banks where it had only two feet of space to spare on each side. We cannot too much admire this miracle. A low- roofed log dwelling occupies “two- third’s of the ark’s length”— a dwelling ninety feet long and sixteen feet wide, let us say— a kind of vestibule train. The dwelling has two rooms— each forty- "ve feet long and sixteen feet wide, let us guess. One of them is the bed- room of the Hutter girls, Judith and Hetty; the other is the parlor, in the day time, at night it is papa’s bed chamber. The ark is arriving at the stream’s exit, now, whose width has been reduced to less than twenty feet to accommodate the Indians— say to eigh teen. There is a foot to spare on each side of the boat. Did the Indians notice that there was going to be a tight squeeze there? Did they notice that they could make money by climbing down out of that arched sapling and just stepping aboard when the ark scraped by? No; other Indians would have noticed these things, but Cooper’s Indians never notice anything. Cooper thinks they are mar- vellous creatures for noticing, but he was almost always in error about his Indians. There was seldom a sane one among them.

The ark is 140 feet long; the dwelling is 90 feet long. The idea of the Indi- ans is to drop softly and secretly from the arched sapling to the dwelling as the ark creeps along under it at the rate of a mile an hour, and butcher the family. It will take the ark a minute and a half to pass under. It will take the 90- foot dwelling a minute to pass under. Now, then, what did the six Indians do? It would take you thirty years to guess, and even then you would have to give it up, I believe. Therefore, I will tell you what the Indians did. Their chief, a person of quite extraordinary intellect for a Cooper Indian, warily watched the canal boat as it squeezed along under him, and when he had got his calculations "ned down to exactly the right shade, as he judged, he let go and dropped. And missed the house! That is actually what he did. He missed the house, and landed in the stern of the scow. It was not much of a fall, yet it knocked him silly. He lay there unconscious. If the house had been 97 feet long, he would have made the trip. The fault was Cooper’s, not his. The error lay in the construction of the house. Cooper was no architect.

There still remained in the roost "ve Indians. The boat has passed under and is now out of their reach. Let me explain what the "ve did— you would not be able to reason it out for yourself. No. 1 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water astern of it. Then No. 2 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water still further astern of it. Then No. 3 jumped for the boat, and fell a good way astern of it. Then No. 4 jumped for the boat, and fell in the water away astern. Then even No. 5 made a jump for the boat— for he was a Cooper Indian. In the matter of intellect, the difference between a Cooper Indian and the Indian that stands in front of the cigar shop is not spacious. The scow episode is really a sublime burst of invention; but it does not thrill, because the inac- curacy of the details throws a sort of air of "ctitiousness and general improbability over it. This comes of Cooper’s inadequacy as an observer.

The reader will "nd some examples of Cooper’s high talent for inaccurate observation in the account of the shooting match in The Path"nder. “A com- mon wrought nail was driven lightly into the target, its head having been "rst touched with paint.” The color of the paint is not stated—an impor tant omission, but Cooper deals freely in impor tant omissions. No, after all, it was not an impor tant omission; for this nail head is a hundred yards from the marksmen and could not be seen by them at that distance no matter what its color might be. How far can the best eyes see a common house `y? A hundred yards? It is quite impossible. Very well, eyes that cannot see a house `y that is a hundred yards away cannot see an ordinary nail head at that distance, for the size of the two objects is the same. It takes a keen eye to see a `y or a nail head at "fty yards— one hundred and "fty feet. Can the reader do it?

The nail was lightly driven, its head painted, and game called. Then the Cooper miracles began. The bullet of the "rst marksman chipped an edge of the nail head; the next man’s bullet drove the nail a little way into the target— and removed all the paint. Haven’t the miracles gone far enough now? Not to suit Cooper; for the purpose of this whole scheme is to show off his prodigy, Deerslayer- Hawkeye- Long- Ri`e- Leather- Stocking- Path"nder-Bumppo before the ladies.

“Be all ready to clench it, boys!” cried out Path"nder, stepping into his friend’s tracks the instant they were vacant. “Never mind a new nail; I can see that, though the paint is gone, and what I can see, I can hit at a hundred yards, though it were only a mosquitos’s eye. Be ready to clench!”

The ri`e cracked, the bullet sped its way and the head of the nail was buried in the wood, covered by the piece of `attened lead.

There, you see, is a man who could hunt `ies with a ri`e, and command a ducal salary in a Wild West show to- day, if we had him back with us.

The recorded feat is certainly surprising, just as it stands; but it is not sur- prising enough for Cooper. Cooper adds a touch. He has made Path"nder do this miracle with another man’s ri`e, and not only that, but Path"nder did not have even the advantage of loading it himself. He had every thing against him, and yet he made that impossible shot, and not only made it, but did it with absolute con"dence, saying, “Be ready to clench.” Now a per- son like that would have undertaken that same feat with a brickbat, and with Cooper to help he would have achieved it, too.

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Path"nder showed off handsomely that day before the ladies. His very "rst feat was a thing which no Wild West show can touch. He was standing with the group of marksmen, observing— a hundred yards from the target, mind: one Jasper raised his ri`e and drove the centre of the bull’s- eye. Then the quartermaster "red. The target exhibited no result this time. There was a laugh. “It’s a dead miss,” said Major Lundie. Path"nder waited an impres- sive moment or two, then said in that calm, indifferent, know- it- all way of his, “No, Major—he has covered Jasper’s bullet, as will be seen if any one will take the trou ble to examine the target.”

Wasn’t it remarkable! How could he see that little pellet `y through the air and enter that distant bullet- hole? Yet that is what he did; for nothing is impossible to a Cooper person. Did any of those people have any deep- seated doubts about this thing? No; for that would imply sanity, and these were all Cooper people.

The res pect for Path"nder’s skill and for his quickness and accuracy of sight (the italics are mine) was so profound and general, that the instant he made this declaration the spectators began to distrust their own opinions, and a dozen rushed to the target in order to ascertain the fact. There, sure enough, it was found that the quartermaster’s bullet had gone through the hole made by Jasper’s, and that, too, so accurately as to require a minute examination to be certain of the circumstance, which, however, was soon clearly established by discovering one bullet over the other in the stump against which the target was placed.

They made a “minute” examination; but never mind, how could they know that there were two bullets in that hole without digging the latest one out? for neither probe nor eyesight could prove the presence of any more than one bullet. Did they dig? No; as we shall see. It is the Path"nder’s turn now; he steps out before the ladies, takes aim, and "res.

But alas! here is a disappointment; an incredible, an unimaginable disappointment— for the target’s aspect is unchanged; there is nothing there but that same old bullet hole!

“If one dared to hint at such a thing,” cried Major Duncan, “I should say that the Path"nder has also missed the target.”

As nobody had missed it yet, the “also” was not necessary; but never mind about that, for the Path"nder is going to speak.

“No, no, Major,” said he, con"dently, “that would be a risky declara- tion. I didn’t load the piece, and can’t say what was in it, but if it was lead, you will "nd the bullet driving down those of the Quartermaster and Jasper, else is not my name Path"nder.”

A shout from the target announced the truth of this assertion.

Is the miracle suf"cient as it stands? Not for Cooper. The Path"nder speaks again, as he “now slowly advances towards the stage occupied by the females:”

“That’s not all, boys, that’s not all; if you "nd the target touched at all, I’ll own to a miss. The Quartermaster cut the wood, but you’ll "nd no wood cut by that last messenger.”

8. Crudely molded pieces of iron. 9. No quarter for the rascals! (French).

The miracle is at last complete. He knew— doubtless saw—at the distance of a hundred yards— that his bullet had passed into the hole without fraying the edges. There were now three bullets in that one hole— three bullets imbed- ded pro cessionally in the body of the stump back of the target. Every body knew this— somehow or other— and yet nobody had dug any of them out to make sure. Cooper is not a close observer, but he is in ter est ing. He is certainly always that, no matter what happens. And he is more in ter est ing when he is not noticing what he is about than when he is. This is a considerable merit.

The conversations in the Cooper books have a curious sound in our mod- ern ears. To believe that such talk really ever came out of people’s mouths would be to believe that there was a time when time was of no value to a person who thought he had something to say; when it was the custom to spread a two- minute remark out to ten; when a man’s mouth was a rolling- mill, and busied itself all day long in turning four- foot pigs8 of thought into thirty- foot bars of conversational railroad iron by attenuation; when subjects were seldom faithfully stuck to, but the talk wandered all around and arrived nowhere; when conversations consisted mainly of irrelevances, with here and there a relevancy, a relevancy with an embarrassed look, as not being able to explain how it got there.

Cooper was certainly not a master in the construction of dialogue. Inac- curate observation defeated him here as it defeated him in so many other enterprises of his. He even failed to notice that the man who talks corrupt En glish six days in the week must and will talk it on the seventh, and can’t help himself. In the Deerslayer story he lets Deerslayer talk the showiest kind of book talk sometimes, and at other times the basest of base dialects. For instance, when some one asks him if he has a sweetheart, and if so, where she abides, this is his majestic answer:

“She’s in the forest— hanging from the boughs of the trees, in a soft rain—in the dew on the open grass— the clouds that `oat about in the blue heavens— the birds that sing in the woods— the sweet springs where I slake my thirst— and in all the other glorious gifts that come from God’s Providence!”

And he preceded that, a little before, with this:

“It consarns me as all things that touches a fri’nd consarns a fri’nd.”

And this is another of his remarks:

“If I was Injun born, now, I might tell of this, or carry in the scalp and boast of the expl’ite afore the whole tribe; or if my inimy had only been a bear”— and so on.

We cannot imagine such a thing as a veteran Scotch Commander- in- Chief, comporting himself in the "eld like a windy melodramatic actor, but Coo- per could. On one occasion Alice and Cora were being chased by the French through a fog in the neighborhood of their father’s fort:

“Point de quar tier aux coquins!”9 cried an eager pursuer, who seemed to direct the operations of the enemy.

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1. Slope that runs downward from a forti"cation. 2. Gate or passage in a forti"ed place for use by troops making a raid or other expedition.

3. Latin for “shaking frenzy,” a condition caused by alcohol withdrawal in chronic alcoholics.

“Stand "rm and be ready, my gallant 60ths!” suddenly exclaimed a voice above them; “wait to see the enemy; "re low, and sweep the glacis.”1

“ Father! father!” exclaimed a piercing cry from out the mist; “it is I! Alice! thy own Elsie! spare, O! save your daughters!”

“Hold!” shouted the former speaker, in the awful tones of parental agony, the sound reaching even to the woods, and rolling back in sol- emn echo. “  ’Tis she! God has restored me my children! Throw open the sally- port;2 to the "eld, 60ths, to the "eld; pull not a trigger, lest ye kill my lambs! Drive off these dogs of France with your steel.”

Cooper’s word- sense was singularly dull. When a person has a poor ear for music he will `at and sharp right along without knowing it. He keeps near the tune, but it is not the tune. When a person has a poor ear for words, the result is a literary `atting and sharping; you perceive what he is intend- ing to say, but you also perceive that he doesn’t say it. This is Cooper. He was not a word- musician. His ear was satis"ed with the approximate word. I will furnish some circumstantial evidence in support of this charge. My instances are gathered from half a dozen pages of the tale called Deerslayer. He uses “verbal,” for “oral”; “precision,” for “fa cil i ty”; “phenomena,” for “mar- vels”; “necessary,” for “predetermined”; “unsophisticated,” for “primitive”; “preparation,” for “expectancy”; “rebuked,” for “subdued”; “dependent on,” for “resulting from”; “fact,” for “condition”; “fact,” for “conjecture”; “precau- tion,” for “caution”; “explain,” for “determine”; “morti"ed,” for “disappointed”; “meretricious,” for “factitious”; “materially,” for “considerably”; “decreasing,” for “deepening”; “increasing,” for “disappearing”; “embedded,” for “enclosed”; “treacherous,” for “hostile”; “stood,” for “stooped”; “softened,” for “replaced”; “rejoined,” for “remarked”; “situation,” for “condition”; “dif fer ent,” for “dif- fering”; “insensible,” for “unsentient”; “brevity,” for “celerity”; “distrusted,” for “suspicious”; “ mental imbecility,” for “imbecility”; “eyes,” for “sight”; “counteracting,” for “opposing”; “funeral obsequies,” for “obsequies.”

There have been daring people in the world who claimed that Cooper could write En glish, but they are all dead now— all dead but Lounsbury. I don’t remember that Lounsbury makes the claim in so many words, still he makes it, for he says that Deerslayer is a “pure work of art.” Pure, in that connection, means faultless— faultless in all details— and language is a detail. If Mr.  Lounsbury had only compared Cooper’s En glish with the En glish which he writes himself— but it is plain that he didn’t; and so it is likely that he imagines until this day that Cooper’s is as clean and compact as his own. Now I feel sure, deep down in my heart, that Cooper wrote about the poorest En glish that exists in our language, and that the En glish of Deer- slayer is the very worst than even Cooper ever wrote.

I may be mistaken, but it does seem to me that Deerslayer is not a work of art in any sense; it does seem to me that it is destitute of every detail that goes to the making of a work of art; in truth, it seems to me that Deerslayer is just simply a literary delirium tremens.3

A work of art? It has no invention; it has no order, system, sequence, or result; it has no lifelikeness, no thrill, no stir, no seeming of real ity; its char-

1. Written as early as 1905, during the Philippine- American War, but considered unsuitable for publication in Twain’s day, “The War Prayer” "rst

appeared posthumously in Albert Bigelow Paine’s collection of Twain’s writings, Eu rope and Else- where (1923), published by Harper & Brothers.

acters are confusedly drawn, and by their acts and words they prove that they are not the sort of people the author claims that they are; its humor is pathetic; its pathos is funny; its conversations are— oh! indescribable; its love- scenes odious; its En glish a crime against the language.

Counting these out, what is left is Art. I think we must all admit that.

1895

The War Prayer1

It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy "re of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched "re- crackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a `uttering wilderness of `ags `ashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide ave- nue gay and "ne in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emo- tion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to `ag and country, and invoked the God of Battles, beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpouring of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righ teousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety’s sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.

Sunday morning came— next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was "lled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams— visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the `ashing sabers, the `ight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the "erce pursuit, the surrender!— them home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the "eld of honor, there to win for the `ag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The ser vice proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the "rst prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation—

“God the all- terrible! Thou who ordainest, Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!”

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Then came the “long” prayer. None could remember the like of it for pas- sionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its sup- plication was, that an ever- merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and con"- dent, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their `ag and country imperishable honor and glory—

An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes "xed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghast- liness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher’s side and stood there, wait- ing. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued his moving prayer, and at last "nished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, “Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and `ag!”

The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside— which the startled minister did— and took his place. During some moments he sur- veyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:

“I come from the Throne— bearing a message from Almighty God!” The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. “He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import— that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of— except he pause and think.

“God’s servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two— one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this— keep it in mind. If you would beseech a bless- ing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor’s crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.

“You have heard your servant’s prayer— the uttered part of it. I am com- missioned of God to put into words the other part of it— that part which the pastor— and also you in your hearts— fervently prayed silently. And igno- rantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: ‘Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!’ That is suf"cient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory— must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God the Father fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle—be Thou near them! With them—in spirit—we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved "resides to smite the foe. O Lord our God,

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help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling "elds with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of "re; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roo`ess with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun `ames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it— for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, pro- tract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever- faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.”

( After a pause.) “Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messen- ger of the Most High waits.”

It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.

1905 1923

BRET HARTE 1836–1902

Francis Bret[t] Harte was born August 25, 1836, in Albany, New York, of En glish, Dutch, and Jewish descent. His father, Henry, a schoolteacher, died in 1845, and nine years later, Harte followed his mother, Elizabeth Rebecca, and his elder sister and brother to Oakland, California. When he turned twenty- one, he left to seek employment farther north in California, where he worked for a time for a stage- coach express com pany (he claimed that he “rode shotgun”) and also as a miner, teacher, tutor, pharmacist’s clerk, and printer. From 1858 to 1860 he set type and served as an editorial assistant on the staff of the Uniontown Northern Californian. In late February 1860, while the editor- in- chief was out of town, Harte wrote an editorial expressing outrage over the massacre in nearby Eureka of sixty Native Americans, mostly women and children, by a small gang of white vigilantes. After the appearance of the editorial, his life was apparently threatened, and within a month he left for San Francisco.

Harte quickly found a job setting type for The Golden Era, a monthly magazine, and soon began contributing poems, stories, and sketches, many under the pseud- onym “The Bohemian.” Harte’s career as a writer was con"rmed in 1868 when he became the "rst editor of the newly established Overland Monthly, a publication that quickly became in`uential throughout the United States as the representative jour- nal of the burgeoning, often unruly culture of the Paci"c coast. In the second issue, Harte published “The Luck of Roaring Camp,” which made him a national celeb-

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rity. In this story, as elsewhere, Harte’s success rested on his ability to portray dis- tinctive characters whom he connected to the western settings.

Harte’s popularity and in`uence could be felt throughout the late- nineteenth- century boom in regional or local color writing, "ction that situates its characters in carefully drawn local environments. Writing primarily for readers who were gen- erally distant from its terrain or people, Harte helped to create a compelling vision of the West through a combination of romantic adventure and gritty realism. Per- haps what most distinguished him from other writers who exploited the myths of the Wild West is an ironic perspective that often went undetected by readers unfa- miliar with California. His writing frequently challenged the dime- novel treatment of the West, with its chivalrous heroes and black- hearted villains, by focusing on characters— stagedrivers, miners, schoolmarms— who never quite made their for- tune in the California gold rush. In 1870, Harte published a collection called “The Luck of Roaring Camp” and Other Sketches, which included works from The Golden Era and Overland Monthly. This popu lar book established many ideas about the West that were later circulated in vari ous forms by other western writers, including Mark Twain, Joaquin Miller, Ambrose Bierce, and, later, Jack London.

Harte, who had married Anna Griswold in 1862, left San Francisco early in 1871 at the height of his fame in hopes that his literary reputation would grow even more in the East. After a cross- country journey that was covered by the daily press, the publisher James T. Fields offered Harte the unheard-of sum of ten thousand dollars to write twelve or more poems and sketches to be published in the Atlantic Monthly and Every Saturday magazines during the course of the year. Unfortunately, Harte did not produce much writing in the twelve months following, and his contract was not renewed. At the same time, his drinking was harming his lecturing career, which was already shaky due to per for mances that some saw as “dandi"ed” and not at all those of a rugged western character. Whenever Harte departed from his standard western stories, he was castigated by critics, and so remained trapped in formula and self- parody. Within a few years after his lucrative contract ended, Harte was desperate and nearly penniless.

The last three de cades of Harte’s life constitute a decline in his personal and liter- ary fortunes. His novel Gabriel Conroy (1876) sold well but was slammed by the crit- ics, and though his two plays, Two Men of Sandy Bar (1876) and (with Mark Twain) Ah Sin (1877), were produced, neither was successful. In 1878 Harte moved to Eu rope when he was appointed consul to Krefeld, Prus sia; in 1880 he took up the consulship in Glasgow, Scotland. But when Grover Cleveland became president in 1885, Harte lost his post. Though his American audience waned, Harte’s En glish readers continued to receive his work favorably until his death in May 1902. Today he is still regarded as one of the progenitors of the lit er a ture of the American West— a "gure who challenged the supremacy of eastern publishers, expanded the literary ter- rain of the nation, and set the stage for a more capacious view of American lit er a ture.

The Luck of Roaring Camp1

There was commotion in Roaring Camp. It could not have been a "ght, for in 1850 that was not novel enough to have called together the entire settle- ment. The ditches and claims were not only deserted, but “Tuttle’s grocery” had contributed its gamblers, who, it will be remembered, calmly continued

1. First appearing in 1868 in Overland Monthly, the tale was reprinted by Osgood of Boston in 1870 in “The Luck of Roaring Camp” and Other

Sketches and by Houghton Mif`in in 1878  in “The Luck of Roaring Camp” and Other Tales; the pres ent text is taken from the 1878 revision.

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2. Hawaiian word for adult man, used (nonpejo- ratively) by both Hawaiians and Americans at the time. 3. In the card game euchre, jacks of the trump suit or the other suit of the same color.

4. From the beginning (Latin). 5. Raffaello Sanzio (1483–1520), painter and architect of the Italian High Re nais sance, best known for his Madonnas.

their game the day that French Pete and Kanaka Joe2 shot each other to death over the bar in the front room. The whole camp was collected before a rude cabin on the outer edge of the clearing. Conversation was carried on in a low tone, but the name of a woman was frequently repeated. It was a name familiar enough in the camp,— “Cherokee Sal.”

Perhaps the less said of her the better. She was a coarse and, it is to be feared, a very sinful woman. But at that time she was the only woman in Roaring Camp, and was just then lying in sore extremity, when she most needed the ministration of her own sex. Dissolute, abandoned, and irreclaim- able, she was yet suffering a martyrdom hard enough to bear even when veiled by sympathizing womanhood, but now terrible in her loneliness. The primal curse had come to her in that original isolation which must have made the punishment of the "rst transgression so dreadful. It was, perhaps, part of the expiation of her sin that, at a moment when she most lacked her sex’s intuitive tenderness and care, she met only the half- contemptuous faces of her masculine associates. Yet a few of the spectators were, I think, touched by her sufferings. Sandy Tipton thought it was “rough on Sal,” and, in the contemplation of her condition, for a moment rose superior to the fact that he had an ace and two bowers3 in his sleeve.

It will be seen also that the situation was novel. Deaths were by no means uncommon in Roaring Camp, but a birth was a new thing. People had been dismissed the camp effectively, " nally, and with no possibility of return; but this was the "rst time that anybody had been introduced ab initio.4 Hence the excitement.

“You go in there, Stumpy,” said a prominent citizen known as “Kentuck,” addressing one of the loungers. “Go in there, and see what you kin do. You’ve had experience in them things.”

Perhaps there was a "tness in the se lection. Stumpy, in other climes, had been the putative head of two families; in fact, it was owing to some legal informality in these proceedings that Roaring Camp— a city of refuge— was indebted to his com pany. The crowd approved the choice, and Stumpy was wise enough to bow to the majority. The door closed on the extempore sur- geon and midwife, and Roaring Camp sat down outside, smoked its pipe, and awaited the issue.

The assemblage numbered about a hundred men. One or two of these were actual fugitives from justice, some were criminal, and all were reckless. Phys- ically they exhibited no indication of their past lives and character. The great- est scamp had a Raphael5 face, with a profusion of blonde hair; Oakhurst, a gambler, had the melancholy air and intellectual abstraction of a Hamlet; the coolest and most courageous man was scarcely over "ve feet in height, with a soft voice and an embarrassed, timid manner. The term “roughs” applied to them was a distinction rather than a de"nition. Perhaps in the minor details of "n gers, toes, ears, etc., the camp may have been de"cient, but these slight omissions did not detract from their aggregate force. The strongest man had but three "n gers on his right hand; the best shot had but one eye.

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6. Twin brothers Romulus and Remus, tradition- ally honored as found ers of Rome, were sons of Mars and Rhea, daughter of King Numitor of Alba Longa. When Numitor’s brother Amulius deposed him, he made Rhea a Vestal Virgin (and thus for- bidden to marry). But when Mars fell in love with

her and she bore him the twins, Amulius, fearing they would grow up to overthrow him, left them by the banks of the River Tiber to fend for them- selves; they were found by a she- wolf who took pity on them and fed them with her milk. 7. By virtue of one’s of"ce, or position (Latin).

Such was the physical aspect of the men that were dispersed around the cabin. The camp lay in a triangular valley between two hills and a river. The only outlet was a steep trail over the summit of a hill that faced the cabin, now illuminated by the rising moon. The suffering woman might have seen it from the rude bunk whereon she lay,— seen it winding like a silver thread until it was lost in the stars above.

A "re of withered pine boughs added sociability to the gathering. By degrees the natu ral levity of Roaring Camp returned. Bets were freely offered and taken regarding the result. Three to "ve that “Sal would get through with it;” even that the child would survive; side bets as to the sex and complexion of the coming stranger. In the midst of an excited discussion an exclamation came from those nearest the door, and the camp stopped to listen. Above the swaying and moaning of the pines, the swift rush of the river, and the crack- ling of the "re rose a sharp, querulous cry,— a cry unlike anything heard before in the camp. The pines stopped moaning, the river ceased to rush, and the "re to crackle. It seemed as if Nature had stopped to listen too.

The camp rose to its feet as one man! It was proposed to explode a barrel of gunpowder; but in consideration of the situation of the mother, better counsels prevailed, and only a few revolvers were discharged; for whether owing to the rude surgery of the camp, or some other reason, Cherokee Sal was sinking fast. Within an hour she had climbed, as it were, that rugged road that led to the stars, and so passed out of Roaring Camp, its sin and shame, forever. I do not think that the announcement disturbed them much, except in speculation as to the fate of the child. “Can he live now?” was asked of Stumpy. The answer was doubtful. The only other being of Cherokee Sal’s sex and maternal condition in the settlement was an ass. There was some conjecture as to "tness, but the experiment was tried. It was less problem- atical than the ancient treatment of Romulus and Remus,6 and apparently as successful.

When these details were completed, which exhausted another hour, the door was opened, and the anxious crowd of men, who had already formed themselves into a queue, entered in single "le. Beside the low bunk or shelf, on which the "gure of the mother was starkly outlined below the blankets, stood a pine table. On this a candle- box was placed, and within it, swathed in staring red ̀ annel, lay the last arrival at Roaring Camp. Beside the candle- box was placed a hat. Its use was soon indicated. “Gentlemen,” said Stumpy, with a singular mixture of authority and ex of"cio7 complacency,— “gentlemen will please pass in at the front door, round the table, and out at the back door. Them as wishes to contribute anything toward the orphan will "nd a hat handy.” The "rst man entered with his hat on; he uncovered, however, as he looked about him, and so unconsciously set an example to the next. In such communities good and bad actions are catching. As the pro cession "led in comments were audible,— criticisms addressed perhaps rather to Stumpy in the character of showman: “Is that him?” “Mighty small specimen;”

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8. A small surgical knife.

“ Hasn’t more’n got the color;” “ Ain’t bigger nor a derringer.” The contribu- tions were as characteristic: A silver tobacco box; a doubloon; a navy revolver, silver mounted; a gold specimen; a very beautifully embroidered lady’s hand- kerchief (from Oakhurst the gambler); a diamond breastpin; a diamond ring (suggested by the pin, with the remark from the giver that he “saw that pin and went two diamonds better”); a slung- shot; a Bible (contributor not detected); a golden spur; a silver teaspoon (the initials: I regret to a say, were not the giver’s); a pair of surgeon’s shears; a lancet;8 Bank of Eng land note for £5; and about $200 in loose gold and silver coin. During these proceed- ings Stumpy maintained a silence as impassive as the dead on his left, a grav- ity as inscrutable as that of the newly born on his right. Only one incident occurred to break the monotony of the curious pro cession. As Kentuck bent over the candle- box half curiously, the child turned, and, in a spasm of pain, caught at his groping "n ger, and held it fast for a moment. Kentuck looked foolish and embarrassed. Something like a blush tried to assert itself in his weather- beaten cheek. “The d— d little cuss!” he said, as he extricated his "n ger, with perhaps more tenderness and care than he might have been deemed capable of showing. He held that "n ger a little apart from its fel- lows as he went out, and examined it curiously. The examination provoked the same original remark in regard to the child. In fact, he seemed to enjoy repeating it. “He rastled with my "n ger,” he remarked to Tipton, holding up the member, “the d— d little cuss!”

It was four o’clock before the camp sought repose. A light burnt in the cabin where the watchers sat, for Stumpy did not go to bed that night. Nor did Kentuck. He drank quite freely, and related with great gusto his expe- rience, invariably ending with his characteristic condemnation of the new- comer. It seemed to relieve him of any unjust implication of sentiment, and Kentuck had the weaknesses of the nobler sex. When every body else had gone to bed, he walked down to the river and whistled re`ectingly. Then he walked up the gulch past the cabin, still whistling with demonstrative unconcern. At a large redwood- tree he paused and retraced his steps, and again passed the cabin. Halfway down to the river’s bank he again paused, and then returned and knocked at the door. It was opened by Stumpy. “How goes it?” said Kentuck, looking past Stumpy toward the candle- box. “All serene!” replied Stumpy. “Anything up?” “Nothing.” There was a pause—an embarrassing one— Stumpy still holding the door. Then Ken- tuck had recourse to his "n ger, which he held up to Stumpy. “Rastled with it,— the d— d little cuss,” he said, and retired.

The next day Cherokee Sal had such rude sepulture as Roaring Camp afforded. After her body had been committed to the hillside, there was a formal meeting of the camp to discuss what should be done with her infant. A resolution to adopt it was unan i mous and enthusiastic. But an animated discussion in regard to the manner and feasibility of providing for its wants at once sprang up. It was remarkable that the argument partook of none of those "erce personalities with which discussions were usually conducted at Roaring Camp. Tipton proposed that they should send the child to Red Dog,— a distance of forty miles,— where female attention could be procured.

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9. That is, Tom fears that the men of Red Dog might substitute another baby for theirs. 1. Both lime and phosphorus are used as fertil-

izer, and both are generally white; the suggestion is that the ass’s milk would help the child’s bones grow strong.

But the unlucky suggestion met with "erce and unan i mous opposition. It was evident that no plan which entailed parting from their new acquisition would for a moment be entertained. “Besides,” said Tom Ryder, “them fellows at Red Dog would swap it, and ring in somebody else on us.”9 A disbelief in the honesty of other camps prevailed at Roaring Camp, as in other places.

The introduction of a female nurse in the camp also met with objection. It was argued that no decent woman could be prevailed to accept Roaring Camp as her home, and the speaker urged that “they did n’t want any more of the other kind.” This unkind allusion to the defunct mother, harsh as it may seem, was the "rst spasm of propriety,— the "rst symptom of the camp’s regeneration. Stumpy advanced nothing. Perhaps he felt a certain delicacy in interfering with the se lection of a pos si ble successor in of"ce. But when ques- tioned, he averred stoutly that he and “Jinny”— the mammal before alluded to— could manage to rear the child. There was something original, in de pen- dent, and heroic about the plan that pleased the camp. Stumpy was retained. Certain articles were sent for to Sacramento. “Mind,” said the trea surer, as he pressed a bag of gold- dust into the expressman’s hand, “the best that can be got,— lace, you know, and "ligree- work and frills,— d— n the cost!”

Strange to say, the child thrived. Perhaps the invigorating climate of the mountain camp was compensation for material de"ciencies. Nature took the foundling to her broader breast. In that rare atmosphere of the Sierra foothills,— that air pungent with balsamic odor, that ethereal cordial at once bracing and exhilarating,—he may have found food and nourishment, or a subtle chemistry that transmuted ass’s milk to lime and phosphorus.1 Stumpy inclined to the belief that it was the latter and good nursing. “Me and that ass,” he would say, “has been father and mother to him! Don’t you,” he would add, apostrophizing the helpless bundle before him, “never go back on us.”

By the time he was a month old the necessity of giving him a name became apparent. He had generally been known as “The Kid,” “Stumpy’s Boy,” “The Coyote” (an allusion to his vocal powers), and even by Kentuck’s endearing diminutive of “The d— d little cuss.” But these were felt to be vague and unsatisfactory, and were at last dismissed under another in`uence. Gam- blers and adventurers are generally superstitious, and Oakhurst one day declared that the baby had brought “the luck” to Roaring Camp. It was certain that of late they had been successful. “Luck” was the name agreed upon, with the pre"x of Tommy for greater con ve nience. No allusion was made to the mother, and the father was unknown. “It’s better,” said the phil- osophical Oakhurst, “to take a fresh deal all round. Call him Luck, and start him fair.” A day was accordingly set apart for the christening. What was meant by this ceremony the reader may imagine who has already gath- ered some idea of the reckless irreverence of Roaring Camp. The master of ceremonies was one “Boston,” a noted wag, and the occasion seemed to promise the greatest facetiousness. This ingenious satirist had spent two days in preparing a burlesque of the Church ser vice, with pointed local allu- sions. The choir was properly trained, and Sandy Tipton was to stand god- father. But after the pro cession had marched to the grove with music and

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banners, and the child had been deposited before a mock altar, Stumpy stepped before the ex pec tant crowd. “It ain’t my style to spoil fun, boys,” said the little man, stoutly eyeing the faces around him, “but it strikes me that this thing ain’t exactly on the squar. It’s playing it pretty low down on this yer baby to ring in fun on him that he ain’t goin’ to understand. And ef there’s goin’ to be any godfathers round, I’d like to see who’s got any better rights than me.” A silence followed Stumpy’s speech. To the credit of all humorists be it said that the "rst man to acknowledge its justice was the satirist thus stopped of his fun. “But,” said Stumpy, quickly following up his advantage, “ we’re here for a christening, and we’ll have it. I proclaim you Thomas Luck, according to the laws of the United States and the State of California, so help me God.” It was the "rst time that the name of the Deity had been other wise uttered than profanely in the camp. The form of christening was perhaps even more ludi- crous than the satirist had conceived; but strangely enough, nobody saw it and nobody laughed. “Tommy” was christened as seriously as he would have been under a Christian roof, and cried and was comforted in as orthodox fashion.

And so the work of regeneration began in Roaring Camp. Almost imper- ceptibly a change came over the settlement. The cabin assigned to “Tommy Luck”—or “The Luck,” as he was more frequently called— "rst showed signs of improvement. It was kept scrupulously clean and whitewashed. Then it was boarded, clothed, and papered. The rosewood cradle, packed eighty miles by mule, had, in Stumpy’s way of putting it, “sorter killed the rest of the furniture.” So the rehabilitation of the cabin became a necessity. The men who were in the habit of lounging in at Stumpy’s to see “how ‘The Luck’ got on” seemed to appreciate the change, and in self- defense the rival estab- lishment of “Tuttle’s grocery” bestirred itself and imported a carpet and mirrors. The re`ections of the latter on the appearance of Roaring Camp tended to produce stricter habits of personal cleanliness. Again Stumpy imposed a kind of quarantine upon those who aspired to the honor and priv- ilege of holding The Luck. It was a cruel morti"cation to Kentuck— who, in the carelessness of a large nature and the habits of frontier life, had begun to regard all garments as a second cuticle, which, like a snake’s, only sloughed off through decay—to be debarred this privilege from certain prudential rea- sons. Yet such was the subtle in`uence of innovation that he thereafter appeared regularly every after noon in a clean shirt and face still shining from his ablutions. Nor were moral and social sanitary laws neglected. “Tommy,” who was supposed to spend his whole existence in a per sis tent attempt to repose, must not be disturbed by noise. The shouting and yelling, which had gained the camp its infelicitous title, were not permitted within hearing dis- tance of Stumpy’s. The men conversed in whispers or smoked with Indian gravity. Profanity was tacitly given up in these sacred precincts, and through- out the camp a popu lar form of expletive, known as “D— n the luck!” and “Curse the luck!” was abandoned, as having a new personal bearing. Vocal music was not interdicted, being supposed to have a soothing, tranquilizing quality; and one song, sung by “Man- o’- War Jack,” an En glish sailor from her Majesty’s Australian colonies, was quite popu lar as a lullaby. It was a lugubrious recital of the exploits of “the Arethusa,2 Seventy- four,” in a muf`ed

2. In Greek my thol ogy, a nymph who was transformed into a fountain; the name is a popu lar one for ships, as in the song described here.

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3. A town on the Thames River in Eng land, birthplace of Henry VIII and site of the Royal Naval Col- lege, venerated by seafarers for its keeping of of"cial, or Greenwich Mean, time.

minor, ending with a prolonged dying fall at the burden of each verse, “On b- oo- o- ard of the Arethusa.” It was a "ne sight to see Jack holding The Luck, rocking from side to side as if with the motion of a ship, and crooning forth this naval ditty. Either through the peculiar rocking of Jack or the length of his song,—it contained ninety stanzas, and was continued with conscien- tious deliberation to the bitter end,— the lullaby generally had the desired effect. At such times the men would lie at full length under the trees in the soft summer twilight, smoking their pipes and drinking in the melodious utterances. An indistinct idea that this was pastoral happiness pervaded the camp. “This ’ere kind o’ think,” said the Cockney Simmons, meditatively reclining on his elbow, “is ’evingly.” It reminded him of Greenwich.3

On the long summer days The Luck was usually carried to the gulch from whence the golden store of Roaring Camp was taken. There, on a blanket spread over pine boughs, he would lie while the men were working in the ditches below. Latterly there was a rude attempt to decorate this bower with `owers and sweet- smelling shrubs, and generally some one would bring him a cluster of wild honeysuckles, azaleas, or the painted blossoms of Las Mari- posas. The men had suddenly awakened to the fact that there were beauty and signi"cance in these tri`es, which they had so long trodden carelessly beneath their feet. A `ake of glittering mica, a fragment of variegated quartz, a bright pebble from the bed of the creek, became beautiful to eyes thus cleared and strengthened, and were invariably put aside for The Luck. It was wonderful how many trea sures the woods and hillsides yielded that “would do for Tommy.” Surrounded by playthings such as never child out of fairy- land had before, it is to be hoped that Tommy was content. He appeared to be serenely happy, albeit there was an infantine gravity about him, a con- templative light in his round gray eyes, that sometimes worried Stumpy. He was always tractable and quiet, and it is recorded that once, having crept beyond his “corral,”— a hedge of tessellated pine boughs, which surrounded his bed,—he dropped over the bank on his head in the soft earth, and remained with his mottled legs in the air in that position for at least "ve min- utes with un`inching gravity. He was extricated without a murmur. I hesitate to rec ord the many other instances of his sagacity, which rest, unfortunately, upon the statements of prejudiced friends. Some of them were not without a tinge of superstition. “I crep’ up the bank just now,” said Kentuck one day, in a breathless state of excitement, “and dern my skin if he wasn’t a- talking to a jaybird as was a- sittin’ on his lap. There they was, just as free and sociable as anything you please, a- jawin’ at each other just like two cherrybums.” How- beit, whether creeping over the pine boughs or lying lazily on his back blink- ing at the leaves above him, to him the birds sang, the squirrels chattered, and the `owers bloomed. Nature was his nurse and playfellow. For him she would let slip between the leaves golden shafts of sunlight that fell just within his grasp; she would send wandering breezes to visit him with the balm of bay and resinous gum; to him the tall redwoods nodded familiarly and sleepily, the bumblebees buzzed, and the rooks cawed a slumbrous accompaniment.

Such was the golden summer of Roaring Camp. They were “`ush times,” and the luck was with them. The claims had yielded enormously. The camp

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was jealous of its privileges and looked suspiciously on strangers. No encouragement was given to immigration, and, to make their seclusion more perfect, the land on either side of the mountain wall that surrounded the camp they duly preëmpted. This, and a reputation for singular pro"- ciency with the revolver, kept the reserve of Roaring Camp inviolate. The expressman— their only connecting link with the surrounding world— sometimes told wonderful stories of the camp. He would say, “ They’ve a street up there in ‘Roaring’ that would lay over any street in Red Dog. They’ve got vines and `owers round their houses, and they wash them- selves twice a day. But they’re mighty rough on strangers, and they wor- ship an Ingin baby.”

With the prosperity of the camp came a desire for further improvement. It was proposed to build a hotel in the following spring, and to invite one or two decent families to reside there for the sake of The Luck, who might per- haps pro"t by female companionship. The sacri"ce that this concession to the sex cost these men, who were "ercely skeptical in regard to its general virtue and usefulness, can only be accounted for by their affection for Tommy. A few still held out. But the resolve could not be carried into effect for three months, and the minority meekly yielded in the hope that some- thing might turn up to prevent it. And it did.

The winter of 1851 will long be remembered in the foothills. The snow lay deep on the Sierras, and every mountain creek became a river, and every river a lake. Each gorge and gulch was transformed into a tumultuous water- course that descended the hillsides, tearing down giant trees and scattering its drift and débris along the plain. Red Dog had been twice under water, and Roaring Camp had been forewarned. “ Water put the gold into them gulches,” said Stumpy. “It’s been here once and will be here again!” And that night the North Fork suddenly leaped over its banks and swept up the trian- gular valley of Roaring Camp.

In the confusion of rushing water, crashing trees, and crackling timber, and the darkness which seemed to `ow with the water and blot out the fair valley, but little could be done to collect the scattered camp. When the morn- ing broke, the cabin of Stumpy, nearest the river- bank, was gone. Higher up the gulch they found the body of its unlucky own er; but the pride, the hope, the joy, The Luck, of Roaring Camp had dis appeared. They were returning with sad hearts when a shout from the bank recalled them.

It was a relief- boat from down the river. They had picked up, they said, a man and an infant, nearly exhausted, about two miles below. Did anybody know them, and did they belong here?

It needed but a glance to show them Kentuck lying there, cruelly crushed and bruised, but still holding The Luck of Roaring Camp in his arms. As they bent over the strangely assorted pair, they saw that the child was cold and pulseless. “He is dead,” said one. Kentuck opened his eyes. “Dead?” he repeated feebly. “Yes, my man, and you are dying too.” A smile lit the eyes of the expiring Kentuck. “ Dying!” he repeated; “he’s a- taking me with him. Tell the boys I’ve got The Luck with me now;” and the strong man, clinging to the frail babe as a drowning man is said to cling to a straw, drifted away into the shadowy river that `ows forever to the unknown sea.

1868 1870, 1878

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WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS 1837–1920

As a novelist, playwright, critic, essayist, reviewer, poet, and editor, William Dean Howells was always in the public eye, and his in`uence during the 1880s and 1890s on a growing middle- class readership was incalculable. Known at the height of his career as “the Dean of American Letters,” Howells carefully balanced the traditional and the innovative through his promotion of a new American real- ism. In the “Editor’s Study” essays he wrote for Harper’s New Monthly Magazine start- ing in 1886, Howells attacked sentimentality of thought and feeling, which he believed presented readers with a false repre sen ta tion of the moral and ethical choices that they would face in their own lives. He believed that realism “was noth- ing more or less than the truthful treatment of material,” especially the motives and actions of ordinary men and women. A se lection from these in`uential essays appears in the “Realism and Naturalism” section on pages 956–60 in this volume.

Howells was born in Martinsville, Ohio, on March 1, 1837, and had little formal schooling, assisting his father— a newspaper publisher and printer— from a very early age. As a teenager he was writing for newspapers in Columbus and Cincinnati, becoming city editor of the Ohio State Journal in 1858. During 1859–60, Howells’s essays, poems, and reviews appeared in such national publications as the Atlantic Monthly and the Saturday Press. His increasingly national visibility as an author and active supporter of the Republican Party in Columbus helped him to land the job of writing Abraham Lincoln’s campaign biography, which appeared in 1860. In that year, with the money he earned from the biography, he made a literary pilgrimage to New Eng land— the center of American literary culture at that time— where he was welcomed by such "gures as James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. When Lincoln became president in 1861, he appointed Howells as U.S. consul to Venice. There Howells wrote a series of travel letters, eventually published as Venetian Life (1866). In December 1862, he married Elinor Mead, with whom he would have three children. Returning to Amer- i ca after the Civil War, he worked brie`y for the Nation in New York City until James T. Fields offered him the assistant editorship of Boston’s Atlantic Monthly. In effect, Howells assumed control of the magazine from the very beginning, and he succeeded of"cially to the editorship in 1871, a position he held until 1881.

Howells had been "nding his way as a novelist during his ten years as editor, pub- lishing seven novels during that timespan, beginning with Their Wedding Journey (1871). These early novels are short, uncomplicated linear narratives that deliber- ately avoid the exaggerated characterizations and plots of romantic "ction in favor of a more ordinary realism. Howells came into his own as a novelist in the 1880s, after he left the Atlantic Monthly. A Modern Instance (1882) examines psychic, famil- ial, and social disintegration under the pressure of the secularization and urbaniza- tion of post– Civil War Amer i ca, which would become one of Howells’s central subjects for the rest of his career. In 1885 Howells published his most famous novel, The Rise of Silas Lapham, which traces the economic collapse (and moral journey) of Silas Lapham, a typical American entrepreneur who has built a paint manufac- turing com pany out of a combination of hard work, sheer luck, and shady business dealings. Within a year of its publication, Howells was profoundly affected by Rus- sian novelist Leo Tolstoy’s ideas of nonviolence, Spartan living, and economic equality and, at great risk to his reputation, publicly defended the “Haymarket

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Anarchists,” a group of Chicago work- ers, several of whom were executed without clear proof of their participa- tion in a bombing at a public demon- stration in May 1886.

In 1891 Howells moved from Boston to New York to assume the editorship of the Cosmopolitan, which he hoped to make into a forum for his increas- ingly radical po liti cal views; he resigned in 1893 when he failed to gain support for his po liti cal agenda from the magazine’s wealthy owner. As a "c- tion writer, he had begun to offer more direct po liti cal explorations of social and economic injustice in novels such as the sprawling A Hazard of New For- tunes (1890), which depicts class and ethnic con`ict in New York City from the perspective of an editor who has moved from Boston to New York and appreciates the city as an outsider; the

tighter, more psychologically focused An Imperative Duty (1892), which depicts racial passing; and the utopian romance A Traveller from Altruria (1894). Howells publicly opposed the Spanish– American War (1898), which was presented by its supporters as an unsel"sh effort to liberate Cuba from Spain, but which Howells feared was actually about  U.S. expansionists’ designs on Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and other Spanish colonial possessions. In “Editha” (1905), Howells characteristically explores the moral failure of individuals who have been corrupted by their culture’s worst values. Though the Spanish– American War is not speci"- cally mentioned in the story, its satire of romantic conceptions of battle"eld glory and the rush to war responded to the po liti cal moment.

In the course of his lifelong career as a literary authority, Howells was international in outlook and promoted such Eu ro pean contemporaries as Ivan Turgenev, Benito Perez Caldós, Leo Tolstoy, Henrik Ibsen, Émile Zola, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy. In the constant stream of reviews he wrote over "ve de cades, he also supported many younger American writers and early on recognized and publicized the work of talented African American and women writers, including Paul Dunbar, Charles Ches- nutt, Sarah Orne Jewett, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Edith Wharton, and Emily Dick- inson. He actively promoted the careers of such emerging realists and naturalists as Stephen Crane, Hamlin Garland, and Frank Norris, and from the 1860s on was the friend and literary champion of both Henry James and Mark Twain. Given the aston- ishing roster of writers whom Howells knew and promoted, it is easy to forget that his advocacy of literary realism and his belief in the social value of "ction were often the target of ridicule from his contemporaries in the late nineteenth century.

By the time Howells died of pneumonia in 1920, he had served for thirteen years as the "rst president of the American Acad emy of Arts and Letters and was himself a national institution. For rebels and iconoclasts of the 1930s, Howellsian realism stood for literary conservatism. Frank Norris set the tone for this criticism when he called Howells’s novels “teacup tragedies.” Indeed, Howells’ "ction often seems tame in its focus on the white middle- class, but he strongly believed that "ction could make its greatest contribution by telling stories of everyday life. An out spoken cultural critic and novelistic innovator, Howells focused his passions and intellect on a wide array of con temporary issues in politics and art, regularly revealing his fasci- nation with the lives of Americans of all backgrounds.

William Dean Howells, c. 1871, when he became editor of the Atlantic Monthly.

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1. First printed in the January 1905 issue of Harper’s Monthly, the source of the pres ent text. 2. Presumably the “war fever” preceding the

Spanish– American War (1898), which Howells opposed.

Editha1

The air was thick with the war feeling,2 like the electricity of a storm which has not yet burst. Editha sat looking out into the hot spring after noon, with her lips parted, and panting with the intensity of the question whether she could let him go. She had deci ded that she could not let him stay, when she saw him at the end of the still lea`ess ave nue, making slowly up towards the house, with his head down and his "gure relaxed. She ran impatiently out on the veranda, to the edge of the steps, and imperatively demanded greater haste of him with her will before she called aloud to him: “George!”

He had quickened his pace in mystical response to her mystical urgence, before he could have heard her; now he looked up and answered, “Well?”

“Oh, how united we are!” she exulted, and then she swooped down the steps to him. “What is it?” she cried.

“It’s war,” he said, and he pulled her up to him and kissed her. She kissed him back intensely, but irrelevantly, as to their passion, and

uttered from deep in her throat. “How glorious!” “It’s war,” he repeated, without consenting to her sense of it; and she did

not know just what to think at "rst. She never knew what to think of him; that made his mystery, his charm. All through their courtship, which was contemporaneous with the growth of the war feeling, she had been puzzled by his want of seriousness about it. He seemed to despise it even more than he abhorred it. She could have understood his abhorring any sort of blood- shed; that would have been a survival of his old life when he thought he would be a minister, and before he changed and took up the law. But mak- ing light of a cause so high and noble seemed to show a want of earnestness at the core of his being. Not but that she felt herself able to cope with a con- genital defect of that sort, and make his love for her save him from himself. Now perhaps the miracle was already wrought in him. In the presence of the tremendous fact that he announced, all triviality seemed to have gone out of him; she began to feel that. He sank down on the top step, and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief, while she poured out upon him her ques- tion of the origin and authenticity of his news.

All the while, in her duplex emotioning, she was aware that now at the very beginning she must put a guard upon herself against urging him, by any word or act, to take the part that her whole soul willed him to take, for the completion of her ideal of him. He was very nearly perfect as he was, and he must be allowed to perfect himself. But he was peculiar, and he might very well be reasoned out of his peculiarity. Before her reasoning went her emotioning: her nature pulling upon his nature, her womanhood upon his manhood, without her knowing the means she was using to the end she was willing. She had always supposed that the man who won her would have done something to win her; she did not know what, but something. George Gearson had simply asked her for her love, on the way home from a concert, and she gave her love to him, without, as it were, thinking. But now, it `ashed upon

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3. Part of a toast given by American naval of"cer Stephen Decatur (1779–1820): “Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country right or wrong.”

her, if he could do something worthy to have won her—be a hero, her hero— it would be even better than if he had done it before asking her; it would be grander. Besides, she had believed in the war from the beginning.

“But don’t you see, dearest,” she said, “that it wouldn’t have come to this, if it hadn’t been in the order of Providence? And I call any war glorious that is for the liberation of people who have been struggling for years against the cruelest oppression. Don’t you think so, too?”

“I suppose so,” he returned, languidly. “But war! Is it glorious to break the peace of the world?”

“That ignoble peace! It was no peace at all, with that crime and shame at our very gates.” She was conscious of parroting the current phrases of the newspapers, but it was no time to pick and choose her words. She must sac- ri"ce anything to the high ideal she had for him, and after a good deal of rapid argument she ended with the climax: “But now it doesn’t matter about the how or why. Since the war has come, all that is gone. There are no two sides, any more. There is nothing now but our country.”

He sat with his eyes closed and his head leant back against the veranda, and he said with a vague smile, as if musing aloud, “Our country— right or wrong.”3

“Yes, right or wrong!” she returned, fervidly. “I’ll go and get you some lem- onade.” She rose rustling, and whisked away; when she came back with two tall glasses of clouded liquid, on a tray, and the ice clucking in them, he still sat as she had left him, and she said as if there had been no interruption: “But there is no question of wrong in this case. I call it a sacred war. A war for liberty, and humanity, if ever there was one. And I know you will see it just as I do, yet.”

He took half the lemonade at a gulp, and he answered as he set the glass down: “I know you always have the highest ideal. When I differ from you, I ought to doubt myself.”

A generous sob rose in Editha’s throat for the humility of a man, so very nearly perfect, who was willing to put himself below her.

Besides, she felt, more subliminally, that he was never so near slipping through her "n gers as when he took that meek way.

“You shall not say that! Only, for once I happen to be right.” She seized his hand in her two hands, and poured her soul from her eyes into his. “ Don’t you think so?” she entreated him.

He released his hand and drank the rest of his lemonade, and she added, “Have mine, too,” but he shook his head in answering, “I’ve no business to think so, unless I act so, too.”

Her heart stopped a beat before it pulsed on with leaps that she felt in her neck. She had noticed that strange thing in men: they seemed to feel bound to do what they believed, and not think a thing was "nished when they said it, as girls did. She knew what was in his mind, but she pretended not, and she said, “Oh, I am not sure,” and then faltered.

He went on as if to himself without apparently heeding her. “ There’s only one way of proving one’s faith in a thing like this.”

She could not say that she understood, but she did understand.

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He went on again. “If I believed—if I felt as you do about this war— Do you wish me to feel as you do?”

Now she was really not sure; so she said, “George, I don’t know what you mean.”

He seemed to muse away from her as before. “ There is a sort of fascina- tion in it. I suppose that at the bottom of his heart every man would like at times to have his courage tested, to see how he would act.”

“How can you talk in that ghastly way?” “It is rather morbid. Still, that’s what it comes to, unless you’re swept away

by ambition, or driven by conviction. I haven’t the conviction or the ambi- tion, and the other thing is what it comes to with me. I ought to have been a preacher, after all; then I couldn’t have asked it of myself, as I must, now I’m a lawyer. And you believe it’s a holy war, Editha?” he suddenly addressed her. “Oh, I know you do! But you wish me to believe so, too?”

She hardly knew whether he was mocking or not, in the ironical way he always had with her plainer mind. But the only thing was to be out spoken with him.

“George, I wish you to believe what ever you think is true, at any and every cost. If I’ve tried to talk you into anything, I take it all back.”

“Oh, I know that, Editha. I know how sincere you are, and how— I wish I had your undoubting spirit! I’ll think it over; I’d like to believe as you do. But I don’t, now; I don’t, indeed. It isn’t this war alone; though this seems peculiarly wanton and needless; but it’s every war—so stupid; it makes me sick. Why shouldn’t this thing have been settled reasonably?”

“ Because,” she said, very throatily again, “God meant it to be war.” “You think it was God? Yes, I suppose that is what people will say.” “Do you suppose it would have been war if God hadn’t meant it?” “I don’t know. Sometimes it seems as if God had put this world into men’s

keeping to work it as they pleased.” “Now, George, that is blasphemy.” “Well, I won’t blaspheme. I’ll try to believe in your pocket Providence,”

he said, and then he rose to go. “Why don’t you stay to dinner?” Dinner at Balcom’s Works was at one

o’clock. “I’ll come back to supper, if you’ll let me. Perhaps I shall bring you a convert.” “Well, you may come back, on that condition.” “All right. If I don’t come, you’ll understand.” He went away without kissing her, and she felt it a suspension of their

engagement. It all interested her intensely; she was undergoing a tremen- dous experience, and she was being equal to it. While she stood looking after him, her mother came out through one of the long win dows, on to the veranda, with a catlike softness and vagueness.

“Why didn’t he stay to dinner?” “ Because— because— war has been declared,” Editha pronounced, with-

out turning. Her mother said, “Oh, my!” and then said nothing more until she had sat

down in one of the large Shaker chairs4 and rocked herself for some time.

4. Sturdy unadorned chairs made by the Shaker sect.

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5. From “Lucasta, Going to the Wars,” by the En glish poet Richard Lovelace (1618–1658).

Then she closed what ever tacit passage of thought there had been in her mind with the spoken words: “Well, I hope he won’t go.”

“And I hope he will,” the girl said, and confronted her mother with a stormy exaltation that would have frightened any creature less unimpressionable than a cat.

Her mother rocked herself again for an interval of cogitation. What she arrived at in speech was: “Well, I guess you’ve done a wicked thing, Editha Balcom.”

The girl said, as she passed indoors through the same win dow her mother had come out by: “I haven’t done anything— yet.”

In her room, she put together all her letters and gifts from Gearson, down to the withered petals of the "rst `ower he had offered, with that timidity of his veiled in that irony of his. In the heart of the packet she enshrined her engagement ring which she had restored to the pretty box he had brought it her in. Then she sat down, if not calmly yet strongly, and wrote:

“GEORGE:— I understood— when you left me. But I think we had better emphasize your meaning that if we cannot be one in every thing we had better be one in nothing. So I am sending these things for your keeping till you have made up your mind.

“I shall always love you, and therefore I shall never marry any one else. But the man I marry must love his country "rst of all, and be able to say to me,

“ ‘I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honor more.’5

“ There is no honor above Amer i ca with me. In this great hour there is no other honor.

“Your heart will make my words clear to you. I had never expected to say so much, but it has come upon me that I must say the utmost.

EDITHA”

She thought she had worded her letter well, worded it in a way that could not be bettered; all had been implied and nothing expressed.

She had it ready to send with the packet she had tied with red, white, and blue ribbon, when it occurred to her that she was not just to him, that she was not giving him a fair chance. He had said he would go and think it over, and she was not waiting. She was pushing, threatening, compelling. That was not a woman’s part. She must leave him free, free, free. She could not accept for her country or herself a forced sacri"ce.

In writing her letter she had satis"ed the impulse from which it sprang; she could well afford to wait till he had thought it over. She put the packet and the letter by, and rested serene in the consciousness of having done what was laid upon her by her love itself to do, and yet used patience, mercy, justice.

She had her reward. Gearson did not come to tea, but she had given him till morning, when, late at night there came up from the village the sound of a "fe and drum with a tumult of voices, in shouting, singing, and laugh-

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6. From Antony’s soliloquy after the murder of Caesar, in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (3.1.274).

ing. The noise drew nearer and nearer; it reached the street end of the ave- nue; there it silenced itself, and one voice, the voice she knew best, rose over the silence. It fell; the air was "lled with cheers; the "fe and drum struck up, with the shouting, singing, and laughing again, but now retreating; and a single "gure came hurrying up the ave nue.

She ran down to meet her lover and clung to him. He was very gay, and he put his arm round her with a boisterous laugh. “Well, you must call me Captain, now; or Cap, if you prefer; that’s what the boys call me. Yes, we’ve had a meeting at the town hall, and every body has volunteered; and they selected me for captain, and I’m going to the war, the big war, the glorious war, the holy war ordained by the pocket Providence that blesses butchery. Come along; let’s tell the whole family about it. Call them from their downy beds, father, mother, Aunt Hitty, and all the folks!”

But when they mounted the veranda steps he did not wait for a larger audi- ence; he poured the story out upon Editha alone.

“ There was a lot of speaking, and then some of the fools set up a shout for me. It was all going one way, and I thought it would be a good joke to sprinkle a little cold water on them. But you can’t do that with a crowd that adores you. The "rst thing I knew I was sprinkling hell- "re on them. ‘Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war.’6 That was the style. Now that it had come to the "ght, there were no two parties; there was one country, and the thing was to "ght the "ght to a "nish as quick as pos si ble. I suggested volunteer- ing then and there, and I wrote my name "rst of all on the roster. Then they elected me— that’s all. I wish I had some ice- water!”

She left him walking up and down the veranda, while she ran for the ice- pitcher and a goblet, and when she came back he was still walking up and down, shouting the story he had told her to her father and mother, who had come out more sketchily dressed than they commonly were by day. He drank goblet after goblet of the ice- water without noticing who was giving it, and kept on talking, and laughing through his talk wildly. “It’s astonishing,” he said, “how well the worse reason looks when you try to make it appear the better. Why, I believe I was the "rst convert to the war in that crowd to night! I never thought I should like to kill a man; but now, I shouldn’t care; and the smokeless powder lets you see the man drop that you kill. It’s all for the country! What a thing it is to have a country that can’t be wrong, but if it is, is right, anyway!”

Editha had a great, vital thought, an inspiration. She set down the ice- pitcher on the veranda `oor, and ran up- stairs and got the letter she had written him. When at last he noisily bade her father and mother, “Well, good night. I forgot I woke you up; I sha’n’t want any sleep myself,” she fol- lowed him down the ave nue to the gate. There, after the whirling words that seemed to `y away from her thoughts and refuse to serve them, she made a last effort to solemnize the moment that seemed so crazy, and pressed the letter she had written upon him.

“What’s this?” he said. “Want me to mail it?” “No, no. It’s for you. I wrote it after you went this morning. Keep it— keep

it— and read it sometime—” She thought, and then her inspiration came:

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7. Allusion to Shakespeare’s Othello (2.3.64–68), in which Iago sings a soldier’s drinking song.

“Read it if ever you doubt what you’ve done, or fear that I regret your having done it. Read it after you’ve started.”

They strained each other in embraces that seemed as in effec tive as their words, and he kissed her face with quick, hot breaths that were so unlike him, that made her feel as if she had lost her old lover and found a stranger in his place. The stranger said: “What a gorgeous `ower you are, with your red hair, and your blue eyes that look black now, and your face with the color painted out by the white moonshine! Let me hold you under my chin, to see whether I love blood, you tiger- lily!” Then he laughed Gearson’s laugh, and released her, scared and giddy. Within her willfulness she had been fright- ened by a sense of subtler force in him, and mystically mastered as she had never been before.

She ran all the way back to the house, and mounted the steps panting. Her mother and father were talking of the great affair. Her mother said: “Wa’n’t Mr. Gearson in rather of an excited state of mind? Didn’t you think he acted curious?”

“Well, not for a man who’d just been elected captain and had to set ’em up for the whole of Com pany A,” her father chuckled back.

“What in the world do you mean, Mr. Balcom? Oh! There’s Editha!” She offered to follow the girl indoors.

“ Don’t come, mother!” Editha called, vanishing. Mrs. Balcom remained to reproach her husband. “I don’t see much of any-

thing to laugh at.” “Well, it’s catching. Caught it from Gearson. I guess it won’t be much of

a war, and I guess Gearson don’t think so, either. The other fellows will back down as soon as they see we mean it. I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. I’m going back to bed, myself.”

Gearson came again next after noon, looking pale, and rather sick, but quite himself, even to his languid irony. “I guess I’d better tell you, Editha, that I consecrated myself to your god of battles last night by pouring too many libations to him down my own throat. But I’m all right now. One has to carry off the excitement, somehow.”

“Promise me,” she commanded, “that you’ll never touch it again!” “What! Not let the cannikin clink? Not let the soldier drink?7 Well, I

promise.” “You don’t belong to yourself now; you don’t even belong to me. You belong

to your country, and you have a sacred charge to keep yourself strong and well for your country’s sake. I have been thinking, thinking all night and all day long.”

“You look as if you had been crying a little, too,” he said with his queer smile.

“That’s all past. I’ve been thinking, and worshipping you. Don’t you sup- pose I know all that you’ve been through, to come to this? I’ve followed you every step from your old theories and opinions.”

“Well, you’ve had a long row to hoe.” “And I know you’ve done this from the highest motives—” “ ‘Oh, there won’t be much pettifogging to do till this cruel war is—”

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8. Short for vanguard, the foremost division of an army.

“And you haven’t simply done it for my sake. I couldn’t re spect you if you had.”

“Well, then we’ll say I haven’t. A man that hasn’t got his own re spect intact wants the re spect of all the other people he can corner. But we won’t go into that. I’m in for the thing now, and we’ve got to face our future. My idea is that this isn’t going to be a very protracted strug gle; we shall just scare the enemy to death before it comes to a "ght at all. But we must provide for con- tingencies, Editha. If anything happens to me—”

“Oh, George!” She clung to him sobbing. “I don’t want you to feel foolishly bound to my memory. I should hate that,

wherever I happened to be.” “I am yours, for time and eternity— time and eternity.” She liked the words;

they satis"ed her famine for phrases. “Well, say eternity; that’s all right; but time’s another thing; and I’m talking

about time. But there is something! My mother! If anything happens—” She winced, and he laughed. “ You’re not the bold soldier- girl of yesterday!”

Then he sobered. “If anything happens, I want you to help my mother out. She won’t like my doing this thing. She brought me up to think war a fool thing as well as a bad thing. My father was in the civil war, all through it; lost his arm in it.” She thrilled with the sense of the arm round her; what if that should be lost? He laughed as if divining her: “Oh, it doesn’t run in the family, as far as I know!” Then he added, gravely: “He came home with mis- givings about war, and they grew on him. I guess he and mother agreed between them that I was to be brought up in his "nal mind about it; but that was before my time. I only knew him from my mother’s report of him and his opinions; I don’t know whether they were hers "rst; but they were hers last. This will be a blow to her. I shall have to write and tell her—”

He stopped, and she asked: “Would you like me to write too, George?” “I don’t believe that would do. No, I’ll do the writing. She’ll understand a

little if I say that I thought the way to minimize it was to make war on the largest pos si ble scale at once— that I felt I must have been helping on the war somehow if I hadn’t helped keep it from coming, and I knew I hadn’t; when it came, I had no right to stay out of it.”

Whether his sophistries satis"ed him or not, they satis"ed her. She clung to his breast, and whispered, with closed eyes and quivering lips: “Yes, yes, yes!”

“But if anything should happen, you might go to her, and see what you could do for her. You know? It’s rather far off; she can’t leave her chair—”

“Oh, I’ll go, if it’s the ends of the earth! But nothing will happen! Noth- ing can! I—”

She felt herself lifted with his rising, and Gearson was saying, with his arm still round her, to her father: “Well, we’re off at once, Mr. Balcom. We’re to be formally accepted at the capital, and then bunched up with the rest somehow, and sent into camp somewhere, and got to the front as soon as pos si ble. We all want to be in the van,8 of course; we’re the "rst com pany to report to the Governor. I came to tell Editha, but I hadn’t got round to it.”

She saw him again for a moment at the capital, in the station, just before the train started southward with his regiment. He looked well, in his

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uniform, and very soldierly, but somehow girlish, too, with his clean- shaven face and slim "gure. The manly eyes and the strong voice satis"ed her, and his preoccupation with some unexpected details of duty `attered her. Other girls were weeping and bemoaning themselves, but she felt a sort of noble distinction in the abstraction, the almost unconsciousness, with which they parted. Only at the last moment he said: “ Don’t forget my mother. It mayn’t be such a walk- over as I supposed,” and he laughed at the notion.

He waved his hand to her as the train moved off— she knew it among a score of hands that were waved to other girls from the platform of the car, for it held a letter which she knew was hers. Then he went inside the car to read it, doubtless, and she did not see him again. But she felt safe for him through the strength of what she called her love. What she called her God, always speaking the name in a deep voice and with the implication of a mutual understanding, would watch over him and keep him and bring him back to her. If with an empty sleeve, then he should have three arms instead of two, for both of hers should be his for life. She did not see, though, why she should always be thinking of the arm his father had lost.

There were not many letters from him, but they were such as she could have wished, and she put her whole strength into making hers such as she imagined he could have wished, glorifying and supporting him. She wrote to his mother glorifying him as their hero, but the brief answer she got was merely to the effect that Mrs. Gearson was not well enough to write herself, and thanking her for her letter by the hand of someone who called herself “Yrs truly, Mrs. W. J. Andrews.”

Editha determined not to be hurt, but to write again quite as if the answer had been all she expected. But before it seemed as if she could have writ- ten, there came news of the "rst skirmish, and in the list of the killed, which was telegraphed as a tri`ing loss on our side, was Gearson’s name. There was a frantic time of trying to make out that it might be, must be, some other Gearson; but the name and the com pany and the regiment, and the State were too de"nitely given.

Then there was a lapse into depths out of which it seemed as if she never could rise again; then a lift into clouds far above all grief, black clouds, that blotted out the sun, but where she soared with him, with George, George! She had the fever that she expected of herself, but she did not die in it; she was not even delirious, and it did not last long. When she was well enough to leave her bed, her one thought was of George’s mother, of his strangely worded wish that she should go to her and see what she could do for her. In the exaltation of the duty laid upon her—it buoyed her up instead of bur- dening her— she rapidly recovered.

Her father went with her on the long railroad journey from northern New York to western Iowa; he had business out at Davenport, and he said he could just as well go then as any other time; and he went with her to the little country town where George’s mother lived in a little house on the edge of illimitable corn- "elds, under trees pushed to a top of the rolling prairie. George’s father had settled there after the civil war, as so many other old soldiers had done; but they were Eastern people, and Editha fancied touches of the East in the June rose overhanging the front door, and the garden with early summer `owers stretching from the gate of the paling fence.

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It was very low inside the house, and so dim, with the closed blinds, that they could scarcely see one another: Editha tall and black in her crapes which "lled the air with the smell of their dyes; her father standing decorously apart with his hat on his forearm, as at funerals; a woman rested in a deep arm- chair, and the woman who had let the strangers in stood behind the chair.

The seated woman turned her head round and up, and asked the woman behind her chair: “Who did you say?”

Editha, if she had done what she expected of herself, would have gone down on her knees at the feet of the seated "gure and said, “I am George’s Editha,” for answer.

But instead of her own voice she heard that other woman’s voice, saying: “Well, I don’t know as I did get the name just right. I guess I’ll have to make a little more light in here,” and she went and pushed two of the shutters ajar.

Then Editha’s father said, in his public will- now- address- a- few- remarks tone: “My name is Balcom, ma’am— Junius H. Balcom, of Balcom’s Works, New York; my daughter—”

“Oh!” the seated woman broke in, with a power ful voice, the voice that always surprised Editha from Gearson’s slender frame. “Let me see you! Stand round where the light can strike on your face,” and Editha dumbly obeyed. “So, you’re Editha Balcom,” she sighed.

“Yes,” Editha said, more like a culprit than a comforter. “What did you come for?” Mrs. Gearson asked. Editha’s face quivered and her knees shook. “I came— because— because

George—” She could go no further. “Yes,” the mother said, “he told me he had asked you to come if he got

killed. You didn’t expect that, I suppose, when you sent him.” “I would rather have died myself than done it!” Editha said with more truth

in her deep voice than she ordinarily found in it. “I tried to leave him free—” “Yes, that letter of yours, that came back with his other things, left him

free.” Editha saw now where George’s irony came from. “It was not to be read before— unless— until— I told him so,” she faltered. “Of course, he wouldn’t read a letter of yours, under the circumstances,

till he thought you wanted him to. Been sick?” the woman abruptly demanded. “Very sick.” Editha said, with self- pity. “ Daughter’s life,” her father interposed, “was almost despaired of, at one

time.” Mrs. Gearson gave him no heed. “I suppose you would have been glad to

die, such a brave person as you! I don’t believe he was glad to die. He was always a timid boy, that way; he was afraid of a good many things; but if he was afraid he did what he made up his mind to. I suppose he made up his mind to go, but I knew what it cost him, by what it cost me when I heard of it. I had been through one war before. When you sent him you didn’t expect he would get killed.”

The voice seemed to compassionate Editha, and it was time. “No,” she hus- kily murmured.

“No, girls don’t; women don’t, when they give their men up to their coun- try. They think they’ll come marching back, somehow, just as gay as they went, or if it’s an empty sleeve, or even an empty pantaloon, it’s all the more glory, and they’re so much the prouder of them, poor things!”

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The tears began to run down Editha’s face; she had not wept till then; but it was now such a relief to be understood that the tears came.

“No, you didn’t expect him to get killed,” Mrs. Gearson repeated in a voice which was startlingly like George’s again. “You just expected him to kill some one else, some of those foreigners, that weren’t there because they had any say about it, but because they had to be there, poor wretches— conscripts, or what ever they call ’em. You thought it would be all right for my George, your George, to kill the sons of those miserable mothers and the husbands of those girls that you would never see the faces of.” The woman lifted her power ful voice in a psalmlike note. “I thank my God he didn’t live to do it! I thank my God they killed him "rst, and that he ain’t livin’ with their blood on his hands!” She dropped her eyes, which she had raised with her voice, and glared at Editha. “What you got that black on for?” She lifted herself by her power ful arms so high that her helpless body seemed to hang limp its full length. “Take it off, take it off, before I tear it from your back!”

The lady who was passing the summer near Balcom’s Works was sketching Editha’s beauty, which lent itself wonderfully to the effects of a colorist. It had come to that con"dence which is rather apt to grow between artist and sitter, and Editha told her every thing.

“To think of your having such a tragedy in your life!” the lady said. She added: “I suppose there are people who feel that way about war. But when you consider the good this war has done— how much it has done for the country! I can’t understand such people, for my part. And when you had come all the way out there to console her— got up out of a sick- bed! Well!”

“I think,” Editha said, magnanimously, “she wasn’t quite in her right mind; and so did papa.”

“Yes,” the lady said, looking at Editha’s lips in nature and then at her lips in art, and giving an empirical touch to them in the picture. “But how dreadful of her! How perfectly— excuse me— how vulgar!”

A light broke upon Editha in the darkness which she felt had been with- out a gleam of brightness for weeks and months. The mystery that had bewil- dered her was solved by the word; and from that moment she rose from grovelling in shame and self- pity, and began to live again in the ideal.

1905

HENRY ADAMS 1838–1918

Henry Adams’s great- grand father John Adams was second president of the United States; his grand father John Quincy Adams was sixth president; and his father, Charles Francis Adams, was a distinguished po liti cal leader and diplo- mat. Despite Adams’s lifelong penchant for self- deprecation, his own achievements

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as a scholar, teacher, novelist, editor, and cultural historian are worthy of his emi- nent forebears, for they have earned him an impor tant place in American intellec- tual and literary history.

Adams was born in Boston, on Beacon Hill, and spent his childhood in the con- stant presence of renowned politicians, artists, and intellectuals; the index to his autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams, is virtually an “International Who Was Who” of the time. He studied at Harvard and after graduating he traveled in Eu rope; in 1860 he returned to Amer i ca to become private secretary to his father, a position he held for nine years, "rst in Washington, when the elder Adams was elected to Congress, then in London, where his father served as U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James.

In 1870, after a brief career as a freelance journalist, he accepted a position as assistant professor of medieval history at Harvard, doubting his own "tness for the job. In the same period he undertook the editorship of the North American Review, using this position to criticize the major po liti cal parties of this period concerning uncontrolled expansion and widespread government corruption. He sardonically remarked of his two vocations that “a professor commonly became a pedagogue or a pedant; an editor became an authority on advertising.” By all accounts other than his own, however, he served both the college and the journal well before he gave up both positions in the late 1870s to settle in Washington to devote his time to his- torical research.

Adams’s new career as historian did not begin auspiciously. His 1879 biography of Albert Gallatin, Thomas Jefferson’s secretary of the trea sury, and his subsequent biography of the `amboyant congressman John Randolph (1882), were not success- ful with his professional colleagues or with the public. Adams’s research for these biographies led him to produce a broader history of this period: The History of the United States of Amer i ca during the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison (1889–91). The nine- volume work, which took almost nine years to com- plete, is still a standard account of the early national period. During these years Adams also published two novels: Democracy in 1880, which Adams published anon- ymously, and Esther in 1884, which Adams published under a pseudonym. Both novels stirred considerable interest when they appeared and continue to attract read- ers who "nd, in the "rst work, a penetrating account of the corruption of govern- ment by business interests and, in the second, a prescient repre sen ta tion of the effect of scienti"c thought on traditional religious belief.

Adams’s life was profoundly changed by the suicide, in 1885, of his much- loved wife, Marian Hooper, who was despondent over her father’s death. After a de cade of mourning, a trip to northern France in the summer of 1895 stirred his intellectual curiosity and reignited his creative energies. What most struck the world- weary Adams that summer was the severe and majestic harmony of the twelfth- and thirteenth- century Norman and Gothic cathedrals he visited, particularly the one at Chartres. Mont- Saint- Michel and Chartres (privately printed in 1904; published 1913) not only provided illuminating discussions of the literary and architectural monu- ments of the period but examined the power ful spiritual forces that lay behind those achievements. During this time, he began to identify the images that represented to Adams a historical decline from medieval unity to the confusion and incoherence of the early twentieth century. Paradoxically, telling this story of decline served to renew Adams’s spirits and brought his work to the attention of a wider public.

In The Education of Henry Adams, an autobiography narrated in the third person, Adams describes the in`uence of his family, his schools, and vari ous social institu- tions on his intellect. With self- deprecation and sarcasm, Adams downplays his own achievements and emphasizes the degree to which he has been poorly prepared for a world of rapid change; he ironically offers his own “failures” as a negative exam- ple to young men of the time. The book also constitutes a meditation on the forces remaking, as Adams saw it, a world informed by its spiritual heritage into a new one

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1. The se lections from The Education reprint the Houghton Mif`in Riverside Edition text estab- lished by Ernest Samuels. Adams made a gift of the book’s copyright to the Mas sa chu setts His- torical Society in 1918, the year the "rst edition of the book was publicly sold. 2. The World’s Fair held in Paris from April through November.

3. Samuel  P. Langley (1834–1906), American astronomer and inventor, in 1896, of the "rst airplane to `y successfully. 4. Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626), En glish natu- ral phi los o pher, author of The Advancement of Learning (1605). 5. Early Shakespearean comedy (1594). 6. King of Eng land (1603–25).

dominated by science, industry, and technology. “The Virgin and the Dynamo,” in which “the historian” (as Adams calls himself) visits the Paris exposition of 1900, is the best- known chapter of The Education, and it dramatizes this historical shift through the pair of images named in the chapter’s title. The Virgin Mary repre- sents the forces that once held together the civilization of the West; and the power- ful new engines displayed at the exposition represent forces so power ful that the human mind cannot comprehend their true power.

The Education is primarily a literary work, not a biography or a history. (It omits many crucial details of Adams’s life, including his marriage and the death of his wife.) Despite Adams’s nineteenth- century upbringing and his deep interest in his- tory, the book feels quite modern in the author’s concern about his ability to con- tend with the increasing pace of social change. At a moment of optimism about the future that might unfold in the new, twentieth century, The Education sounds a countervailing note. Its "nal chapter (dated 1905) warns that the disintegrative forces unleashed by science threaten to destroy the world within a generation.

Adams "rst printed The Education in 1906 and distributed it privately. The book was "rst printed commercially in 1918, just after Adams’s death at the age of eighty, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize the following year. For more than a century, read- ers of The Education have been attracted to more than Adams’s ironic sense of humor in describing his own life as a series of missteps. In the time that has passed sense the book "rst appeared, Adams’s sense of being displaced in his own time by the pace and power of technological change continues to seem prophetic.

From The Education of Henry Adams1

Chapter XXV. The Dynamo and the Virgin

Until the Great Exposition of 19002 closed its doors in November, Adams haunted it, aching to absorb knowledge, and helpless to "nd it. He would have liked to know how much of it could have been grasped by the best- informed man in the world. While he was thus meditating chaos, Langley3 came by, and showed it to him. At Langley’s behest, the Exhibition dropped its super`uous rags and stripped itself to the skin, for Langley knew what to study, and why, and how; while Adams might as well have stood outside in the night, staring at the Milky Way. Yet Langley said nothing new, and taught nothing that one might not have learned from Lord Bacon,4 three hundred years before; but though one should have known the “Advancement of Sci- ence” as well as one knew the “Comedy of Errors,”5 the literary knowledge counted for nothing until some teacher should show how to apply it. Bacon took a vast deal of trou ble in teaching King James I6 and his subjects, Ameri- can or other, towards the year 1620, that true science was the development or economy of forces; yet an el derly American in 1900 knew neither the for- mula nor the forces; or even so much as to say to himself that his historical

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7. The subject of Ch. 22 of The Education. The Chicago Exposition of 1893 "rst stimulated Adams’s interest in the “economy of forces.” 8. German social phi los o pher (1818–1883) and architect of modern socialism and communism; he formulated his theories on the princi ple of

“dialectical materialism.” 9. Gottlieb Daimler (1834–1900), German engineer, inventor of the high- speed internal combustion engine and an early developer of the automobile.

business in the Exposition concerned only the economics or developments of force since 1893, when he began to study at Chicago.7

Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accu- mulates in the form of inert facts. Adams had looked at most of the accu- mulations of art in the store houses called Art Museums; yet he did not know how to look at the art exhibits of 1900. He had studied Karl Marx8 and his doctrines of history with profound attention, yet he could not apply them at Paris. Langley, with the ease of a great master of experiment, threw out of the "eld every exhibit that did not reveal a new application of force, and natu- rally threw out, to begin with, almost the whole art exhibit. Equally, he ignored almost the whole industrial exhibit. He led his pupil directly to the forces. His chief interest was in new motors to make his airship feasible, and he taught Adams the astonishing complexities of the new Daimler9 motor, and of the automobile, which, since 1893, had become a nightmare at a hundred kilometres an hour, almost as destructive as the electric tram which was only ten years older; and threatening to become as terrible as the locomotive steam- engine itself, which was almost exactly Adams’s own age.

Then he showed his scholar the great hall of dynamos, and explained how little he knew about electricity or force of any kind, even of his own special

The Gallery of Machines was constructed for the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris. Henry Adams visited the expanded gallery during the 1900 Exposition.

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1. Langley had in ven ted the bolometer, with which he was able to mea sure intensities of invis- ible heat rays in the infrared spectrum. 2. Because radium, "rst isolated by the Curies in 1898, underwent spontaneous transformation through radioactive emission, it did not "t pre- vailing scienti"c distinctions between matter and energy. 3. William Thomson, Baron Kelvin (1824–1907), En glish mathematician and physicist known

especially for his work in thermodynamics and electrodynamics. 4. Édouard Branly (1844–1940), French physi- cist and inventor, in 1890, of the Branly “coherer” for detecting radio waves. Guglielmo Marconi (1874–1937), Italian inventor of radio telegraphy in 1895. 5. Wilhelm Roentgen (1845–1923) discovered X- rays in 1895.

sun, which spouted heat in inconceivable volume, but which, as far as he knew, might spout less or more, at any time, for all the certainty he felt in it. To him, the dynamo itself was but an ingenious channel for convey- ing somewhere the heat latent in a few tons of poor coal hidden in a dirty engine- house carefully kept out of sight; but to Adams the dynamo became a symbol of in"nity. As he grew accustomed to the great gallery of machines, he began to feel the forty- foot dynamos as a moral force, much as the early Christians felt the Cross. The planet itself seemed less impressive, in its old- fashioned, deliberate, annual or daily revolution, than this huge wheel, revolving within arm’s- length at some vertiginous speed, and barely murmuring— scarcely humming an audible warning to stand a hair’s- breadth further for re spect of power— while it would not wake the baby lying close against its frame. Before the end, one began to pray to it; inherited instinct taught the national expression of man before silent and in"nite force. Among the thousand symbols of ultimate energy, the dynamo was not so human as some, but it was the most expressive.

Yet the dynamo, next to the steam- engine, was the most familiar of exhib- its. For Adams’s object its value lay chie`y in its occult mechanism. Between the dynamo in the gallery of machines and the engine- house outside, the break of continuity amounted to abysmal fracture for a historian’s objects. No more relation could he discover between the steam and the electric cur- rent than between the Cross and the cathedral. The forces were interchange- able if not reversible, but he could see only an absolute "at in electricity as in faith. Langley could not help him. Indeed, Langley seemed to be worried by the same trou ble, for he constantly repeated that the new forces were anarchical, and especially that he was not responsible for the new rays, that were little short of parricidal in their wicked spirit towards science. His own rays,1 with which he had doubled the solar spectrum, were altogether harm- less and bene"cent; but Radium denied its God2—or, what was to Langley the same thing, denied the truths of his Science. The force was wholly new.

A historian who asked only to learn enough to be as futile as Langley or Kelvin,3 made rapid pro gress under this teaching, and mixed himself up in the tangle of ideas until he achieved a sort of Paradise of ignorance vastly consoling to his fatigued senses. He wrapped himself in vibrations and rays which were new, and he would have hugged Marconi and Branly4 had he met them, as he hugged the dynamo; while he lost his arithmetic in trying to "gure out the equation between the discoveries and the economies of force. The economies, like the discoveries, were absolute, supersensual, occult; incapable of expression in horse- power. What mathematical equiva- lent could he suggest as the value of a Branly coherer? Frozen air, or the electric furnace, had some scale of mea sure ment, no doubt, if somebody could invent a thermometer adequate to the purpose; but X- rays5 had played

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6. Galileo (1564–1642), Italian astronomer and developer of the refracting telescope, was con- demned by the Inquisition for espousing the beliefs of the Polish astronomer Copernicus (1473–1543), who asserted that the earth rotated

around the sun. 7. Constantine the Great (288?–337), Roman emperor, issued the Edict of Milan in 313 pro- claiming toleration of Christians, which paved the way for the ascendancy of Chris tian ity.

no part what ever in man’s consciousness, and the atom itself had "gured only as a "ction of thought. In these seven years man had translated him- self into a new universe which had no common scale of mea sure ment with the old. He had entered a supersensual world, in which he could mea sure nothing except by chance collisions of movements imperceptible to his senses, perhaps even imperceptible to his instruments, but perceptible to each other, and so to some known ray at the end of the scale. Langley seemed prepared for anything, even for an indeterminable number of universes interfused— physics stark mad in metaphysics.

Historians undertake to arrange sequences,— called stories, or histories— assuming in silence a relation of cause and effect. These assumptions, hid- den in the depths of dusty libraries, have been astounding, but commonly unconscious and childlike; so much so, that if any captious critic were to drag them to light, historians would prob ably reply, with one voice, that they had never supposed themselves required to know what they were talking about. Adams, for one, had toiled in vain to "nd out what he meant. He had even published a dozen volumes of American history for no other purpose than to satisfy himself whether, by the severest pro cess of stating, with the least pos si ble comment, such facts as seemed sure, in such order as seemed rigorously consequent, he could "x for a familiar moment a necessary sequence of human movement. The result had satis"ed him as little as at Harvard College. Where he saw sequence, other men saw something quite dif fer ent, and no one saw the same unit of mea sure. He cared little about his experiments and less about his statesmen, who seemed to him quite as ignorant as himself and, as a rule, no more honest; but he insisted on a rela- tion of sequence, and if he could not reach it by one method, he would try as many methods as science knew. Satis"ed that the sequence of men led to nothing and that the sequence of their society could lead no further, while the mere sequence of time was arti"cial, and the sequence of thought was chaos, he turned at last to the sequence of force; and thus it happened that, after ten years’ pursuit, he found himself lying in the Gallery of Machines at the Great Exposition of 1900, his historical neck broken by the sudden irruption of forces totally new.

Since no one else showed much concern, an el derly person without other cares had no need to betray alarm. The year 1900 was not the "rst to upset schoolmasters. Copernicus and Galileo6 had broken many professorial necks about 1600; Columbus had stood the world on its head towards 1500; but the nearest approach to the revolution of 1900 was that of 310, when Constantine set up the Cross.7 The rays that Langley disowned, as well as those which he fathered, were occult, supersensual, irrational; they were a revelation of mysterious energy like that of the Cross; they were what, in terms of mediæval science, were called immediate modes of the divine sub- stance.

The historian was thus reduced to his last resources. Clearly if he was bound to reduce all these forces to a common value, this common value

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8. That is, the druggist knew of Venus only through selling medi cation for venereal disease, and because Boston was largely Protestant, he would have heard of the Virgin only as the object of idolatrous worship. 9. In Chrétien de Troyes’s Lancelot, the hero has to crawl across a bridge made of a single sword to enter a castle and rescue Guinevere. 1. A famous shrine in France known for its

miraculous cures; the Virgin Mary was said to have appeared to a peasant girl there in 1858. 2. I.e., to conceal sexual organs and sensuality. 3. The shrine at Ephesus on the west coast of Asia Minor was dedicated to Artemis, a virgin goddess and mother "gure. 4. Lucretius (c. 99–55 b.c.e.), in “On the Nature of Things” 1.21: “And since ’tis thou / Venus alone / Guidest the Cosmos” (trans. W. E. Leonard).

could have no mea sure but that of their attraction on his own mind. He must treat them as they had been felt; as convertible, reversible, inter- changeable attractions on thought. He made up his mind to venture it; he would risk translating rays into faith. Such a reversible pro cess would vastly amuse a chemist, but the chemist could not deny that he, or some of his fellow physicists, could feel the force of both. When Adams was a boy in Boston, the best chemist in the place had prob ably never heard of Venus except by way of scandal, or of the Virgin except as idolatry;8 neither had he heard of dynamos or automobiles or radium; yet his mind was ready to feel the force of all, though the rays were unborn and the women were dead.

Here opened another totally new education, which promised to be by far the most hazardous of all. The knife- edge along which he must crawl, like Sir Lancelot9 in the twelfth century, divided two kingdoms of force which had nothing in common but attraction. They were as dif fer ent as a magnet is from gravitation, supposing one knew what a magnet was, or gravitation, or love. The force of the Virgin was still felt at Lourdes,1 and seemed to be as potent as X- rays; but in Amer i ca neither Venus nor Virgin ever had value as force—at most as sentiment. No American had ever been truly afraid of either.

This prob lem in dynamics gravely perplexed an American historian. The Woman had once been supreme; in France she still seemed potent, not merely as a sentiment, but as a force. Why was she unknown in Amer i ca? For evidently Amer i ca was ashamed of her, and she was ashamed of herself, other wise they would not have strewn "g- leaves so profusely all over her.2 When she was a true force, she was ignorant of "g- leaves, but the monthly- magazine- made American female had not a feature that would have been recognized by Adam. The trait was notorious, and often humorous, but any one brought up among Puritans knew that sex was sin. In any previous age, sex was strength. Neither art nor beauty was needed. Every one, even among Puritans, knew that neither Diana of the Ephesians3 nor any of the Orien- tal goddesses was worshipped for her beauty. She was goddess because of her force; she was the animated dynamo; she was reproduction— the great- est and most mysterious of all energies; all she needed was to be fecund. Singularly enough, not one of Adams’s many schools of education had ever drawn his attention to the opening lines of Lucretius,4 though they were per- haps the "nest in all Latin lit er a ture, where the poet invoked Venus exactly as Dante invoked the Virgin:—

“Quae quoniam rerum naturam sola gubernas.”

The Venus of Epicurean philosophy survived in the Virgin of the Schools:—

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5. The Virgin of the Schools is a reference to medieval scholastic phi los o phers. The lines from Dante translate as follows:

Lady, thou art so great and hath such worth, that if there be who would have grace yet beta- keth not himself to thee, his longing seeketh to `y without wings (Paradiso 33, trans. Carlyle- Wicksteed).

6. Nineteenth- century En glish phi los o pher and popu lar izer of Darwinian evolutionary princi ples. Adams ironically suggests that Spencer’s expla- nations were too general and abstract to explain this primal force. 7. Harte (1836–1902) sympathetically portrayed

prostitutes in such stories as “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” and “Miggles.” Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1855) treated sex boldly and was much criticized on that account. 8. The wife of King Herod; she collaborated with her daughter Salome in arranging the beheading of John the Baptist. 9. Just as the American language is not in`ected for gender, so American education was coeduca- tional and in Adams’s day entirely excluded sex as a subject from the curriculum. 1. Augustus Saint- Gaudens (1848–1907), Ameri- can sculptor. 2. Senator James Donald Cameron (1833–1918), secretary of war under President Grant.

“Donna, sei tanto grande, e tanto vali, Che qual vuol grazia, e a te non ricorre, Sua disianza vuol volar senz’ ali.”5

All this was to American thought as though it had never existed. The true American knew something of the facts, but nothing of the feelings; he read the letter, but he never felt the law. Before this historical chasm, a mind like that of Adams felt itself helpless; he turned from the Virgin to the Dynamo as though he were a Branly coherer. On one side, at the Louvre and at Char- tres, as he knew by the rec ord of work actually done and still before his eyes, was the highest energy ever known to man, the creator of four- "fths of his noblest art, exercising vastly more attraction over the human mind than all the steam- engines and dynamos ever dreamed of; and yet this energy was unknown to the American mind. An American Virgin would never dare command; an American Venus would never dare exist.

The question, which to any plain American of the nineteenth century seemed as remote as it did to Adams, drew him almost violently to study, once it was posed; and on this point Langleys were as useless as though they were Herbert Spencers6 or dynamos. The idea survived only as art. There one turned as naturally as though the artist were himself a woman. Adams began to ponder, asking himself whether he knew of any American artist who had ever insisted on the power of sex, as every classic had always done; but he could think only of Walt Whitman; Bret Harte,7 as far as the maga- zines would let him venture; and one or two paint ers, for the `esh- tones. All the rest had used sex for sentiment, never for force; to them, Eve was a tender `ower, and Herodias8 an unfeminine horror. American art, like the American language and American education, was as far as pos si ble sexless.9 Society regarded this victory over sex as its greatest triumph, and the histo- rian readily admitted it, since the moral issue, for the moment, did not con- cern one who was studying the relations of unmoral force. He cared nothing for the sex of the dynamo until he could mea sure its energy.

Vaguely seeking a clue, he wandered through the art exhibit, and, in his stroll, stopped almost every day before St. Gaudens’s1 General Sherman, which had been given the central post of honor. St. Gaudens himself was in Paris, putting on the work his usual interminable last touches, and listening to the usual contradictory suggestions of brother sculptors. Of all the Ameri- can artists who gave to American art what ever life it breathed in the seven- ties, St. Gaudens was perhaps the most sympathetic, but certainly the most inarticulate. General Grant or Don Cameron2 had scarcely less instinct of

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3. American architect (1853–1906). William Mor- ris Hunt (1824–1879), painter, and his younger brother Richard Morris Hunt (1828–1895), archi- tect. Henry Hobson Richardson (1838–1886), architect. La Farge (1835–1910), muralist and maker of stained- glass win dows. 4. James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), American painter and lithographer. 5. Excessive (French).

6. A large wooded park on the outskirts of Paris. “Mont Parnasse”: a Paris Left Bank district fre- quented by artists and writers. 7. Apparently Adams’s adaptation of a passage in Gibbon’s French journal for February 21, 1763. 8. John Ruskin (1819–1900), En glish art critic and social reformer, famous for his highly imagi- native interpretations of great works of the Ital- ian Re nais sance.

rhe toric than he. All the others— the Hunts, Richardson, John La Farge, Stanford White3— were exuberant; only St. Gaudens could never discuss or dilate on an emotion, or suggest artistic arguments for giving to his work the forms that he felt. He never laid down the law, or affected the despot, or became brutalized like Whistler4 by the brutalities of his world. He required no incense; he was no egoist; his simplicity of thought was excessive; he could not imitate, or give any form but his own to the creations of his hand. No one felt more strongly than he the strength of other men, but the idea that they could affect him never stirred an image in his mind.

This summer his health was poor and his spirits were low. For such a tem- per, Adams was not the best companion, since his own gaiety was not folle;5 but he risked going now and then to the studio on Mont Parnasse to draw him out for a stroll in the Bois de Boulogne,6 or dinner as pleased his moods, and in return St. Gaudens sometimes let Adams go about in his com pany.

Once St. Gaudens took him down to Amiens, with a party of Frenchmen, to see the cathedral. Not until they found themselves actually studying the sculpture of the western portal, did it dawn on Adams’s mind that, for his purposes, St. Gaudens on the spot had more interest to him than the cathe- dral itself. Great men before great monuments express great truths, provided they are not taken too solemnly. Adams never tired of quoting the supreme phrase of his idol Gibbon, before the Gothic cathedrals: “I darted a contemp- tuous look on the stately monuments of superstition.”7 Even in the foot- notes of his history, Gibbon had never inserted a bit of humor more human than this, and one would have paid largely for a photo graph of the fat little historian, on the background of Notre Dame of Amiens, trying to persuade his readers— perhaps himself— that he was darting a contemptuous look on the stately monument, for which he felt in fact the re spect which every man of his vast study and active mind always feels before objects worthy of it; but besides the humor, one felt also the relation. Gibbon ignored the Virgin, because in 1789 religious monuments were out of fashion. In 1900 his remark sounded fresh and simple as the green "elds to ears that had heard a hun- dred years of other remarks, mostly no more fresh and certainly less simple. Without malice, one might "nd it more instructive than a whole lecture of Ruskin.8 One sees what one brings, and at that moment Gibbon brought the French Revolution. Ruskin brought reaction against the Revolution. St. Gaud- ens had passed beyond all. He liked the Stately monuments much more than he liked Gibbon or Ruskin; he loved their dignity; their unity; their scale; their lines; their lights and shadows; their decorative sculpture; but he was even less conscious than they of the force that created it all— the Virgin, the Woman—by whose genius “the stately monuments of superstition” were built, through which she was expressed. He would have seen more meaning

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9. Egyptian earth- mother goddess. Adams vis- ited Edfu, the site of the best- preserved temple in Egypt, in 1872–73 and in 1893. 1. A pious French king (1423–1483) who often disguised himself as a pilgrim and wore an old felt hat decorated with the lead statuette of a saint. 2. Italian sculptor and goldsmith (1500–1571), author of a famous autobiography. 3. Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), 17th- century Flemish painter. Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475– 1564), Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and

poet of the High Re nais sance. Both are known for their exceptional renderings of the human body. 4. Cnidos, or Cnidus, is an ancient city in Asia Minor, site of the most famous of the statues of Aphrodite by Praxiteles (c. 370–330 b.c.e.); only a copy survives, in the Vatican. 5. Arnold’s poem “Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse” (1855) invokes the Virgin Mary in mourning the loss of faith formerly held by ascetic Carthusian monks.

in Isis9 with the cow’s horns, at Edfoo, who expressed the same thought. The art remained, but the energy was lost even upon the artist.

Yet in mind and person St. Gaudens was a survival of the 1500s; he bore the stamp of the Re nais sance, and should have carried an image of the Vir- gin round his neck, or stuck in his hat, like Louis XI.1 In mere time he was a lost soul that had strayed by chance into the twentieth century, and for- gotten where it came from. He writhed and cursed at his ignorance, much as Adams did at his own, but in the opposite sense. St. Gaudens was a child of Benvenuto Cellini,2 smothered in an American cradle. Adams was a quin- tessence of Boston, devoured by curiosity to think like Benvenuto. St. Gaud- ens’s art was starved from birth, and Adams’s instinct was blighted from babyhood. Each had but half of a nature, and when they came together before the Virgin of Amiens they ought both to have felt in her the force that made them one; but it was not so. To Adams she became more than ever a channel of force; to St. Gaudens she remained as before a channel of taste.

For a symbol of power St. Gaudens instinctively preferred the horse, as was plain in his horse and Victory of the Sherman monument. Doubtless Sherman also felt it so. The attitude was so American that, for at least forty years, Adams had never realized that any other could be in sound taste. How many years had he taken to admit a notion of what Michael Angelo and Rubens3 were driving at? He could not say; but he knew that only since 1895 had he begun to feel the Virgin or Venus as force, and not everywhere even so. At Chartres— perhaps at Lourdes— possibly at Cnidos4 if one could still "nd there the divinely naked Aphrodite of Praxiteles— but other wise one must look for force to the goddesses of Indian my thol ogy. The idea died out long ago in the German and En glish stock. St. Gaudens at Amiens was hardly less sensitive to the force of the female energy than Matthew Arnold at the Grande Chartreuse.5 Neither of them felt goddesses as power— only as re`ected emotion, human expression, beauty, purity, taste, scarcely even as sympathy. They felt a railway train as power; yet they, and all other artists, constantly complained that the power embodied in a railway train could never be embodied in art. All the steam in the world could not, like the Vir- gin, build Chartres.

Yet in mechanics, what ever the mechanicians might think, both energies acted as interchangeable forces on man, and by action on man all known force may be mea sured. Indeed, few men of science mea sured force in any other way. After once admitting that a straight line was the shortest distance between two points, no serious mathematician cared to deny anything that suited his con ve nience, and rejected no symbol, unproved or unproveable,

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6. Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), French phi los o- pher. Prob ably Zeno of Citium (c. 366–264 b.c.e.), Greek phi los o pher. René Descartes (1596–1650), French phi los o pher. Aquinas (1225?–1274), Italian phi los o pher and theologian

who is the subject of the last chapter of Adams’s Mont- Saint- Michel and Chartres. Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533–1592), French essayist and skeptical phi los o pher.

that helped him to accomplish work. The symbol was force, as a compass- needle or a triangle was force, as the mechanist might prove by losing it, and nothing could be gained by ignoring their value. Symbol or energy, the Virgin had acted as the greatest force the Western world ever felt, and had drawn man’s activities to herself more strongly than any other power, natu- ral or super natu ral, had ever done; the historian’s business was to follow the track of the energy; to "nd where it came from and where it went to; its com- plex source and shifting channels; its values, equivalents, conversions. It could scarcely be more complex than radium; it could hardly be de`ected, diverted, polarized, absorbed more perplexingly than other radiant matter. Adams knew nothing about any of them, but as a mathematical prob lem of in`uence on human pro gress, though all were occult, all reacted on his mind, and he rather inclined to think the Virgin easiest to handle.

The pursuit turned out to be long and tortuous, leading at last into the vast forests of scholastic science. From Zeno to Descartes, hand in hand with Thomas Aquinas, Montaigne, and Pascal,6 one stumbled as stupidly as though one were still a German student of 1860. Only with the instinct of despair could one force one’s self into this old thicket of ignorance after hav- ing been repulsed at a score of entrances more promising and more popu- lar. Thus far, no path had led anywhere, unless perhaps to an exceedingly modest living. Forty- "ve years of study had proved to be quite futile for the pursuit of power; one controlled no more force in 1900 than in 1850, although the amount of force controlled by society had enormously increased. The secret of education still hid itself somewhere behind ignorance, and one fumbled over it as feebly as ever. In such labyrinths, the staff is a force almost more necessary than the legs; the pen becomes a sort of blind- man’s dog, to keep him from falling into the gutters. The pen works for itself, and acts like a hand, modelling the plastic material over and over again to the form that suits it best. The form is never arbitrary, but is a sort of growth like crystallization, as any artist knows too well; for often the pencil or pen runs into side- paths and shapelessness, loses its relations, stops or is bogged. Then it has to return on its trail, and recover, if it can, its line of force. The result of a year’s work depends more on what is struck out than on what is left in; on the sequence of the main lines of thought, than on their play or variety. Compelled once more to lean heavi ly on this support, Adams covered more thousands of pages with "gures as formal as though they were algebra, labo- riously striking out, altering, burning, experimenting, until the year had expired, the Exposition had long been closed, and winter drawing to its end, before he sailed from Cherbourg, on January 19, 1901, for home.

1907, 1918

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CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON 1840–1894

By the time of her death, in 1894, Constance Fenimore Woolson had published four novels and over "fty short stories, and she had acquired a reputation among the "rst rank of American writers of literary realism. Over the course of her life, she had traveled to and written about a variety of American regions— from the upper Midwest to the South— and become an observer, like her friend Henry James, of Americans abroad in Eu rope. Few of her contemporaries matched her range or enjoyed the consistency of her success.

Woolson was born in 1840 in New Hampshire, but she was raised in Cleveland, Ohio, where her family relocated when Woolson was still an infant. Her father par- ticipated in the growth of the industrial Midwest as a partner in a foundry that man- ufactured stoves, and Woolson had the opportunity to accompany him on business travel throughout the region. She was educated in the Cleveland Female Seminary, and then spent a year in New York at a "nishing school.

In 1869 Woolson’s father died, a loss that continued to reverberate throughout her life. In the aftermath, Woolson began writing stories and sketches, seeking a means to support herself and her mother. In doing so, she began to prominently feature her middle name— a token of her familial connection to James Fenimore Cooper, her granduncle. By 1870, she was publishing her work in leading maga- zines such as Harper’s and Putnam’s. Soon after, she began traveling to the South, spending winters in Florida, where she sought a climate more conducive to her mother’s health. Her "rst collection of stories, Castle Nowhere: Lake Country Sketches (1875), brought together her writing about the upper Midwest, and Rod- man the Keeper: Southern Sketches (1880) focused on the American South. Though she would publish four novels, all "rst serialized in Harper’s, most readers "nd her greatest achievements in these short stories, where her abilities as a careful observer of the subtleties of place and mind come to the fore.

Woolson continued to travel widely in the South until the death of her mother in 1879. Crushed by the loss, she left for Eu rope, where she would live for the remain- der of her life, spending time in Eng land, France, Switzerland, and especially Italy. During one of her Italian stays she met Henry James, and the two began a close, enduring friendship. James read and commented on Woolson’s work, and he clearly regarded her as belonging to a small set of literary equals. Unfortunately for their biographers, the two made a pact to burn their mutual correspondence. As she trav- eled, Woolson continued to manage her literary career through a network of Ameri- can editors, and her writing was well received. She maintained a remarkably productive career even as she faced increasing health prob lems of her own: the grad- ual loss of her hearing, bouts of intense depression, and a series of other illnesses in the early 1890s. She was living in Venice in early 1894 when she suffered a severe case of in`uenza. She was found dead on the snowy pavement beneath the open win dow of her third- story apartment. Though her family was convinced that the fall was accidental, most biographers believe other wise.

The genesis of “Rodman the Keeper” came from Woolson’s visit to a Union cem- etery in Salisbury, North Carolina, near Asheville. The title character is a veteran charged with overseeing the graves of comrades buried on the site of a Confederate prison. Rodman interacts both with unrepentant Southerners clinging to vestiges of their gentility and with an African American population that regards the Union

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1. “Rodman the Keeper” was "rst published in March 1877 in the Atlantic Monthly, the source of this text.

2. The bombardment of the federal Fort Sumter in South Carolina in April 1861 is generally rec- ognized as the beginning of the Civil War.

graves as sacrosanct. Like many stories set in the South during this time, Woolson’s is deeply concerned with the potential of reconciliation between North and South, as well as the former slaves whose fate remained uncertain. When it was later pub- lished in book form, a reviewer called the story “one of the few artistically perfect tales that the history of the Civil War has inspired.”

Rodman the Keeper1

“Keeper of what? Keeper of the dead. Well, it is easier to keep the dead than the living; and as for the gloom of the thing, the living among whom I have been lately were not a hilarious set.”

John Rodman sat in the door- way and looked out over his domain. The little cottage behind him was empty of life save himself alone. In one room the slender appointments provided by government for the keeper, who being still alive must sleep and eat, made the bareness doubly bare; in the other the desk and the great ledgers, the ink and pens, the register, the loud- ticking clock on the wall, and the `ag folded on a shelf, were all for the kept, whose names, in hastily written, blotted rolls of manuscript, were waiting to be transcribed in the new red- bound ledgers in the keeper’s best handwriting day by day, while the clock was to tell him the hour when the `ag must rise over the mounds where reposed the bodies of fourteen thousand United States soldiers,— who had languished where once stood the prison- pens, on the opposite slopes now fair and peaceful in the sunset; who had fallen by the way in long marches to and fro under the burning sun; who had fought and died on the many battle- "elds that reddened the beautiful State, stretching from the peaks of the marble mountains in the smoky west down to the sea- islands of the ocean border. The last rim of the sun’s red ball had sunk below the horizon line, and the western sky glowed with deep rose- color, which faded away above into pink, into the salmon- tint, into shades of that far- away heavenly emerald which the brush of the earthly artist can never reproduce, but which is found sometimes in the iridescent heart of the opal. The small town, a mile distant, stood turning its back on the cemetery; but the keeper could see the pleasant, rambling old mansions, each with its rose- garden and neglected outlying "elds, the empty negro quarters falling into ruin, and every thing just as it stood when on that April morning the "rst gun was "red on Sumter;2 apparently not a nail added, not a brushful of paint applied, not a fallen brick replaced, or latch or lock repaired. The keeper had noted these things as he strolled through the town, but not with surprise; for he had seen the South in its "rst estate, when, fresh, strong, and "red with enthusiasm, he too had marched away from his village home with the colors `ying above and the girls waving their handkerchiefs behind, as the regiment, a thousand strong, "led down the dusty road. That regiment, a weak, scarred two hundred, came back a year later with lagging step and colors tattered and scorched, and the girls could

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3. Simple cracker or biscuit that was a staple food for soldiers. 4. Nickname for a Confederate solder. 5. Cf. Luke 23:31— “For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?”

6. An allusion to Psalm 121, which begins: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.” 7. In bulk.

not wave their handkerchiefs, wet and sodden with tears. But the keeper, his wound healed, had gone again; and he had seen with his New Eng land eyes the magni"cence and the carelessness of the South, her splendor and negligence, her wealth and thriftlessness, as through Virginia and the fair Carolinas, across Georgia and into sunny Florida, he had marched month by month, "rst a lieutenant, then captain, and " nally major and col o nel, as death mowed down those above him, and he and his good conduct were left; everywhere magni"cence went hand in hand with neglect, and he had said so as chance now and then threw a conversation in his path.

“We have no such shiftless ways,” he would remark, after he had furtively supplied his prisoner with hard- tack3 and coffee.

“And no such grand ones either,” Johnny Reb4 would reply, if he was a man of spirit; and generally he was.

The Yankee, forced to acknowledge the truth of this statement, quali"ed it by observing that he would rather have more thrift with a little less grandeur; whereupon the other answered that he would not; and there the conversation rested. So now ex- Colonel Rodman, keeper of the national cemetery, viewed the little town in its second estate with philosophic eyes. He no longer felt warming within him his early temptations to put in the missing nail or pick up the rusting axe; “for, if they did these things in a green tree, what will they do in a dry?” he thought.5 “It is part of a great prob lem now working itself out; I am not here to tend the living, but the dead.”

Whereupon, as he walked among the long mounds, a voice seemed to rise from the still ranks below: “While ye have time, do good to men,” it said. “Behold, we are beyond your care.” But the keeper did not heed.

This still eve ning in early February he looked out over the level waste. The little town stood in the lowlands; there were no hills from whence cometh help,6— calm heights that lift the soul above earth and its cares; no river to lead the aspirations of the children outward towards the great sea. Every- thing was monotonous, and the only spirit that rose above the waste was a bitterness for the gained and sorrow for the lost cause. The keeper was the only man whose presence personated the former in their sight, and upon him therefore, as representative, the bitterness fell, not in words, but in averted looks, in sudden silences when he approached, in withdrawals and avoidance, until he lived and moved in a vacuum; wherever he went there was presently no one save himself; the very shop- keeper who sold him sugar seemed turned into a man of wood, and took his money reluctantly, although the shilling gained stood perhaps for that day’s family dinner. So Rodman withdrew himself, and came and went among them no more; the broad acres of his domain gave him as much exercise as his shattered ankle could bear; he ordered his few supplies by the quantity,7 and began the life of a solitary, his island marked out by the massive granite wall with which the United States government has carefully surrounded those sad Southern cemeteries of hers; sad, not so much from the number of the mounds representing youth and strength cut off in their bloom, for that is but the fortune of war, as for

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8. In Exodus 2, Moses declares, “I have been a stranger in a strange land.”

9. Warship.

the complete isolation which marks them. “Strangers in a strange land”8 is the thought of all who, coming and going to and from Florida, turn aside here and there to stand for a moment among the closely ranged graves which seem already a part of the past, that near past which in our rushing Ameri- can life is even now so far away. The government work was completed before the keeper came; the lines of the trenches were de"ned by low granite cop- ings, and the comparatively few single mounds were headed by trim little white boards bearing generally the word “unknown,” but here and there a name and an age, in most cases a boy from some far- away Northern State; “twenty- one,” “twenty- two,” said the inscriptions; the dates were those dark years among the sixties, mea sured now more than by anything else in the number of maidens widowed in heart, and women widowed indeed, who sit still and remember, while the world rushes by. At sunrise the keeper ran up the stars and stripes, and so precise were his ideas of the accessories belong- ing to the place that from his own small store of money he had taken enough, by stinting himself, to buy a second ̀ ag for stormy weather, so that, rain or not, the colors should `oat over the dead. This was not patriotism so- called, or rather miscalled, it was not sentimental fancy, it was not zeal or triumph; it was simply a sense of the "tness of things, a conscientious- ness which had in it nothing of religion, unless indeed a man’s endeavor to live up to his own ideal of his duty be a religion. The same feeling led the keeper to spend hours in copying the rolls. “John Andrew Warren, Com pany G, Eighth New Hampshire Infantry,” he repeated, as he slowly wrote the name, giving “John Andrew” clear, bold capitals and a lettering impossible to mistake; “died August 15, 1863, aged twenty- two years. He came from the prison- pen yonder, and lies somewhere in those trenches, I suppose. Now then, John Andrew, don’t fancy I am sorrowing for you; no doubt you are better off than I am at this very moment. But none the less, John Andrew, shall pen, ink, and hand do their duty to you. For that I am here.”

In"nite pains and labor went into these rec ords of the dead; one hair’s- breadth error, and the whole page was replaced by a new one. The same spirit kept the grass carefully away from the low coping of the trenches, kept the graveled paths smooth and the mounds green, and the bare little cottage neat as a man- of- war;9 when the keeper cooked his dinner, the door towards the east, where the dead lay, was scrupulously closed, nor was it opened until every thing was in perfect order again. At sunset the `ag was lowered, and then it was the keeper’s habit to walk slowly up and down the path until the shadows veiled the mounds on each side, and there was nothing save the peaceful green of earth. “So time will efface our little lives and sorrows,” he mused, “and we shall be as nothing in the indistinguishable past.” Yet none the less did he ful"ll the duties of every day and hour with exactness. “At least they shall not say that I was lacking,” he murmured to himself as he thought vaguely of the future beyond these graves. Who “they” were, it would have troubled him to formulate, since he was one of the many sons whom New Eng land in this generation sends forth with a belief composed entirely of negatives. As the season advanced, he worked all day in the sunshine. “My garden looks well,” he said. “I like this cemetery because it is the original

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1. The Seven Days Battle—or Seven Days Campaign— was a series of six battles fought over the week of June 25 to July 1, 1862, east of

Richmond, Virginia. 2. Union general (1815–1862) who died at the Battle of Chantilly.

resting- place of the dead who lie beneath. They were not brought here from distant places, gathered up by contract, numbered and described like so much merchandise; their "rst repose has not been broken, their peace has been undisturbed. Hasty burials the prison authorities gave them; the thin, starved bodies were tumbled into the trenches by men almost as starved, for the whole State went hungry in those dark days. There were not many prayers, no tears, as the dead- carts went the rounds. But the prayers had been said, and the tears had fallen, while the poor fellows were still alive in the pens yonder; and when at last death came, it was like a release. They suffered long; and I for one believe that therefore shall their rest be long,— long and sweet.”

After a time began the rain, the soft, per sis tent, gray rain of the Southern lowlands, and he stayed within and copied another thousand names into the ledger. He would not allow himself the companionship of a dog lest the crea- ture should bark at night and disturb the quiet. There was no one to hear save himself, and it would have been a friendly sound as he lay awake on his narrow iron bed, but it seemed to him against the spirit of the place. He would not smoke, although he had the soldier’s fondness for a pipe. Many a dreary eve ning, beneath a hastily built shelter of boughs, when the rain poured down and every thing was comfortless, he had found solace in the curling smoke; but now it seemed to him that it would be incongruous, and at times he almost felt as if it would be sel"sh too. “They cannot smoke, you know, down there under the wet grass,” he thought, as standing at the win dow he looked towards the ranks of the mounds stretching across the eastern end from side to side; “my parade- ground,” he called it. And then he would smile at his own fancies, draw the curtain to, shut out the rain and the night, light his lamp, and go to work on the ledgers again. Some of the names lingered in his memory; he felt as if he had known the men who bore them, as if they had been boys together and were friends even now although separated for a time. “James Marvin, Com pany B, Fifth Maine. The Fifth Maine was in the seven days’ battle.1 I say, do you remember that retreat down the Quaker church road, and the way Phil Kearney2 held the rearguard "rm?” And over the whole seven days he wandered with his mute friend, who remembered every thing and every body in the most satisfactory way. One of the little head- boards in the parade- ground attracted him peculiarly because the name inscribed was his own: “— — Rodman, Com pany A, One Hundred and Sixth New York.”

“I remember that regiment; it came from the extreme northern part of the State; Blank Rodman must have melted down here, coming as he did from the half- arctic region along the St. Lawrence. I won der what he thought of the "rst hot day, say in South Carolina, along those simmering rice- "elds.” He grew into the habit of pausing for a moment by the side of this grave every morning and eve ning. “Blank Rodman. It might easily have been John. And then, where should I be?”

But Blank Rodman remained silent, and the keeper, after pulling up a weed or two and trimming the grass over his relative, went off to his duties

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3. That is, “master,” used as a term of re spect.

again. “I am convinced that Blank is a relative,” he said to himself; “distant, perhaps, but still a kinsman.”

One April day the heat was almost insupportable; but the sun’s rays were not those brazen beams that sometimes in Northern cities burn the air and scorch the pavements to a white heat; rather were they soft and still; the moist earth exhaled her richness, not a leaf stirred, and the whole level country seemed sitting in a hot vapor- bath. In the early dawn the keeper had per- formed his outdoor tasks, but all day he remained almost without stirring in his chair between two win dows, striving to exist. At high noon out came a little black bringing his supplies from the town, whistling and shuf`ing along, gay as a lark; the keeper watched him coming slowly down the white road, loitering by the way in the hot blaze, stopping to turn a somersault or two, to dangle over a bridge rail, to execute vari ous impromptu capers all by himself. He reached the gate at last entered, and having come all the way up the path in a hornpipe step, he set down his basket at the door to indulge in one long and "nal double- shuf`e before knocking. “Stop that!” said the keeper through the closed blinds. The little darkey darted back; but as nothing further came out of the win dow,— a boot, for instance, or some other stray missile,—he took courage, showed his ivories, and drew near again. “Do you suppose I am going to have you stirring up the heat in that way?” demanded the keeper.

The little black grinned, but made no reply, unless smoothing the hot white sand with his black toes could be construed as such; he now removed his rimless hat and made a bow.

“Is it, or is it not warm?” asked the keeper, as a naturalist might inquire of a salamander, not referring to his own so much as to the salamander’s ideas on the subject.

“Dunno, mars’,”3 replied the little black. “How do you feel?” “ ’Spects I feel all right, mars’.” The keeper gave up the investigation, and presented to the salamander a

nickel cent. “I suppose there is no such thing as a cool spring in all this melt- ing country,” he said.

But the salamander indicated with his thumb a clump of trees on the green plain north of the cemetery. “Ole Mars’ Ward’s place,— cole spring dah.” He then departed, breaking into a run after he had passed the gate, his ample mouth watering at the thought of a certain chunk of taffy at the mer- cantile establishment kept by aunt Dinah in a corner of her one-roomed cabin. At sunset the keeper went thirstily out with a tin pail on his arm, in search of the cold spring. “If it could only be like the spring down under the rocks where I used to drink when I was a boy!” he thought. He had never walked in that direction before. Indeed, now that he had abandoned the town, he seldom went beyond the walls of the cemetery. An old road led across to the clump of trees, through "elds run to waste, and following it he came to the place, a deserted house with tumble- down fences and over- grown garden, the out- buildings indicating that once upon a time there were many servants and a prosperous master. The house was of wood, large on the ground, with encircling piazzas; across the front door rough bars had been nailed, and the closed blinds were protected in the same manner; from long

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4. Short for Pompey, a common slave name. Like many slave names, Pompey contained a classical ref- erence, in this case to the Roman statesman Pompey the Great (106–48 b.c.e.).

want of paint the clapboards were gray and mossy, and the `oor of the piazza had fallen in here and there from decay. The keeper deci ded that his ceme- tery was a much more cheerful place than this, and then he looked around for the spring. Behind the house the ground sloped down; it must be there. He went around and came suddenly upon a man lying on an old rug outside of a back door. “Excuse me. I thought nobody lived here,” he said.

“Nobody does,” replied the man; “I am not much of a body, am I?” His left arm was gone, and his face was thin and worn with long illness; he

closed his eyes after speaking, as though the few words had exhausted him. “I came for water from a cold spring you have here, somewhere,” pursued

the keeper, contemplating the wreck before him with the interest of one who has himself been severely wounded and knows the long, weary pain. The man waved his hand towards the slope without unclosing his eyes, and Rod- man went off with his pail and found a little shady hollow, once curbed and paved with white pebbles, but now neglected, like all the place. The water was cold, however, deliciously cold; he "lled his pail and thought that per- haps after all he would exert himself to make coffee, now that the sun was down; it would taste better made of this cold water. When he came up the slope the man’s eyes were open.

“Have some water?” asked Rodman. “Yes; there’s a gourd inside.” The keeper entered, and found himself in a large, bare room; in one corner

was some straw covered with an old counterpane, in another a table and chair; a kettle hung in the deep "replace, and a few dishes stood on a shelf; by the door on a nail hung a gourd; he "lled it and gave it to the host of this desolate abode. The man drank with eagerness. “Pomp4 has gone to town,” he said, “and I could not get down to the spring to- day, I have had so much pain.”

“And when will Pomp return?” “He should be here now; he is very late to- night.” “Can I get you anything?” “No, thank you; he will soon be here.” The keeper looked out over the waste; there was no one in sight. He was

not a man of any especial kindliness,—he had himself been too hardly treated in life for that,— but he could not "nd it in his heart to leave this helpless creature all alone with night so near. So he sat down on the door- step. “I will rest awhile,” he said, not asking but announcing it. The man had turned away and closed his eyes again, and they both remained silent, busy with their own thoughts; for each had recognized the ex- soldier, Northern and Southern, in portions of the old uniforms, and in the accent. The war and its memories were still very near to the maimed, poverty- stricken Con- federate; and the other knew that they were, and did not obtrude himself.

Twilight fell, and no one came. “Let me get you something,” said Rodman; for the face looked ghastly as

the fever abated. The other refused. Darkness came; still, no one. “Look here,” said Rodman, rising; “I have been wounded myself, was in

hospital for months; I know how you feel,— you must have food; a cup of tea, now, and a slice of toast, brown and thin.”

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“I have not tasted tea or wheaten bread for weeks,” answered the man; his voice died off into a wail, as though feebleness and pain had drawn the cry from him in spite of himself. Rodman lighted a match; there was no candle, only a piece of pitch- pine stuck in an iron socket on the wall; he set "re to this primitive torch and looked around.

“ There is nothing there,” said the man outside, making an effort to speak carelessly; “my servant went to town for supplies. Do not trou ble yourself to wait; he will come presently, and— and— I want nothing.”

But Rodman saw through proud poverty’s lie; he knew that irregular qua- vering of the voice, and that trembling of the hand; the poor fellow had but one to tremble. He continued his search; but the bare room gave back noth- ing, not a crumb.

“Well, if you are not hungry,” he said briskly, “I am, hungry as a bear; and I’ll tell you what I am going to do. I live not far from here, and I live all alone too, I haven’t a servant as you have; let me take supper here with you, just for a change, and if your servant comes, so much the better, he can wait upon us. I’ll run over and bring back the things.”

He was gone without waiting for reply; the shattered ankle made good time over the waste, and soon returned, limping a little but bravely hasting, while on a tray came the keeper’s best supplies, Irish potatoes, corned beef, wheaten bread, butter, and coffee,— for he would not eat the hot biscuits, the corn- cake, the bacon and hominy of the country, and constantly made little New Eng land meals for himself in his prejudiced little kitchen. The pine torch `ared in the door- way; a breeze had come down from the far mountains and cooled the air. Rodman kindled a "re on the cavernous hearth, "lled the kettle, found a saucepan, and commenced operations, while the other lay outside and watched every movement in the lighted room.

“All ready; let me help you in. Here we are now; fried potatoes, cold beef, mustard, toast, butter, and tea. Eat, man; and the next time I am laid up, you shall come over and cook for me.”

Hunger conquered, and the other ate, ate as he had not eaten for months. As he was "nishing a second cup of tea, a slow step came around the house; it was the missing Pomp, an old negro, bent and shriveled, who carried a bag of meal and some bacon in his basket. “That is what they live on,” thought the keeper.

He took leave without more words. “I suppose now I can be allowed to go home in peace,” he grumbled to conscience. The negro followed him across what was once the lawn. “Fin’ Mars’ Ward mighty low,” he said apologeti- cally, as he swung open the gate which still hung between its posts, although the fence was down, “but I hurred an’ hurred as fas’ as I could; it’s mighty fur to de town. Proud to see you, sah; hope you’ll come again. Fine fambly, de Wards, sah, befo’ de war.”

“How long has he been in this state?” asked the keeper. “Ever sence one ob de las’ battles, sah; but he’s worse sence we come yer,

’bout a mont’ back.” “Who owns the house? Is there no one to see to him? has he no friends?” “House b’long to Mars’ Ward’s uncle; "ne place once, befo’ de war; he’s

dead now, and dah’s nobuddy but Miss Bettina, an’ she’s gone off somewhuz. Propah place, sah, fur Mars’ Ward,— own uncle’s house,” said the old slave, loyally striving to maintain the family dignity even then.

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5. A derogatory term for Northerners who sought their fortunes in the South after the Civil War.

“Are there no better rooms,—no furniture?” “Sartin; but— but Miss Bettina, she took de keys; she didn’t know we was

comin’ ”— “You had better send for Miss Bettina, I think,” said the keeper, starting

homeward with his tray, washing his hands, as it were, of any future respon- sibility in the affair.

The next day he worked in his garden, for clouds veiled the sun and exer- cise was pos si ble; but, nevertheless, he could not forget the white face on the old rug. “Pshaw!” he said to himself, “ haven’t I seen tumble- down old houses and battered human beings before this?”

At eve ning came a violent thunderstorm, and the splendor of the heavens was terrible. “We have chained you, mighty spirit,” thought the keeper as he watched the lightning, “and some time we shall learn the laws of the winds and foretell the storms; then, prayers will no more be offered in churches to alter the weather than they would be offered now to alter an eclipse. Yet back of the lightning and the wind lies the power of the great Creator, just the same.”

But still, into his musings crept, with shadowy per sis tence, the white face on the rug.

“Nonsense!” he exclaimed, “if white faces are going around as ghosts, how about the fourteen thousand white faces that went under the sod down yon- der? If they could arise and walk, the whole State would be "lled and no more carpet- baggers5 needed.” So, having balanced the one with the four- teen thousand, he went to bed.

Daylight brought rain,— still, soft, gray rain; the next morning showed the same, and the third likewise, the nights keeping up their part with low- down clouds and steady pattering on the roof. “If there was a river here, we should have a ̀ ood,” thought the keeper, drumming idly on his win dow- pane. Memory brought back the steep New Eng land hill-sides shedding their rain into the brooks, which grew in a night to torrents and "lled the rivers so that they over`owed their banks; then, suddenly, an old house in a sunken corner of a waste rose before his eyes, and he seemed to see the rain drop- ping from a moldy ceiling on the straw where a white face lay.

“ Really, I have nothing else to do, you know,” he remarked in an apol o- getic way to himself, as he and his umbrella went along the old road; and he repeated the remark as he entered the room where the man lay, just as he had fancied, on the damp straw.

“The weather is unpleasant,” said the man. “Pomp, bring a chair.” Pomp brought one, the only one, and the visitor sat down. A "re smol-

dered on the hearth and puffed out acrid smoke now and then, as if the rain had clogged the soot in the long- neglected chimney; from the streaked ceil- ing oozing drops fell with a dull splash into little pools on the decayed `oor; the door would not close; the broken panes were stopped with rags, as if the old servant had tried to keep out the damp; in the ashes a corn- cake was baking.

“I am afraid you have not been so well during these long rainy days,” said the keeper, scanning the face on the straw.

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6. That is, a Union soldier.

“My old enemy, rheumatism,” answered the man; “the "rst sunshine will drive it away.”

They talked awhile, or rather the keeper talked, for the other seemed hardly able to speak, as the waves of pain swept over him; then the visitor went outside and called Pomp out. “Is there any one to help him, or not?” he asked impatiently.

“Fine fambly, befo’ de war,” began Pomp. “Never mind all that; is there anyone to help him now,— yes or no?” “No,” said the old black with a burst of despairing truthfulness; “Miss

Bettina, she’s as poor as Mars’ Ward, an’ dere’s no one else. He’s had noth’n but hard corn- cake for three days, an’ he can’t swaller it no more.”

The next morning saw Ward De Rosset lying on the white pallet in the keeper’s cottage, and old Pomp, marveling at the cleanliness all around him, installed as nurse. A strange asylum for a Confederate soldier, was it not? But he knew nothing of the change, which he would have fought with his last breath if consciousness had remained; returning fever, however, had absorbed his senses, and then it was that the keeper and the slave had borne him slowly across the waste, resting many times, but accomplishing the jour- ney at last.

That eve ning John Rodman, strolling to and fro in the dusky twilight, paused alongside of the other Rodman. “I do not want him here, and that is the plain truth,” he said, pursuing the current of his thoughts. “He "lls the house; he and Pomp together disturb all my ways. He’ll be ready to `ing a brick at me too, when his senses come back; small thanks shall I have for lying on the `oor, giving up all my comforts, and, what is more, riding over the spirit of the place with a vengeance!” He threw himself down on the grass beside the mound and lay looking up towards the stars, which were coming out, one by one, in the deep blue of the Southern night. “With a vengeance, did I say? That is it exactly,— the vengeance of kindness. The poor fellow has suffered horribly in body and in estate, and now ironical Fortune throws him in my way as if saying, ‘Let us see how far your sel"shness will yield.’ This is not a question of magnanimity; there is no magnanimity about it, for the war is over, and you Northerners have gained every point for which you fought; this is merely a question between man and man; it would be the same if the sufferer was a poor Federal,6 one of the carpet- baggers, whom you despise so, for instance, or a pagan Chinaman. And Fortune is right; don’t you think so, Blank Rodman? I put it to you, now, to one who has suf- fered the extreme rigor of the other side,— those prison- pens yonder.”

Whereupon Blank Rodman answered that he had fought for a great cause and that he knew it, although a plain man and not given to speech- making; he was not one of those who had sat safely at home all through the war, and now belittled it and made light of its issues. ( Here a murmur came up from the long line of the trenches, as though all the dead had cried out.) But now the points for which he had fought being gained, and strife ended, it was the plain duty of every man to encourage peace. For his part he bore no malice; he was glad the poor Confederate was up in the cottage, and he did not think any the less of the keeper for bringing him there. He would like to add

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7. “ Woman often varies / The fool is he who trusts her; / A woman is often / A feather in the wind” (French). These lines are sung by the French monarch King Francis I in Victor Hugo’s

play The King Amuses Himself (1832). The "rst couplet, in par tic u lar, is frequently attributed to Francis I (1494–1547). 8. Couplet.

that he thought more of him; but he was sorry to say that he was well aware what an effort it was, and how almost grudgingly the charity began.

If Blank Rodman did not say this, at least the keeper imagined that he did. “That is what he would have said,” he thought. “I am glad you do not object,” he added, pretending to himself that he had not noticed the rest of the remark.

“We do not object to the brave soldier who honestly fought for his cause, even though he fought on the other side,” answered Blank Rodman for the whole fourteen thousand. “But never let a coward, a double- face, or a ̀ ippant- tongued idler walk over our heads. It would make us rise in our graves!”

And the keeper seemed to see a shadowy pageant sweep by,— gaunt soldiers with white faces, arming anew against the subtle product of peace: men who said, “It was nothing! Behold, we saw it with our eyes!”— stay- at- home eyes.

The third day the fever abated, and Ward De Rosset noticed his surround- ings. Old Pomp acknowledged that he had been moved, but veiled the local- ity: “To a frien’s house, Mars’ Ward.”

“But I have no friends, now, Pomp,” said the weak voice. Pomp was very much amused at the absurdity of this. “No frien’s! Mars’

Ward no friens’!” He was obliged to go out of the room to hide his laughter. The sick man lay feebly thinking that the bed was cool and fresh, and the closed green blinds pleasant; his thin "n gers stroked the linen sheet, and his eyes wandered from object to object. The only thing that broke the rule of bare utility in the simple room was a square of white drawing- paper on the wall, upon which was inscribed in ornamental text the following verse:—

“Toujours femme varie, Bien fou qui s’y "e; Une femme souvent N’est qu’une plume au vent.”7

With the persistency of illness the eyes and mind of Ward De Rosset went over and over this distich;8 he knew something of French, but was unequal to the effort of translating; the rhymes alone caught his vagrant fancy. “Tou- jours femme varie,” he said to himself over and over again, and when the keeper entered, he said it to him.

“Certainly,” answered the keeper; “bien fou qui s’y "e. How do you "nd yourself, this morning?”

“I have not found myself at all, so far. Is this your house?” “Yes.” “Pomp told me I was in a friend’s house,” observed the sick man, vaguely. “Well, it isn’t an enemy’s. Had any breakfast? No? Better not talk, then.” He went to the detached shed which served for a kitchen, upset all Pomp’s

clumsy arrangements, and ordered him outside; then he set to work and pre- pared a delicate breakfast with his best skill. The sick man eagerly eyed the tray as he entered. “Better have your hands and face sponged off, I think,” said Rodman; and then he propped him up skillfully, and left him to his repast. The grass needed mowing on the parade- ground; he shouldered his

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scythe and started down the path, viciously kicking the gravel to and fro as he walked. “ Wasn’t solitude your principal idea, John Rodman, when you applied for this place?” he demanded of himself; “how much of it are you likely to have with sick men, and sick men’s servants, and so forth?”

The “and so forth,” thrown in as a rhetorical climax, turned into real ity and arrived bodily upon the scene,— a climax indeed; one after noon, return- ing late to the cottage, he found a girl sitting by the pallet,— a girl young and dimpled and dewy, one of the creamy roses of the South that, even in the bud, are richer in color and luxuriance than any Northern `ower. He saw her through the door, and paused; distressed old Pomp met him and beckoned him cautiously outside. “Miss Bettina,” he whispered gutturally, “she’s come back from somewhuz, an’ she’s awful mad ’cause Mars’ Ward’s here. I tole her all ’bout ’em,—de leaks an’ de rheumatiz an’ de hard corn- cake, but she done gone scole me; an’ Mars’ Ward, he know now whar he is, an’ he mad too.”

“Is the girl a fool?” said Rodman. He was just beginning to rally a little. He stalked into the room and confronted her. “I have the honor of addressing”—

“Miss Ward.” “And I am John Rodman, keeper of the national cemetery.” This she ignored entirely; it was as though he had said, “I am John Jones,

the coachman.” Coachmen were useful in their way; but their names were unimportant.

The keeper sat down and looked at his new visitor. The little creature fairly radiated scorn; her pretty head was thrown back, her eyes, dark brown fringed with long dark lashes, hardly deigned a glance; she spoke to him as though he was something to be paid and dismissed like any other mechanic.

“We are indebted to you for some days’ board, I believe, keeper, medicines, I presume, and general attendance; my cousin will be removed to- day to our own residence; I wish to pay now what he owes.”

The keeper saw that her dress was old and faded; the small black shawl had evidently been washed and many times mended; the old- fashioned knit- ted purse she held in her hand was lank with long famine.

“Very well,” he said, “if you choose to treat a kindness in that way, I consider "ve dollars a day none too much for the annoyance, expense, and trou ble I have suffered. Let me see; "ve days,—or is it six? Yes— thirty dollars, Miss Ward.”

He looked at her steadily; she `ushed; “The money will be sent to you,” she began haughtily; then, hesitatingly, “I must ask a little time”—

“Oh, Betty, Betty, you know you cannot pay it. Why try to disguise— But that does not excuse you for bringing me here,” said the sick man, turning towards his host with an attempt to speak "ercely, which ended in a falter- ing quaver.

All this time the old slave stood anxiously outside of the door; in the pauses they could hear his feet shuf`ing as he waited for the decision of his supe- riors. The keeper rose and threw open the blinds of the win dow that looked out on the distant parade- ground. “Bringing you here,” he repeated; “ here; that is my offense, is it? There they lie, fourteen thousand brave men and true. Could they come back to earth, they would be the "rst to pity and aid you, now that you are down. So would it be with you if the case were reversed; for a soldier is generous to a soldier. It was not your own heart that spoke

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9. Accursed; “anathema- maranatha” was used as an intensi"ed form of the word “anathema,” as both words appear together in the text of 1 Corinthians.

then; it was the small venom of a woman, that here, as everywhere through the South, is playing its rancorous part.”

The sick man gazed out through the win dow, seeing for the "rst time the far- spreading ranks of the dead. He was very weak, and the keeper’s words had touched him; his eyes were suffused with tears. But Miss Ward rose with a `ashing glance. She turned her back full upon the keeper and ignored his very existence. “I will take you home immediately, Ward,— this very eve ning,” she said.

“A nice comfortable place for a sick man,” commented the keeper, scorn- fully. “I am going out now, De Rosset, to prepare your supper; you had better have one good meal before you go.”

He dis appeared; but as he went he heard the sick man say, deprecatingly, “It isn’t very comfortable over at the old house now, indeed it isn’t, Betty; I suffered”— and the girl’s passionate outburst in reply. Then he closed his door and set to work.

When he returned, half an hour later, Ward was lying back exhausted on the pillows, and his cousin sat leaning her head upon her hand; she had been weeping, and she looked very desolate, he noticed, sitting there in what was to her an enemy’s country. Hunger is a strong master, however, especially when allied to weakness; and the sick man ate with eagerness.

“I must go back,” said the girl, rising. “A wagon will be sent out for you, Ward; Pomp will help you.”

But Ward had gained a little strength as well as obstinacy with the nour- ishing food. “Not to- night,” he said.

“Yes; to- night.” “But I cannot go to- night; you are unreasonable, Bettina. To- morrow will

do as well, if go I must.” “If go you must! You do not want to go, then—to go to our own home—

and with me”— Her voice broke; she turned towards the door. The keeper stepped forward: “This is all nonsense, Miss Ward,” he said,

“and you know it. Your cousin is in no state to be moved. Wait a week or two, and he can go in safety. But do not dare to offer me your money again; my kindness was to the soldier, not to the man, and as such he can accept it. Come out and see him as often as you please. I shall not intrude upon you. Pomp, take the lady home.”

And the lady went. Then began a remarkable existence for the four: a Confederate soldier

lying ill in the keeper’s cottage of a national cemetery, a rampant little rebel coming out daily to a place which was to her anathema- maranatha,9 a cyni- cal, misanthropic keeper sleeping on the `oor and enduring every variety of discomfort for a man he never saw before,— a man belonging to an idle, arro- gant class he detested,— and an old black freedman allowing himself to be taught the alphabet in order to gain permission to wait on his master,— master no longer in law,— with all the devotion of his loving old heart. For the keeper had announced to Pomp that he must learn his alphabet or go; after all these years of theory, he, as a New En glander, could not stand by

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1. Common name for a horse.

and see precious knowledge shut from the black man. So he opened it; and mighty dull work he found it.

Ward De Rosset did not rally as rapidly as they expected. The white- haired doctor from the town rode out on horse back, pacing slowly up the graveled roadway with a scowl on his brow, casting, as he dismounted, a furtive glance down towards the parade- ground. His horse and his coat were alike old and worn, and his broad shoulders were bent with long ser vice in the miserably provided Confederate hospitals, where he had striven to do his duty through every day and every night of those shadowed years. Cursing the incompe- tency in high places, cursing the mismanagement of the entire medical department of the Confederate army, cursing the recklessness and indiffer- ence which left the men suffering for want of proper hospitals and hospital stores, he yet went on resolutely doing his best with the poor means in his control until the last. Then he came home, he and his old horse, and went the rounds again, he prescribing for whooping- cough or measles, and Dob- bin1 waiting outside; the only difference was that fees were small and good meals scarce for both, not only for the man but for the beast. The doctor sat down and chatted awhile kindly with De Rosset, whose father and uncle had been dear friends of his in the bright, prosperous days; then he left a few harmless medicines and rose to go, his gaze resting a moment on Miss Ward, then on Pomp, as if he were hesitating. But he said nothing until on the walk outside he met the keeper, and recognized a person to whom he could tell the truth. “ There is nothing to be done; he may recover, he may not; it is a question of strength, merely. He needs no medicines, only nourishing food, rest, and careful tendance.”

“He shall have them,” answered the keeper, brie`y. And then the old gen- tleman mounted his horse and rode away, his "rst and last visit to a national cemetery.

“National!” he said to himself,— “national!” All talk of moving De Rosset ceased, but Miss Ward moved into the old

house. There was not much to move: herself, her one trunk, and Marì, a black attendant, whose name prob ably began life as Maria, since the accent still dwelt on the curtailed last syllable. The keeper went there once, and once only, and then it was an errand for the sick man, whose fancies came sometimes at incon ve nient hours,— when Pomp had gone to town, for instance. On this occasion the keeper entered the mockery of a gate and knocked at the front door, from which the bars had been removed; the piazza still showed its decaying planks, but quick-growing summer vines had been planted, and were now encircling the old pillars and veiling all defects with their greenery. It was a woman’s pathetic effort to cover up what cannot be covered— poverty. The blinds on one side were open and white curtains waved to and fro in the breeze; into this room he was ushered by Marì. Mat- ting lay on the `oor, streaked here and there ominously by the dampness from the near ground. The furniture was of dark mahogany, handsome in its day: chairs, a heavy pier table with low- down glass, into which no one by any possibility could look unless he had eyes in his ankles, a sofa with a stiff round pillow of hair- cloth under each curved end, and a mirror with a com- partment framed off at the top, containing a picture of shepherds and shep-

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2. Robert E. Lee (1807–1870), chief commander of Confederate forces during the Civil War. 3. The opening lines of “A Psalm of Life” by

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882). In the original, the "nal line of the quotation reads, “Was not spoken of the soul.”

herdesses, and lambs with blue ribbons around their necks, all enjoying themselves in the most natu ral and life- like manner. Flowers stood on the high mantelpiece, but their fragrance could not overcome the faint odor of the damp straw- matting. On a table were books, a life of General Lee,2 and three or four shabby little volumes printed at the South during the war, waifs of prose and poetry of that highly wrought, richly colored style which seems indigenous to Southern soil.

“Some way, the whole thing reminds me of a funeral,” thought the keeper. Miss Ward entered, and the room bloomed at once; at least, that is what

a lover would have said. Rodman, however, merely noticed that she bloomed, and not the room, and he said to himself that she would not bloom long, if she continued to live in such a moldy place. Their conversation in these days was excessively polite, shortened to the extreme minimum pos si ble, and con- ducted without the aid of the eyes, at least on one side. Rodman had discov- ered that Miss Ward never looked at him, and so he did not look at her, that is, not often; he was human, however, and she was delightfully pretty. On this occasion they exchanged exactly "ve sentences, and then he departed, but not before his quick eyes had discovered that the rest of the house was in even worse condition than this parlor, which, by the way, Miss Ward con- sidered quite a grand apartment; she had been down near the coast, trying to teach school, and there the desolation was far greater than here, both armies having passed back and forward over the ground, foragers out, and the torch at work more than once.

“ Will there ever come a change for the better?” thought the keeper, as he walked homeward. “What an enormous stone has got to be rolled up hill! But at least, John Rodman, you need not go to work at it; you are not called upon to lend your shoulder.”

None the less, however, did he call out Pomp that very after noon and sternly teach him “E” and “F,” using the smooth white sand for a blackboard, and a stick for chalk. Pomp’s primer was a government placard hanging on the wall of the of"ce. It read as follows:—

in this cemetery expose the remains of

fourteen thousand three hundred and twenty- one

united states soldiers.

“Tell me not in mournful numbers Life is but an empty dream; For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem

“Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not written of the soul!”3

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4. Originally called “Decoration Day,” Memorial Day was established after the Civil War as an occasion to decorate the graves of the Union sol- diers who had died in the con`ict. By the end of the 1860s, the practice was observed at hundreds of cemeteries. As the story suggests, some cities

and states in the former Confederacy observed their own Memorial Day on a dif fer ent date. 5. Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. “Arlington”: Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C., that is the site of the principal U.S. military cemetery.

“The only known instance of the government’s condescending to poetry,” the keeper had thought, when he "rst read this placard. It was placed there for the instruction and edi"cation of visitors, but no visitors coming, he took the liberty of using it as a primer for Pomp. The large letters served the pur- pose admirably, and Pomp learned the entire quotation; what he thought of it has not tran spired. Miss Ward came over daily to see her cousin. At "rst she brought him soups and vari ous concoctions from her own kitchen,— the leaky cavern, once the dining room, where the soldier had taken refuge after his last dismissal from hospital; but the keeper’s soups were richer, and free from the taint of smoke; his martial laws of neatness even disorderly old Pomp dared not disobey, and the sick man soon learned the difference. He thanked the girl, who came bringing the dishes over carefully in her own dimpled hands, and then, when she was gone, he sent them untasted away. By chance Miss Ward learned this, and wept bitter tears over it; she contin- ued to come, but her poor little soups and jellies she brought no more.

One morning in May the keeper was working near the `ag- staff, when his eyes fell upon a pro cession coming down the road which led from the town and turning towards the cemetery; no one ever came that way, what could it mean? It drew near, entered the gate, and showed itself to be negroes walking two and two, old uncles and aunties, young men and girls, and even little children, all dressed in their best; a very poor best, sometimes gravely ludi- crous imitations of “ole mars’,” or “ole miss’,” sometimes mere rags bravely patched together and adorned with a strip of black calico or rosette of black ribbon; not one was without a badge of mourning. All carried `owers, com- mon blossoms from the little gardens behind the cabins that stretched around the town on the outskirts,— the new forlorn cabins with their chim- neys of piled stones and ragged patches of corn; each little darkey had his bouquet and marched solemnly along, rolling his eyes around, but without even the beginning of a smile, while the elders moved forward with gravity, the bubbling, irrepressible gayety of the negro subdued by the newborn dig- nity of the freedman.

“Memorial Day,”4 thought the keeper; “I had forgotten it.” “ Will you do us de hono’, sah, to take de head ob de pro cessio’, sah?” said

the leader, with a ceremonious bow. Now the keeper had not much sympa- thy with the strewing of `owers, North or South; he had seen the beautiful ceremony more than once turned into a po liti cal demonstration; here, how- ever, in this small, isolated, interior town, there was nothing of that kind; the whole population of white faces laid their roses and wept true tears on the graves of their lost ones in the village churchyard when the Southern Memorial Day came round, and just as naturally the whole population of black faces went out to the national cemetery with their `owers on the day when, throughout the North, spring blossoms were laid on the graves of the soldiers, from the little Maine village to the stretching ranks of Arlington, from Greenwood5 to the far western burial- places of San Francisco. The

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keeper joined the pro cession and led the way to the parade- ground. As they approached the trenches, the leader began singing and all joined. “Swing low, sweet chariot,” sang the freedmen, and their hymn rose and fell with strange, sweet harmony,— one of those wild, unwritten melodies which the North heard with surprise and marveling when, after the war, bands of singers came to their cities and sang the songs of slavery, in order to gain for their children the coveted education. “Swing low, sweet chariot,” sang the freed- men, and two by two they passed along, strewing the graves with `owers till all the green was dotted with color. It was a pathetic sight to see some of the old men and women, ignorant "eld- hands, bent, dull- eyed, and past the possibility of education even in its simplest forms, carefully placing their poor `owers to the best advantage. They knew dimly that the men who lay beneath those mounds had done something wonderful for them and for their children, and so they came bringing their blossoms, with little intelli- gence but with much love.

The ceremony over, they retired; as he turned, the keeper caught a glimpse of Miss Ward’s face at the win dow.

“Hope we ’s not makin’ too free, sah,” said the leader, as the pro cession, with many a bow and scrape, took leave, “but we ’s kep’ de day now two years, sah, befo’ you came, sah, an’ we ’s teachin’ de chil’en to keep it, sah.”

The keeper returned to the cottage. “Not a white face,” he said. “Certainly not,” replied Miss Ward, crisply. “I know some graves at the North, Miss Ward, graves of Southern soldiers,

and I know some Northern women who do not scorn to lay a few `owers on the lonely mounds as they pass by with their blossoms on our Memorial Day.”

“You are fortunate. They must be angels. We have no angels here.” “I am inclined to believe you are right,” said the keeper. That night old Pomp, who had remained invisible in the kitchen during

the ceremony, stole away in the twilight and came back with a few `owers; Rodman saw him going down towards the parade- ground, and watched. The old man had but a few blossoms; he arranged them hastily on the mounds with many a furtive glance towards the house, and then stole back, satis- "ed; he had performed his part.

Ward De Rosset lay on his pallet, apparently unchanged; he seemed neither stronger nor weaker. He had grown childishly dependent upon his host, and wearied for him, as the Scotch say; but Rodman withstood his fancies, and gave him only the eve nings, when Miss Bettina was not there. One after- noon, however, it rained so violently that he was forced to seek shelter; he set himself to work on the ledgers; he was on the ninth thousand now. But the sick man heard his step in the outer room, and called in his weak voice, “Rodman,— Rodman.” After a time he went in, and it ended in his staying, for the patient was ner vous and irritable, and he pitied the nurse, who seemed able to please him in nothing. De Rosset turned with a sigh of relief towards the strong hands that lifted him readily, towards the composed manner, towards the man’s voice that seemed to bring a breeze from outside into the close room; animated, cheered, he talked volubly. The keeper listened, answered once in a while, and quietly took the rest of the after noon into his own hands. Miss Ward yielded to the silent change, leaned back, and closed her eyes. She looked exhausted and for the "rst time pallid; the loosened dark hair curled in little rings about her temples, and her lips

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were parted as though she was too tired to close them; for hers were not the thin, straight lips that shut tight naturally, like the straight line of a closed box. The sick man talked on. “Come, Rodman,” he said, after a while, “I have read that lying verse of yours over at least ten thousand and "fty- nine times; please tell me its history; I want to have something de"nite to think of when I read it for the ten thousand and sixtieth.”

“Toujours femme varie, Bien fou qui s’y "e; Une femme souvent N’est qu’une plume au vent,”

read the keeper slowly, with his execrable En glish accent. “Well, I don’t know that I have any objection to telling the story. I am not sure but that it will do me good to hear it all over myself in plain language again.”

“Then it concerns yourself,” said De Rosset; “so much the better. I hope it will be, as the children say, the truth, and long.”

“It will be the truth, but not long. When the war broke out I was twenty- eight years old, living with my mother on our farm in New Eng land. My father and two brothers had died and left me the homestead, other wise I should have broken away and sought fortune farther westward, where the lands are better and life is more free. But mother loved the house, the "elds, and every crooked tree. She was alone, and so I stayed with her. In the cen- tre of the village green stood the square, white meeting- house, and near by the small cottage where the pastor lived; the minister’s daughter, Mary, was my promised wife. Mary was a slender little creature with a profusion of pale `axen hair, large, serious blue eyes, and small, delicate features; she was timid almost to a fault; her voice was low and gentle. She was not eigh teen, and we were to wait a year. The war came, and I volunteered, of course, and marched away; we wrote to each other often; my letters were full of the camp and skirmishes; hers told of the village, how the widow Brown had fallen ill, and how it was feared that Squire Stafford’s boys were lapsing into evil ways. Then came the day when my regiment marched to the "eld of its slaughter, and soon after our shattered remnant went home. Mary cried over me, and came out every day to the farm house with her bunches of violets; she read aloud to me from her good little books, and I used to lie and watch her pro- "le bending over the page, with the light falling on her `axen hair low down against the small, white throat. Then my wound healed, and I went again, this time for three years; and Mary’s father blessed me, and said that when peace came he would call me son, but not before, for these were no times for marrying or giving in marriage. He was a good man, a red- hot abolition- ist, and a roaring lion as regards temperance; but nature had made him so small in body that no one was much frightened when he roared. I said that I went for three years; but eight years have passed and I have never been back to the village. First, mother died. Then Mary turned false. I sold the farm by letter and lost the money three months afterwards in an unfortu- nate investment; my health failed. Like many another Northern soldier I remembered the healing climate of the South; its soft airs came back to me when the snow lay deep on the "elds and the sharp wind whistled around the poor tavern where the moneyless, half- crippled volunteer sat coughing by the "re. I applied for this place and obtained it. That is all.”

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“But it is not all,” said the sick man, raising himself on his elbow; “you have not told half yet, nor anything at all about the French verse.”

“Oh— that? There was a little Frenchman staying at the hotel; he had for- merly been a dancing- master, and was full of dry, withered conceits, although he looked like a thin and bilious old ape dressed as a man. He taught me, or tried to teach me, vari ous wise sayings, among them this one, which pleased my fancy so much that I gave him twenty- "ve cents to write it out in large text for me.”

“Toujours femme varie,” repeated De Rosset; “but you don’t really think so, do you, Rodman?”

“I do. But they cannot help it; it is their nature. I beg your pardon, Miss Ward. I was speaking as though you were not here.”

Miss Ward’s eyelids barely acknowledged his existence; that was all. But some time after she remarked to her cousin that it was only in New Eng land that one found that pale `axen hair.

June was waning, when suddenly the summons came; Ward De Rosset died. He was unconscious towards the last, and death, in the guise of sleep, bore away his soul. They carried him home to the old house, and from there the funeral started, a few family carriages, dingy and battered, following the hearse, for death revived the old neighborhood feeling; that honor at least they could pay,— the sonless mothers and the widows who lived shut up in the old houses with every thing falling into ruin around them, brooding over the past. The keeper watched the small pro cession as it passed his gate on its way to the churchyard in the village. “ There he goes, poor fellow, his sufferings over at last,” he said; and then he set the cottage in order and began the old solitary life again.

He saw Miss Ward but once. It was a breathless eve ning in August when the moonlight `ooded the level

country. He had started but to stroll across the waste, but the mood changed, and climbing over the eastern wall he had walked back to the `ag- staff, and now lay at its foot gazing up into the in"nite sky. A step sounded on the gravel walk; he turned his face that way and recognized Miss Ward. With con"dent step she passed the dark cottage, and brushed his arm with her robe as he lay unseen in the shadow. She went down towards the parade- ground, and his eyes followed her. Softly outlined in the moonlight she moved to and fro among the mounds, pausing often, and once he thought she knelt. Then slowly she returned, and he raised himself and waited; she saw him, started, then paused.

“I thought you were away,” she said; “Pomp told me so.” “You set him to watch me?” “Yes. I wished to come here once, and I did not wish to meet you.” “Why did you wish to come?” “ Because Ward was here— and because— because— never mind. It is

enough that I wished to walk once among those mounds.” “And pray there?” “Well,— and if I did!” said the girl, de"antly. Rodman stood facing her, with his arms folded; his eyes rested on her face;

he said nothing. “I am going away to- morrow,” began Miss Ward again, assuming with an

effort her old, pulseless manner. “I have sold the place, and I shall never return, I think; I am going far away.”

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“Where?” “To Tennessee.” “That is not so very far,” said the keeper, smiling. “ There I shall begin a new existence,” pursued the voice, ignoring the

comment. “You have scarcely begun the old; you are hardly more than a child, now.

What are you going to do in Tennessee?” “Teach.” “Have you relatives there?” “No.” “A miserable life,— a hard, lonely, loveless life,” said Rodman; “God help

the woman who must be that dreary thing, a teacher from necessity.” Miss Ward turned swiftly, but the keeper kept by her side. He saw the

tears glittering on her eyelashes, and his voice softened. “Do not leave me in anger,” he said; “I should not have spoken so, although indeed it was the truth. Walk back with me to the cottage, and take your last look at the room where poor Ward died, and then I will go with you to your home.”

“No; Pomp is waiting at the gate,” said the girl, almost inarticulately. “Very well; to the gate, then.” They went towards the cottage in silence; the keeper threw open the door.

“Go in,” he said. “I will wait outside.” The girl entered and went into the inner room; throwing herself down

upon her knees at the bedside, “O Ward, Ward,” she sobbed, “I am all alone in the world now, Ward, all alone!” She buried her face in her hands and gave way to a passion of tears; and the keeper could not help but hear as he waited outside. Then the desolate little creature rose and came forth, put- ting on, as she did so, her poor armor of pride. The keeper had not moved from the doorstep. Now, he turned his face. “Before you go,—go away forever from this place,— will you write your name in my register,” he said, “the visitors’ register? The government had it prepared for the throngs who would visit these graves; but with the exception of the blacks, who cannot write, no one has come, and the register is empty. Will you write your name? Yet do not write it unless you can think gently of the men who lie there under the grass; I believe you do think gently of them, else why have you come of your own accord to stand by the side of their graves?” As he said this, he looked "xedly at her.

Miss Ward did not answer; but neither did she write. “Very well,” said the keeper; “come away. You will not, I see.” “I cannot! Shall I, Bettina Ward, set my name down in black and white

as a visitor to this cemetery, where lie fourteen thousand of the soldiers who killed my father, my three brothers, my cousins; who brought deso- lation upon all our house, and ruin upon all our neighborhood, all our State, and all our country?— for the South is our country, and not your icy North. Shall I forget these things? Never! Sooner let my right hand wither by my side! I was but a child; yet I remember the tears of my mother, and the grief of all around us. There was not a house where there was not one dead.”

“It is true,” answered the keeper; “at the South, all went.” “Grief covers our land.” “Yes; for a mighty wrong brings ever in its train a mighty sorrow.”

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5. When Woolson reprinted this story for book publication, the text omitted this "erce exchange about the “transition” and the state of education in the South.

Miss Ward turned upon him "ercely. “Do you, who have lived among us, dare to pretend that the state of our servants is not worse this moment than it ever was before?”

“Transition.” “A horrible transition!” “Horrible, but inevitable; education will be the savior. Had I "fty millions

to spend on the South to- morrow, every cent should go for schools, and for schools alone.”

“For the negroes, I suppose,” said the girl with a bitter scorn. “For the negroes, and for the whites also,” answered John Rodman gravely.

“The lack of general education is painfully apparent everywhere through- out the South; it is from that cause more than any other that your beautiful country now lies desolate.”

“Desolate,— desolate indeed,” said Miss Ward.5 They walked down to the gate together in silence. “Good-by,” said John,

holding out his hand; “you will give me yours or not as you choose, but I will not have it as a favor.”

She gave it. “I hope that life will grow brighter to you as the years pass. May God bless

you.” He dropped her hand; she turned, and passed through the gateway; then,

he sprang after her. “Nothing can change you,” he said; “I know it, I have known it all along; you are part of your country, part of the time, part of the bitter hour through which she is passing. Nothing can change you; if it could, you would not be what you are, and I should not— But you cannot change. Good-by, Bettina, poor little child; good-by. Follow your path out into the world. Yet do not think, dear, that I have not seen— have not understood.”

He bent and kissed her hand; then he was gone, and she went on alone. A week later the keeper strolled over towards the old house. It was twi-

light, but the new owner was still at work. He was one of those sandy- haired, energetic Maine men, who, prob ably on the princi ple of extremes, were often found through the South, making new homes for themselves in the pleas- ant land.

“Pulling down the old house, are you?” said the keeper, leaning idly on the gate, which was already `anked by a new fence.

“Yes,” replied the Maine man, pausing; “it was only an old shell, just ready to tumble on our heads. You’re the keeper over yonder, an’t you?” (He already knew every body within a circle of "ve miles.)

“Yes. I think I should like those vines if you have no use for them,” said Rodman, pointing to the uprooted greenery that once screened the old piazza.

“Wuth about twenty- "ve cents, I guess,” said the Maine man, handing them over.

1877

3 9 4

AMBROSE BIERCE 1842– c. 1914

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was born on June 24, 1842, in Meigs County, Ohio, the tenth of thirteen children. After the family moved to Indiana, he attended school and then struck out on his own at age "fteen. He worked as a printer’s appren- tice for a newspaper in Indiana, spent a term at a military school in Kentucky, and enlisted in the Union Army during the Civil War. Bierce saw action in some of the bloodiest battles of the war, including Shiloh, Chickamauga, and the Atlanta campaign. In 1864, at Kennesaw Mountain, he was struck in the temple by a bullet that miracu- lously lodged beneath the skin without penetrating the skull. In his Dev il’s Dictionary, Bierce would later de"ne war as a “by- product of the arts of peace” and peace as “a period of cheating between two periods of "ghting”—an unsentimental attitude that carried over to his "ction about the war including the bitter war narrative “Chickamauga” (1889) and the suspenseful “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (1890).

When the war ended, Bierce moved to San Francisco to begin the journalistic career he followed for the rest of his life. San Francisco in the late 1860s and 1870s was becoming home to a journalism- based literary culture, as writers worked to make the West better known to eastern readers and to counter the image of the “wild West,” so popu lar in dime- novel "ction, by showing San Francisco as the center of a culti- vated society. Bierce married in 1872 and he went with his wife to Eng land for four years, where he continued to hone his literary skills. Returning to San Francisco in 1875, he made a reputation through his newspaper columns as a satirist of elegance and bite. From 1886 to 1906, he was employed by William Randolph Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner, and many of his best- known stories and essays appeared "rst in the Examiner. He published the story collections Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891) and Can Such Things Be? (1893), and then, while working as a correspondent in Washington, D.C., began collecting his witticisms from newspaper columns dat- ing back to the 1880s into book form. This volume was "rst published in 1906 as The Cynic’s Word Book. Between 1909 and 1912 his collected works came out in twelve volumes, and the Word Book appeared under Bierce’s preferred title, The Dev il’s Dictionary.

Bierce and his wife separated in 1888 and divorced "ve years later. They had three children; one of his two sons seems to have been shot to death in 1889 in a brawl over a woman, and the other died from alcoholism- related pneumonia in 1913. In that year, Bierce went to Mexico and dis appeared. It is supposed that he planned to take part in the Mexican Revolution on the side of pro- democracy rebels led by the general Pancho Villa, a cause endorsed by some po liti cally engaged Americans of the era (but not by the U.S. government).

Among writers active after the Civil War, Bierce was known as the most consis- tently pessimistic; he was called “ Bitter Bierce” by many. His stories merged the hallucinatory and the paranormal with everyday events, attempting to catch the intensity of extreme human experience. Rejecting the national preference for opti- mism and happy endings, he strove to produce essays, "ction, and commentaries that would remain in his readers’ minds as much for the tight pungency of his prose style as for the ideas that motivated them. In both of the stories included here, Bierce turns to extraordinary observers— a condemned man preparing to die and a child who has stumbled into the horrors of combat—to tell stories of the Civil War stripped of their usual patina of glory and nobility.

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1. First published in the San Francisco Examiner on July  13, 1890, this story was subsequently reprinted as part of the collection Tales of Sol- diers and Civilians (1891), the source of the text

printed here. 2. The wooden cross- braces supporting railroad tracks.

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge1

I

A man stood upon a railroad bridge in Northern Alabama, looking down into the swift waters twenty feet below. The man’s hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross- timber above his head, and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the sleepers2 supporting the met- als of the railway supplied a footing for him, and his executioners— two pri- vate soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant, who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short remove upon the same tempo- rary platform was an of"cer in the uniform of his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge stood with his ri`e in the posi- tion known as “support,” that is to say, vertical in front of the left shoulder, the hammer resting on the forearm thrown straight across the chest— a formal and unnatural position, enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It did not appear to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at the centre of the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends of the foot planking that traversed it.

Beyond one of the sentinels nobody was in sight; the railroad ran straight away into a forest for a hundred yards, then, curving, was lost to view. Doubt- less there was an outpost farther along. The other bank of the stream was open ground— a gentle acclivity crowned with a stockade of vertical tree trunks, loopholed for ri`es, with a single embrasure through which pro- truded the muzzle of a brass cannon commanding the bridge. Midway of the slope between bridge and fort were the spectators— a single com pany of infantry in line, at “parade rest,” the butts of the ri`es on the ground, the barrels inclining slightly backward against the right shoulder, the hands crossed upon the stock. A lieutenant stood at the right of the line, the point of his sword upon the ground, his left hand resting upon his right. Except- ing the group of four at the center of the bridge not a man moved. The com- pany faced the bridge, staring stonily, motionless. The sentinels, facing the banks of the stream, might have been statues to adorn the bridge. The cap- tain stood with folded arms, silent, observing the work of his subordinates but making no sign. Death is a dignitary who, when he comes announced, is to be received with formal manifestations of re spect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and "xity are forms of deference.

The man who was engaged in being hanged was apparently about thirty- "ve years of age. He was a civilian, if one might judge from his dress, which was that of a planter. His features were good— a straight nose, "rm mouth, broad forehead, from which his long, dark hair was combed straight back, falling behind his ears to the collar of his well- "tting frock coat. He wore a mustache and pointed beard but no whis kers; his eyes were large and dark gray and had a kindly expression which one would hardly have expected in

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one whose neck was in the hemp. Evidently this was no vulgar assassin. The liberal military code makes provision for hanging many kinds of people, and gentlemen are not excluded.

The preparations being complete, the two private soldiers stepped aside and each drew away the plank upon which he had been standing. The ser- geant turned to the captain, saluted and placed himself immediately behind that of"cer, who in turn moved apart one pace. These movements left the condemned man and the sergeant standing on the two ends of the same plank, which spanned three of the cross- ties of the bridge. The end upon which the civilian stood almost, but not quite, reached a fourth. This plank had been held in place by the weight of the captain; it was now held by that of the sergeant. At a signal from the former, the latter would step aside, the plank would tilt and the condemned man go down between two ties. The arrangement commended itself to his judgment as simple and effec- tive. His face had not been covered nor his eyes bandaged. He looked a moment at his “unsteadfast footing,” then let his gaze wander to the swirl- ing water of the stream racing madly beneath his feet. A piece of dancing driftwood caught his attention and his eyes followed it down the current. How slowly it appeared to move! What a sluggish stream!

He closed his eyes in order to "x his last thoughts upon his wife and children. The water, touched to gold by the early sun, the brooding mists under the banks at some distance down the stream, the fort, the soldiers, the piece of drift— all had distracted him. And now he became conscious of a new disturbance. Striking through the thought of his dear ones was a sound which he could neither ignore nor understand, a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith’s hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ring- ing quality. He wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably distant or near by—it seemed both. Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He awaited each stroke with impatience and—he knew not why— apprehension. The intervals of silence grew progressively longer; the delays became maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the thrust of a knife; he feared he would shriek. What he heard was the ticking of his watch.

He unclosed his eyes and saw again the water below him. “If I could free my hands,” he thought, “I might throw off the noose and spring into the stream. By diving I could evade the bullets and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take to the woods, and get away home. My home, thank God, is as yet outside their lines; my wife and little ones are still beyond the invader’s farthest advance.”

As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were `ashed into the doomed man’s brain rather than evolved from it, the captain nod- ded to the sergeant. The sergeant stepped aside.

II

Peyton Farquhar was a well- to-do planter, of an old and highly respected Alabama family. Being a slave owner, and, like other slave owners, a politi- cian he was naturally an original secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern cause. Circumstances of an imperious nature which it is unnec- essary to relate here, had prevented him from taking ser vice with the gallant

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3. Corinth, Mississippi, fell to the Union forces under General Ulysses  S. Grant following the

Battle of Shiloh on April 6 and 7, 1862. 4. Guard post.

army that had fought the disastrous campaigns ending with the fall of Corinth,3 and he chafed under the inglorious restraint, longing for the release of his energies, the larger life of the soldier, the opportunity for distinction. That opportunity, he felt, would come, as it comes to all in war time. Mean- while he did what he could. No ser vice was too humble for him to perform in aid of the South, no adventure too perilous for him to undertake if con- sistent with the character of a civilian who was at heart a soldier, and who in good faith and without too much quali"cation assented to at least a part of the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war.

One eve ning while Farquhar and his wife were sitting on a rustic bench near the entrance to his grounds, a gray- clad soldier rode up to the gate and asked for a drink of water. Mrs. Farquhar was only too happy to serve him with her own white hands. While she was gone to fetch the water her hus- band approached the dusty horse man and inquired eagerly for news from the front.

“The Yanks are repairing the railroads,” said the man, “and are getting ready for another advance. They have reached the Owl Creek bridge, put it in order, and built a stockade on the other bank. The commandant has issued an order, which is posted everywhere, declaring that any civilian caught interfering with the railroad, its bridges, tunnels, or trains will be summarily hanged. I saw the order.”

“How far is it to the Owl Creek bridge?” Farquhar asked. “About thirty miles?” “Is there no force on this side the creek?” “Only a picket post4 half a mile out, on the railroad, and a single sentinel

at this end of the bridge.” “Suppose a man— a civilian and student of hanging— should elude the

picket post and perhaps get the better of the sentinel,” said Farquhar, smil- ing, “what could he accomplish?”

The soldier re`ected. “I was there a month ago,” he replied. “I observed that the `ood of last winter had lodged a great quantity of driftwood against the wooden pier at this end of the bridge. It is now dry and would burn like tow.”

The lady had now brought the water, which the soldier drank. He thanked her ceremoniously, bowed to her husband, and rode away. An hour later, after nightfall, he repassed the plantation, going northward in the direction from which he had come. He was a Federal scout.

III

As Peyton Farquhar fell straight downward through the bridge, he lost con- sciousness and was as one already dead. From this state he was awakened— ages later, it seemed to him—by the pain of a sharp pressure upon his throat, followed by a sense of suffocation. Keen, poignant agonies seemed to shoot from his neck downward through every "ber of his body and limbs. These pains appeared to `ash along well- de"ned lines of rami"cation and to beat with an inconceivably rapid periodicity. They seemed like streams of

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pulsating "re heating him to an intolerable temperature. As to his head, he was conscious of nothing but a feeling of fullness—of congestion. These sen- sations were unaccompanied by thought. The intellectual part of his nature was already effaced; he had power only to feel, and feeling was torment. He was conscious of motion. Encompassed in a luminous cloud, of which he was now merely the "ery heart, without material substance, he swung through unthinkable arcs of oscillation, like a vast pendulum. Then all at once, with terrible suddenness, the light about him shot upward with the noise of a loud plash; a frightful roaring was in his ears, and all was cold and dark. The power of thought was restored; he knew that the rope had broken and he had fallen into the stream. There was no additional strangu- lation; the noose about his neck was already suffocating him and kept the water from his lungs. To die of hanging at the bottom of a river!— the idea seemed to him ludicrous. He opened his eyes in the blackness and saw above him a gleam of light, but how distant, how inaccessible! He was still sink- ing, for the light became fainter and fainter until it was a mere glimmer. Then it began to grow and brighten, and he knew that he was rising toward the surface— knew it with reluctance, for he was now very comfortable. “To be hanged and drowned,” he thought, “that is not so bad; but I do not wish to be shot. No; I will not be shot; that is not fair.”

He was not conscious of an effort, but a sharp pain in his wrist apprised him that he was trying to free his hands. He gave the strug gle his attention, as an idler might observe the feat of a juggler, without interest in the out- come. What splendid effort!— what magni"cent, what superhuman strength! Ah, that was a "ne endeavor! Bravo! The cord fell away; his arms parted and `oated upward, the hands dimly seen on each side in the growing light. He watched them with a new interest as "rst one and then the other pounced upon the noose at his neck. They tore it away and thrust it "ercely aside, its undulations resembling those of a water snake. “Put it back, put it back!” He thought he shouted these words to his hands, for the undoing of the noose had been succeeded by the direst pang that he had yet experienced. His neck ached horribly; his brain was on "re; his heart, which had been `uttering faintly, gave a great leap, trying to force itself out at his mouth. His whole body was racked and wrenched with an insupportable anguish! But his disobedient hands gave no heed to the command. They beat the water vigorously with quick, downward strokes, forcing him to the surface. He felt his head emerge; his eyes were blinded by the sunlight; his chest expanded convulsively, and with a supreme and crowning agony his lungs engulfed a great draught of air, which instantly he expelled in a shriek!

He was now in full possession of his physical senses. They were, indeed, preternaturally keen and alert. Something in the awful disturbance of his organic system had so exalted and re"ned them that they made rec ord of things never before perceived. He felt the ripples upon his face and heard their separate sounds as they struck. He looked at the forest on the bank of the stream, saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf— saw the very insects upon them: the locusts, the brilliant- bodied `ies, the gray spiders stretching their webs from twig to twig. He noted the pris- matic colors in all the dewdrops upon a million blades of grass. The hum- ming of the gnats that danced above the eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon `ies’ wings, the strokes of the water spiders’ legs, like oars

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which had lifted their boat— all these made audible music. A "sh slid along beneath his eyes and he heard the rush of its body parting the water.

He had come to the surface facing down the stream; in a moment the vis- i ble world seemed to wheel slowly round, himself the pivotal point, and he saw the bridge, the fort, the soldiers upon the bridge, the captain, the ser- geant, the two privates, his executioners. They were in silhouette against the blue sky. They shouted and gesticulated, pointing at him; the captain had drawn his pistol, but did not "re; the others were unarmed. Their movements were grotesque and horrible, their forms gigantic.

Suddenly he heard a sharp report and something struck the water smartly within a few inches of his head, spattering his face with spray. He heard a second report, and saw one of the sentinels with his ri`e at his shoulder, a light cloud of blue smoke rising from the muzzle. The man in the water saw the eye of the man on the bridge gazing into his own through the sights of the ri`e. He observed that it was a gray eye, and remembered having read that gray eyes were keenest and that all famous marksmen had them. Nevertheless, this one had missed.

A counter swirl had caught Farquhar and turned him half round; he was again looking into the forest on the bank opposite the fort. The sound of a clear, high voice in a monotonous singsong now rang out behind him and came across the water with a distinctness that pierced and subdued all other sounds, even the beating of the ripples in his ears. Although no soldier, he had frequented camps enough to know the dread signi"cance of that deliberate, drawling, aspirated chant; the lieutenant on shore was taking a part in the morning’s work. How coldly and pitilessly— with what an even, calm intonation, presaging and enforcing tranquillity in the men— with what accurately- measured intervals fell those cruel words:

“Attention, com pany. . . . Shoulder arms. . . . Ready. . . . Aim. . . . Fire.” Farquhar dived— dived as deeply as he could. The water roared in his ears

like the voice of Niagara, yet he heard the dulled thunder of the volley, and, rising again toward the surface, met shining bits of metal, singularly `at- tened, oscillating slowly downward. Some of them touched him on the face and hands, then fell away, continuing their descent. One lodged between his collar and neck; it was uncomfortably warm, and he snatched it out.

As he rose to the surface, gasping for breath, he saw that he had been a long time under water; he was perceptibly farther down stream— nearer to safety. The soldiers had almost "nished reloading; the metal ramrods `ashed all at once in the sunshine as they were drawn from the barrels, turned in the air, and thrust into their sockets. The two sentinels "red again, in de- pen dently and ineffectually.

The hunted man saw all this over his shoulder; he was now swimming vigorously with the current. His brain was as energetic as his arms and legs; he thought with the rapidity of lightning.

“The of"cer,” he reasoned, “ will not make that martinet’s error a second time. It is as easy to dodge a volley as a single shot. He has prob ably already given the command to "re at will. God help me, I cannot dodge them all!”

An appalling plash within two yards of him, followed by a loud, rushing sound, diminuendo,5 which seemed to travel back through the air to the fort

5. In music, diminishing (Italian).

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6. Grapeshot, a cluster of small iron balls used as a cannon charge. 7. Stringed instruments activated by the wind

(Aeolus was the keeper of the winds in classical my thol ogy).

and died in an explosion which stirred the very river to its deeps! A rising sheet of water, which curved over him, fell down upon him, blinded him, strangled him! The cannon had taken a hand in the game. As he shook his head free from the commotion of the smitten water, he heard the de`ected shot humming through the air ahead, and in an instant it was cracking and smashing the branches in the forest beyond.

“They will not do that again,” he thought; “the next time they will use a charge of grape.6 I must keep my eye upon the gun; the smoke will apprise me— the report arrives too late; it lags behind the missile. It is a good gun.”

Suddenly he felt himself whirled round and round— spinning like a top. The water, the banks, the forests, the now distant bridge, fort and men— all were commingled and blurred. Objects were represented by their colors only; circular horizontal streaks of color— that was all he saw. He had been caught in a vortex and was being whirled on with a velocity of advance and gyra- tion which made him giddy and sick. In a few moments he was `ung upon the gravel at the foot of the left bank of the stream— the southern bank— and behind a projecting point which concealed him from his enemies. The sudden arrest of his motion, the abrasion of one of his hands on the gravel, restored him and he wept with delight. He dug his "n gers into the sand, threw it over himself in handfuls and audibly blessed it. It looked like gold, like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could think of nothing beautiful which it did not resemble. The trees upon the bank were giant garden plants; he noted a de"nite order in their arrangement, inhaled the fragrance of their blooms. A strange, roseate light shone through the spaces among their trunks and the wind made in their branches the music of aeo- lian harps.7 He had no wish to perfect his escape, was content to remain in that enchanting spot until retaken.

A whizz and rattle of grapeshot among the branches high above his head roused him from his dream. The baf`ed cannoneer had "red him a random farewell. He sprang to his feet, rushed up the sloping bank, and plunged into the forest.

All that day he traveled, laying his course by the rounding sun. The forest seemed interminable; nowhere did he discover a break in it, not even a wood- man’s road. He had not known that he lived in so wild a region. There was something uncanny in the revelation.

By nightfall he was fatigued, footsore, famishing. The thought of his wife and children urged him on. At last he found a road which led him in what he knew to be the right direction. It was as wide and straight as a city street, yet it seemed untraveled. No "elds bordered it, no dwelling anywhere. Not so much as the barking of a dog suggested human habitation. The black bodies of the great trees formed a straight wall on both sides, terminating on the horizon in a point, like a diagram in a lesson in perspective. Overhead, as he looked up through this rift in the wood, shone great golden stars looking unfamiliar and grouped in strange constellations. He was sure they were arranged in some order which had a secret and malign signi"cance. The wood on either side was full of singular noises, among which— once, twice, and again—he distinctly heard whispers in an unknown tongue.

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1. First published on January  20, 1889, in the San Francisco Examiner, the story was reprinted in the collection Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891), the source of the text printed here. Chick-

amauga was one of the bloodiest single- day battles of the Civil War, a costly Union defeat along a creek south of Chattanooga, Tennessee, on Sep- tember 19, 1863.

His neck was in pain, and, lifting his hand to it, he found it horribly swol- len. He knew that it had a circle of black where the rope had bruised it. His eyes felt congested; he could no longer close them. His tongue was swollen with thirst; he relieved its fever by thrusting it forward from between his teeth into the cold air. How softly the turf had carpeted the untraveled ave- nue! He could no longer feel the roadway beneath his feet!

Doubtless, despite his suffering, he fell asleep while walking, for now he sees another scene— perhaps he has merely recovered from a delirium. He stands at the gate of his own home. All is as he left it, and all bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine. He must have traveled the entire night. As he pushes open the gate and passes up the wide white walk, he sees a `utter of female garments; his wife, looking fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from the veranda to meet him. At the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a smile of ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dig- nity. Ah, how beautiful she is! He springs forward with extended arms. As he is about to clasp her, he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding white light blazes all about him, with a sound like the shock of a cannon— then all is darkness and silence!

Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.

1890, 1891

Chickamauga1

One sunny autumn after noon a child strayed away from its rude home in a small "eld and entered a forest unobserved. It was happy in a new sense of freedom from control— happy in the opportunity of exploration and adven- ture; for this child’s spirit, in bodies of its ancestors, had for many thousands of years been trained to memorable feats of discovery and conquest— victories in battles whose critical moments were centuries, whose victors’ camps were cities of hewn stone. From the cradle of its race it had conquered its way through two continents, and, passing a great sea, had penetrated a third, there to be born to war and dominion as a heritage.

The child was a boy, aged about six years, the son of a poor planter. In his younger manhood the father had been a soldier, had fought against naked savages, and followed the `ag of his country into the capital of a civilized race to the far South. In the peaceful life of a planter the warrior- "re sur- vived; once kindled it is never extinguished. The man loved military books and pictures, and the boy had understood enough to make himself a wooden sword, though even the eye of his father would hardly have known it for what it was. This weapon he now bore bravely, as became the son of an heroic race, and, pausing now and again in the sunny space of the forest, assumed with some exaggeration, the postures of aggression and defense that he had

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2. From Canto 3 of Byron’s poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812–18), these lines refer to Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo.

been taught by the engraver’s art. Made reckless by the ease with which he overcame invisible foes attempting to stay his advance, he committed the common enough military error of pushing the pursuit to a dangerous extreme, until he found himself upon the margin of a wide but shallow brook, whose rapid waters barred his direct advance against the ̀ ying foe that had crossed with illogical ease. But the intrepid victor was not to be baf`ed; the spirit of the race which had passed the great sea burned unconquerable in that small breast and would not be denied. Finding a place where some bowlders in the bed of the stream lay but a step or a leap apart, he made his way across and fell again upon the rear guard of his imaginary foe, putting all to the sword.

Now that the battle had been won, prudence required that he withdraw to his base of operations. Alas! like many a mightier conqueror, and like one, the mightiest, he could not

curb the lust for war, Nor learn that tempted Fate will leave the loftiest star.2

Advancing from the bank of the creek, he suddenly found himself con- fronted with a new and more formidable enemy; in the path that he was fol- lowing, bolt upright, with ears erect and paws suspended before it, sat a rabbit. With a startled cry the child turned and `ed, he knew not in what direction, calling with inarticulate cries for his mother, weeping, stumbling, his tender skin cruelly torn by brambles, his little heart beating hard with terror— breathless, blind with tears— lost in the forest! Then, for more than

Chickamauga. “The Battle of Chickamauga; Thomas’s Men Repulsing the Charge of the Rebels.” Harper’s Weekly, October 21, 1863.

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an hour, he wandered with erring feet through the tangled undergrowth, till at last, overcome by fatigue, he lay down in a narrow space between two rocks, within a few yards of the stream, and, still grasping his toy sword, no longer a weapon but a companion, sobbed himself to sleep. The wood birds sang merrily above his head; the squirrels, whisking their bravery of tail, ran barking from tree to tree, unconscious of the pity of it, and somewhere far away was a strange, muf`ed thunder, as if the partridges were drumming in cele bration of nature’s victory over the son of her immemorial enslavers. And back at the little plantation, where white men and black were hastily search- ing the "elds and hedges in alarm, a mother’s heart was breaking for her missing child.

Hours passed, and then the little sleeper rose to his feet. The chill of the eve ning was in his limbs, the fear of the gloom in his heart. But he had rested, and he no longer wept. With some blind instinct which impelled to action he strug gled through the undergrowth about him and came to a more open ground—on his right the brook, to the left a gentle acclivity studded with infrequent trees; over all the gathering gloom of twilight. A thin, ghostly mist rose along the water. It frightened and repelled him; instead of recross- ing, in the direction whence he had come, he turned his back upon it, and went forward toward the dark inclosing wood. Suddenly he saw before him a strange moving object which he took to be some large animal— a dog, a pig—he could not name it; perhaps it was a bear. He had seen pictures of bears, but knew of nothing to their discredit, and had vaguely wished to meet one. But something in form or movement of this object— something in the awkwardness of its approach— told him that it was not a bear, and curiosity was stayed by fear. He stood still, and as it came slowly on, gained courage every moment, for he saw that at least it had not the long, menacing ears of the rabbit. Possibly his impressionable mind was half conscious of something familiar in its shambling, awkward gait. Before it had approached near enough to resolve his doubts, he saw that it was followed by another and another. To right and to left were many more; the whole open space about him was alive with them— all moving toward the brook.

They were men. They crept upon their hands and knees. They used their hands only, dragging their legs. They used their knees only, their arms hang- ing useless at their sides. They strove to rise to their feet, but fell prone in the attempt. They did nothing naturally, and nothing alike, save only to advance foot by foot in the same direction. Singly, in pairs, and in little groups, they came on through the gloom, some halting now and again while others crept slowly past them, then resuming their movement. They came by dozens and by hundreds; as far on either hand as one could see in the deep- ening gloom they extended and the black wood behind them appeared to be inexhaustible. The very ground seemed in motion toward the creek. Occa- sionally one who had paused did not again go on, but lay motionless. He was dead. Some, pausing, made strange gestures with their hands, erected their arms and lowered them again, clasped their heads; spread their palms upward, as men are sometimes seen to do in public prayer.

Not all of this did the child note; it is what would have been noted by an older observer; he saw little but that these were men, yet crept like babes. Being men, they were not terrible, though some of them were unfamiliarly clad. He moved among them freely, going from one to another and peering

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3. Spotted, blemished. “Freaked”: streaked or `ecked. 4. The track, trail, or droppings of a wild animal.

into their faces with childish curiosity. All their faces were singularly white and many were streaked and gouted with red. Something in this— something too, perhaps, in their grotesque attitudes and movements— reminded him of the painted clown whom he had seen last summer in the circus, and he laughed as he watched them. But on and ever on they crept, these maimed and bleeding men, as heedless as he of the dramatic contrast between his laughter and their own ghastly gravity. To him it was a merry spectacle. He had seen his father’s negroes creep upon their hands and knees for his amusement— had ridden them so, “making believe” they were his horses. He now approached one of these crawling "gures from behind and with an agile movement mounted it astride. The man sank upon his breast, recovered, `ung the small boy "ercely to the ground as an unbroken colt might have done, then turned upon him a face that lacked a lower jaw— from the upper teeth to the throat was a great red gap fringed with hanging shreds of `esh and splinters of bone. The unnatural prominence of nose, the absence of chin, the "erce eyes, gave this man the appearance of a great bird of prey crimsoned in throat and breast by the blood of its quarry. The man rose to his knees, the child to his feet. The man shook his "st at the child; the child, terri"ed at last, ran to a tree near by, got upon the farther side of it, and took a more serious view of the situation. And so the uncanny multitude dragged itself slowly and painfully along in hideous pantomime— moved for- ward down the slope like a swarm of great black beetles, with never a sound of going—in silence profound, absolute.

Instead of darkening, the haunted landscape began to brighten. Through the belt of trees beyond the brook shone a strange red light, the trunks and branches of the trees making a black lacework against it. It struck the creep- ing "gures and gave them monstrous shadows, which caricatured their movements on the lit grass. It fell upon their faces, touching their white- ness with a ruddy tinge, accentuating the stains with which so many of them were freaked and maculated.3 It sparkled on buttons and bits of metal in their clothing. Instinctively the child turned toward the growing splendor and moved down the slope with his horrible companions; in a few moments had passed the foremost of the throng— not much of a feat, considering his advantages. He placed himself in the lead, his wooden sword still in hand, and solemnly directed the march, conforming his pace to theirs and occa- sionally turning as if to see that his forces did not straggle. Surely such a leader never before had such a following.

Scattered about upon the ground now slowly narrowing by the encroach- ment of this awful march to water, were certain articles to which, in the leader’s mind, were coupled no signi"cant associations; an occasional blan- ket, tightly rolled lengthwise, doubled and the ends bound together with a string; a heavy knapsack here, and there a broken musket— such things, in short, as are found in the rear of retreating troops, the “spoor”4 of men `ying from their hunters. Everywhere near the creek, which here had a margin of lowland, the earth was trodden into mud by the feet of men and horses. An observer of better experience in the use of his eyes would have noticed that these footprints pointed in both directions; the ground had been twice passed

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5. Job 39.25.

over—in advance and in retreat. A few hours before, these desperate, stricken men, with their more fortunate and now distant comrades, had penetrated the forest in thousands. Their successive battalions, breaking into swarms and reforming in lines, had passed the child on every side— had almost trod- den on him as he slept. The rustle and murmur of their march had not awak- ened him. Almost within a stone’s throw of where he lay they had fought a battle; but all unheard by him were the roar of the musketry, the shock of the cannon, “the thunder of the captains and the shouting.”5 He had slept through it all, grasping his little wooden sword with perhaps a tighter clutch in unconscious sympathy with his martial environment, but as heedless of the grandeur of the strug gle as the dead who had died to make the glory.

The "re beyond the belt of woods on the farther side of the creek, re`ected to earth from the canopy of its own smoke, was now suffusing the whole landscape. It transformed the sinuous line of mist to the vapor of gold. The water gleamed with dashes of red, and red, too, were many of the stones protruding above the surface. But that was blood; the less desperately wounded had stained them in crossing. On them, too, the child now crossed with eager steps; he was going to the "re. As he stood upon the farther bank, he turned about to look at the companions of his march. The advance was arriving at the creek. The stronger had already drawn themselves to the brink and plunged their faces in the `ood. Three or four who lay without motion appeared to have no heads. At this the child’s eyes expanded with won der; even his hospitable understanding could not accept a phenomenon implying such vitality as that. After slaking their thirst these men had not the strength to back away from the water, nor to keep their heads above it. They were drowned. In rear of these the open spaces of the forest showed the leader as many formless "gures of his grim command as at "rst; but not nearly so many were in motion. He waved his cap for their encouragement and smilingly pointed with his weapon in the direction of the guiding light— a pillar of "re to this strange exodus.

Con"dent of the "delity of his forces, he now entered the belt of woods, passed through it easily in the red illumination, climbed a fence, ran across a "eld, turning now and again to coquette with his responsive shadow, and so approached the blazing ruin of a dwelling. Desolation everywhere. In all the wide glare not a living thing was vis i ble. He cared nothing for that; the spectacle pleased, and he danced with glee in imitation of the wavering `ames. He ran about collecting fuel, but every object that he found was too heavy for him to cast in from the distance to which the heat limited his approach. In despair he `ung in his sword— a surrender to the superior forces of nature. His military career was at an end.

Shifting his position, his eyes fell upon some outbuildings which had an oddly familiar appearance, as if he had dreamed of them. He stood consid- ering them with won der, when suddenly the entire plantation, with its inclos- ing forest, seemed to turn as if upon a pivot. His little world swung half around; the points of the compass were reversed. He recognized the blazing building as his own home!

For a moment he stood stupe"ed by the power of the revelation, then ran with stumbling feet, making a half cir cuit of the ruin. There, con spic u ous

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in the light of the con`agration, lay the dead body of a woman— the white face turned upward, the hands thrown out and clutched full of grass, the clothing deranged, the long dark hair in tangles and full of clotted blood. The greater part of the forehead was torn away, and from the jagged hole the brain protruded, over`owing the temple, a frothy mass of gray, crowned with clusters of crimson bubbles— the work of a shell!

The child moved his little hands, making wild, uncertain gestures. He uttered a series of inarticulate and indescribable cries— something between the chattering of an ape and the gobbling of a turkey— a startling, soulless, unholy sound, the language of a devil. The child was a deaf mute.

Then he stood motionless, with quivering lips, looking down upon the wreck.

1889, 1891

HENRY JAMES 1843–1916

As a young man Henry James set out to be a “literary master” in the Eu ro pean sense. His writings, the product of more than half a century as a publishing author, include tales, novellas, novels, plays, autobiographies, criticism, travel pieces, letters, reviews, and biographies— altogether perhaps as many as one hundred vol- umes, a prodigious output even by late- nineteenth- century standards. The recogni- tion of his importance as well as his wide in`uence as novelist and critic increased in the years between the world wars, when James’s "ction was recognized as a fore- runner of transatlantic literary modernism. Since that time James has been "rmly established as one of Amer i ca’s greatest novelists and critics, a subtle psychological realist, and an unsurpassed literary stylist.

Henry James was born in New York City on April 15, 1843. His father was a reli- gious phi los o pher who had inherited enough wealth for his family to live comfort- ably and travel without his needing to earn an income; his mother, Mary Robertson Walsh James, like many women of her day, stayed home and was the family main- stay. James’s older brother, William, would become Amer i ca’s "rst notable psycholo- gist and one of its most in`uential phi los o phers. The family also included two younger brothers and a sister, Alice, herself a perceptive observer and diarist. First taken to Eu rope as an infant, James spent his boyhood in a then almost bucolic Washington Square in New York City until, when he was twelve, the family once again left for the Continent. His father wanted the children to have a rich, “sensuous education,” and during the next four years, with stays in Eng land, Switzerland, and France, he brought them to galleries, libraries, museums, and (of special interest to James) theaters. James’s formal schooling was unsystematic, but he mastered French well enough to begin a lifelong study of its lit er a ture, and from childhood on he was fascinated by the literary and historical traditions in Eu rope that, as he later lamented in Hawthorne (1879), he believed were mostly absent in the United States.

James early developed what he described in A Small Boy and Others (1913) as the “practice of wondering and dawdling and gaping.” This memoir also tells about a

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“horrid even if obscure hurt” that he suffered while "ghting a stable "re in his late teens. The exact nature of this injury and its consequences have been the subject of intense speculation by biographers and critics, and it prob ably prevented James from serving in the Civil War. By this time, James’s interest in lit er a ture and in writing had inten- si"ed; before he reached the age of twenty- one he was publishing reviews and stories in some of the leading Amer- ican journals— the Atlantic Monthly, the North American Review, the Galaxy, and the Nation. He attended Harvard Law School brie`y in 1862 but then deci ded that lit er a ture was his calling. He settled permanently in Eng land in 1876 ( after moving back and forth between Amer i ca and Eu rope and after trial residences in France and Italy). James never married, and in recent de cades the portrayal of sexual desire in his "ction and the question of his own sexual orientation have engaged his critics and biographers. He maintained close ties with his family, including William’s children. He kept up a large correspon- dence, was extremely sociable, and knew most of his contemporaries in the arts. His prodigious creative energy was invested for more than "fty years in what he called the “sacred rage” of his art.

Leon Edel’s in`uential, multi- volume biography of James, published from 1953 to 1972, divides James’s mature literary career into three phases. In the "rst, which culminated with The Portrait of a Lady (1881), James felt his way toward and appro- priated the so- called international theme— the drama, comic and tragic, of Ameri- cans in Eu rope and occasionally of Eu ro pe ans in Amer i ca. In the second period, he experimented with diverse themes and forms— initially in novels dealing explic itly with the social and po liti cal currents of the 1870s and 1880s, such as The Princess Casamassima (1886), then in writing for the theater, and " nally in shorter "ctions exploring the relationship of artists to society and the troubled psyches of oppressed children, as in What Maisie Knew (1897). In his last period, the so- called major phase, which culminated with The Golden Bowl (1904), he returned to international and cosmopolitan subjects in elaborately complex narratives of great epistemologi- cal and moral challenge to readers.

Three of his earliest books, A Passionate Pilgrim (stories), Transatlantic Sketches (travel pieces), and Roderick Hudson (a novel), were published in 1875. The Ameri- can (1877) was James’s "rst successful extended treatment of the naïve young American in con`ict with the traditions, customs, and values of the Old World. Daisy Miller (1878), with its portrayal of the “new” American girl, brought him widespread popularity, so much so that the name of the title character became used frequently in con temporary debates about the role of women in the United States. In this "ctional “study,” as it was originally subtitled, a stubbornly naïve American girl willfully resists Eu ro pean (and American) social mores. These works show James as neither a national patriot nor a resentful émigré but a true cosmopolitan concerned with exploring American national character as it is tested by cultural displacement. In Daisy Miller in par tic u lar, James’s skillful use of the limited point

Henry James in the early 1890s.

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of view depicts a young American man who is himself limited by self- absorption and class position— and who is thus unable to see Daisy for who she is. In Daisy Miller and other works written during the 1870s, James was already developing the hallmarks of his later works. The drama of his "ction became increasingly con- cerned with the question of knowledge, whether characters’ knowledge of each other or readers’ strug gles with deliberately limited information.

Despite their appeal, the relatively simple characters of Christopher Newman (The American) and Daisy Miller evoke romance, melodrama, and pathos more than psy- chological complexity and genuine tragedy, which required for James a broader can- vas. In the character and career of Isabel Archer he found the focus for one of his most in`uential works on the international theme, The Portrait of a Lady. Here, the complex inner lives of his American characters are rendered with greater depth and stylistic innovation. The last third of Portrait depicts the heroine’s awakened understanding and her attempts to escape her miserable marriage without sacri- "cing her princi ples or harming other people she cares about. James’s tendency to have his main characters sacri"ce their own happiness for the sake of princi ple has been criticized by some for its rejection of self- expression. But in Portrait and other of his works, James elucidates his belief that renunciation is a form of self- expression. During this same period, James formulated his own views on “The Art of Fiction” (1884) in a polemical essay that is reprinted in the “Realism and Naturalism” section of this volume.

From 1885 to 1890 James was largely occupied by writing The Bostonians (1886), The Princess Casamassima (1886), and The Tragic Muse (1889). These novels of reformers, radicals, and revolutionaries are better appreciated, perhaps, in our time than they were in his. Out of a sense of artistic challenge as well as "nancial need, James attempted to regain the popularity of Daisy Miller and earn money by turn- ing dramatist. Between 1890 and 1895 he wrote seven plays; two were produced, and both were painful public failures for their author, leading him into a period of intense self- doubt. Between 1895 and  1900 he returned to "ction, especially to experimental works with three dominant subjects that he often combined: misun- derstood or troubled writers and artists; ghosts and apparitions; and doomed or threatened children and adolescents. (The latter two themes conjoin to power ful effect in The Turn of the Screw [1898].) “The Beast in the Jungle” (1903, 1909) depicts the life of an egocentric man whose obsessive concern over the vague prospect of personal disaster destroys his chances for love and life in the pres ent. Some of James’s biographers have linked the guilt in this tale to the suicide of the writer Constance Fenimore Woolson in 1894, which she may have resorted to partly out of unrequited (and entirely unrecognized) love for James. More recently, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and other critics have linked the character’s lack of interest in women to repressed homo sexuality. However it is interpreted, “The Beast in the Jungle” remains a chill- ing tale of a failed life.

In his last three great novels— The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903), and The Golden Bowl (1904)— James experimented further with represent- ing the complexity and uncertainty of human consciousness. All three of these books return to the international theme, but with a new and remorseless insight into how people make their own realities through their perceptions, impressions, and inner motivations. American innocence, at this point, becomes only a willful refusal to see, while awareness of one’s own character as well as others’ provides the wisdom to escape the designs that lead to disaster— though disaster is rarely thwarted in time, and we are usually left both with insight and with the knowledge that it has come “too late.” James’s remedy for unhappiness is sometimes more unhappiness, but more importantly the willingness to entertain diverse points of view on moral strug gles. His treatment of such an extraordinarily complex theme allows him an unparalleled richness of syntax, sentence structure, meta phoric webs, symbols, char- acterization, point of view, and organ izing rhythms. The world of these late novels

is the one James de"ned in “The Art of Fiction” (1884) as representing “the very atmosphere of the mind.” Though they found only a limited readership in James’s own time, these dramas of perception are widely considered to be James’s most in`u- ential contribution to the craft of "ction. He became, in the words of Joseph Con- rad, “the historian of "ne consciences.”

When James was not writing "ction, he often wrote about it— either his own or others’. He was, as he noted in a letter, “a critical, a non- naif, a questioning, worry- ing reader.” His inquiries into the achievement of other writers— preserved in such volumes as French Poets and Novelists (1878), Partial Portraits (1888), and Notes on Novelists (1914)— are remarkable for their breadth, balance, and acuteness. More broadly theoretical than his reviews or essays on individual writers, “The Art of Fic- tion” (an excerpt from which appears later in this volume) encapsulates James’s central aesthetic conceptions. Calling attention to the unparalleled opportunities open to the artist of "ction and the beauty of the novel form, James also insists that “the deepest quality of a work of art will always be the quality of the mind of the producer” and that “no good novel will ever proceed from a super"cial mind.” James left no better rec ord than this essay of his always twinned concerns over the moral and formal qualities of "ction, of the relationship between aesthetic and moral perception.

James was an extremely self- conscious writer, and his Complete Notebooks, edited and published in 1987, reveal a subtle, intense mind in the act of discovering sub- jects, methods, and princi ples. The prefaces he wrote for Scribner’s lavish twenty- four- volume New York Edition (1907–9) of his extensively revised novels and tales contain James’s "nal analyses of the works he considered to best represent his achievement— not to mention the extensive revisions themselves. As the culmina- tion of a lifetime of re`ection on the art of "ction, they provide extraordinary accounts of the origins and growth of his major writings and exquisite analyses of the "ctional prob lems each work posed.

During his 1904–5 visit to the United States, his "rst after nearly twenty years, James traveled extensively and lectured in his native land and in Canada. The chief result of this visit was The American Scene (1907). This “absolutely personal” book explores the profound changes that occurred in Amer i ca between the Civil War and World War I, the period James characterized as the “Age of the Mistake.” The same richness of personal rumination is found in three other autobiographical reminis- cences he wrote later in life: A Small Boy and Others (1913), Notes of a Son and Brother (1914), and the fragmentary and posthumously published The Middle Years (1917).

Henry James became a naturalized British subject out of impatience with Amer i ca’s reluctance to enter World War I. Starting in 1915, he involved himself in war- relief work. He was awarded the British Order of Merit in 1916. Despite their consider- able dif"culty, most of James’s novels and tales have remained in print. The rich depth of his work— especially his incisive psychological renderings of why people do the things they do, or don’t do the things they might or even ought to do— has continued to attract readers and scholars. As a writer who was born an American citizen and died British, and as an author whose writing has been celebrated both as the pinnacle of literary realism and an early example of modernist "ction, James eludes easy categorization. The social world that he describes may seem distant from our own, but his "ction still commands attention, both because of his stylis- tic prowess and because of the complexity of his insights. The short works included in this volume all show, in dif fer ent ways, James’s ability to create a landscape of ambiguity and doubt, where easy moral judgments become unsettled.

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1. First published in the Cornhill Magazine 37 (June– July 1878). The text reprinted here fol- lows the "rst British book edition, published by Macmillan in 1879. 2. Lac Léman, or Lake Geneva. 3. Boarding house. 4. Newport, Rhode Island, and Saratoga, New York, resort areas for the rich, where the Ocean

House and Congress Hall hotels are located. 5. Three Crowns (French). 6. Medieval castle on an island in Lake Geneva, famous as the setting for Byron’s poem “The Pris- oner of Chillon” (1816). “Dent du Midi”: the high- est peak in a mountain group in the Swiss Alps. 7. An aromatic substance made from bark and wood, used at the time for the relief of minor pain.

Daisy Miller: A Study1

I

At the little town of Vevey, in Switzerland, there is a particularly comfort- able hotel. There are, indeed, many hotels; for the entertainment of tourists is the business of the place, which, as many travelers will remember, is seated upon the edge of a remarkably blue lake2— a lake that it behoves every tour- ist to visit. The shore of the lake pres ents an unbroken array of establish- ments of this order, of every category, from the “ grand hotel” of the newest fashion, with a chalk- white front, a hundred balconies, and a dozen `ags `ying from its roof, to the little Swiss pension3 of an elder day, with its name inscribed in German- looking lettering upon a pink or yellow wall, and an awkward summer- house in the angle of the garden. One of the hotels at Vevey, however, is famous, even classical, being distinguished from many of its upstart neighbors by an air both of luxury and of maturity. In this region, in the month of June, American travelers are extremely numerous; it may be said, indeed, that Vevey assumes at this period some of the characteris- tics of an American watering- place. There are sights and sounds which evoke a vision, an echo, of Newport and Saratoga.4 There is a `itting hither and thither of “stylish” young girls, a rustling of muslin ̀ ounces, a rattle of dance- music in the morning hours, a sound of high- pitched voices at all times. You receive an impression of these things at the excellent inn of the “Trois Cou- ronnes,”5 and are transported in fancy to the Ocean House or to Congress Hall. But at the “Trois Couronnes,” it must be added, there are other features that are much at variance with these suggestions: neat German waiters, who look like secretaries of legation; Rus sian princesses sitting in the garden; little Polish boys walking about, held by the hand, with their governors; a view of the snowy crest of the Dent du Midi and the picturesque towers of the Castle of Chillon.6

I hardly know whether it was the analogies or the differences that were uppermost in the mind of a young American, who, two or three years ago, sat in the garden of the “Trois Couronnes,” looking about him, rather idly, at some of the graceful objects I have mentioned. It was a beautiful summer morning, and in what ever fashion the young American looked at things, they must have seemed to him charming. He had come from Geneva the day before, by the little steamer, to see his aunt, who was staying at the hotel— Geneva having been for a long time his place of residence. But his aunt had a headache— his aunt had almost always a headache— and now she was shut up in her room, smelling camphor,7 so that he was at liberty to wander about. He was some seven- and- twenty years of age; when his friends spoke of him, they usually said that he was at Geneva, “studying.” When his

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8. I.e., Geneva, where the French Protestant reformer John Calvin (1509–1564) attempted to establish a community based on his theological beliefs.

enemies spoke of him they said— but, after all, he had no enemies; he was an extremely amiable fellow, and universally liked. What I should say is, sim- ply, that when certain persons spoke of him they af"rmed that the reason of his spending so much time at Geneva was that he was extremely devoted to a lady who lived there— a foreign lady— a person older than himself. Very few Americans— indeed I think none— had ever seen this lady, about whom there were some singular stories. But Winterbourne had an old attachment for the little metropolis of Calvinism;8 he had been put to school there as a

Daisy Miller. This illustration by Harry McVickar appeared as the frontispiece to the 1892 edition of Daisy Miller, which was published by Harper and Brothers.

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9. I.e., like a member of the diplomatic corps. 1. Legs.

2. Walking stick.

boy, and he had afterwards gone to college there— circumstances which had led to his forming a great many youthful friendships. Many of these he had kept, and they were a source of great satisfaction to him.

After knocking at his aunt’s door and learning that she was indisposed, he had taken a walk about the town, and then he had come in to his break- fast. He had now "nished his breakfast, but he was drinking a small cup of coffee, which had been served to him on a little table in the garden by one of the waiters who looked like an attaché.9 At last he "nished his coffee and lit a cigarette. Presently a small boy came walking along the path—an urchin of nine or ten. The child, who was diminutive for his years, had an aged expression of countenance, a pale complexion, and sharp little features. He was dressed in knickerbockers, with red stockings, which displayed his poor little spindleshanks;1 he also wore a brilliant red cravat. He carried in his hand a long alpenstock,2 the sharp point of which he thrust into every- thing that he approached— the `ower- beds, the garden- benches, the trains of the ladies’ dresses. In front of Winterbourne he paused, looking at him with a pair of bright, penetrating little eyes.

“ Will you give me a lump of sugar?” he asked, in a sharp, hard little voice— a voice immature, and yet, somehow, not young.

Winterbourne glanced at the small table near him, on which his coffee- service rested, and saw that several morsels of sugar remained. “Yes, you may take one,” he answered; “but I don’t think sugar is good for little boys.”

This little boy stepped forward and carefully selected three of the coveted fragments, two of which he buried in the pocket to his knickerbockers, depositing the other as promptly in another place. He poked his alpenstock, lance- fashion, into Winterbourne’s bench, and tried to crack the lump of sugar with his teeth.

“Oh, blazes; it’s har- r- d!” he exclaimed, pronouncing the adjective in a peculiar manner.

Winterbourne had immediately perceived that he might have the honor of claiming him as a fellow- countryman. “Take care you don’t hurt your teeth,” he said, paternally.

“I haven’t got any teeth to hurt. They have all come out. I have only got seven teeth. My mother counted them last night, and one came out right after- wards. She said she’d slap me if any more came out. I can’t help it. It’s this old Eu rope. It’s the climate that makes them come out. In Amer i ca they didn’t come out. It’s these hotels.”

Winterbourne was much amused. “If you eat three lumps of sugar, your mother will certainly slap you,” he said.

“She’s got to give me some candy, then,” rejoined his young interlocutor. “I can’t get any candy here— any American candy. American candy’s the best candy.”

“And are American little boys the best little boys?” asked Winterbourne. “I don’t know. I’m an American boy,” said the child. “I see you are one of the best!” laughed Winterbourne. “Are you an American man?” pursued this vivacious infant. And then, on

Winterbourne’s af"rmative reply— “American men are the best,” he declared.

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3. Nagging.

His companion thanked him for the compliment; and the child, who had now got astride of his alpenstock, stood looking about him, while he attacked a second lump of sugar. Winterbourne wondered if he himself had been like this in his infancy, for he had been brought to Eu rope at about this age.

“ Here comes my sister!” cried the child, in a moment. “She’s an Ameri- can girl.”

Winterbourne looked along the path and saw a beautiful young lady advancing. “American girls are the best girls,” he said, cheerfully, to his young companion.

“My sister ain’t the best!” the child declared. “She’s always blowing3 at me.” “I imagine that is your fault, not hers,” said Winterbourne. The young lady

meanwhile had drawn near. She was dressed in white muslin, with a hun- dred frills and `ounces, and knots of pale- colored ribbon. She was bare- headed; but she balanced in her hand a large parasol, with a deep border of embroidery; and she was strikingly, admirably pretty. “How pretty they are!” thought Winterbourne, straightening himself in his seat, as if he were prepared to rise.

The young lady paused in front of his bench, near the parapet of the garden, which overlooked the lake. The little boy had now converted his alpenstock into a vaulting- pole, by the aid of which he was springing about in the gravel, and kicking it up not a little.

“Randolph,” said the young lady, “what are you doing?” “I’m going up the Alps,” replied Randolph. “This is the way!” And he gave

another little jump, scattering the pebbles about Winterbourne’s ears. “That’s the way they come down,” said Winterbourne. “He’s an American man!” cried Randolph, in his little hard voice. The young lady gave no heed to this announcement, but looked straight

at her brother. “Well, I guess you had better be quiet,” she simply observed. It seemed to Winterbourne that he had been in a manner presented. He

got up and stepped slowly towards the young girl, throwing away his ciga- rette. “This little boy and I have made acquaintance,” he said, with great civility. In Geneva, as he had been perfectly aware, a young man was not at liberty to speak to a young unmarried lady except under certain rarely- occurring conditions; but here at Vevey, what conditions could be better than these?— a pretty American girl coming and standing in front of you in a garden. This pretty American girl, however, on hearing Winterbourne’s observation, simply glanced at him; she then turned her head and looked over the parapet, at the lake and the opposite mountains. He wondered whether he had gone too far; but he deci ded that he must advance farther, rather than retreat. While he was thinking of something else to say, the young lady turned to the little boy again.

“I should like to know where you got that pole,” she said. “I bought it!” responded Randolph. “You don’t mean to say you’re going to take it to Italy!” “Yes, I am going to take it to Italy!” the child declared. The young girl glanced over the front of her dress, and smoothed out a

knot or two of ribbon. Then she rested her eyes upon the prospect again. “Well, I guess you had better leave it somewhere,” she said, after a moment.

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4. A mountain pass in the Alps between Switzerland and Italy.

“Are you going to Italy?” Winterbourne inquired, in a tone of great re spect. The young lady glanced at him again. “Yes, sir,” she replied. And she said nothing more. “Are you— a— going over the Simplon?”4 Winterbourne pursued, a little

embarrassed. “I don’t know,” she said, “I suppose it’s some mountain. Randolph, what

mountain are we going over?” “ Going where?” the child demanded. “To Italy,” Winterbourne explained. “I don’t know,” said Randolph. “I don’t want to go to Italy. I want to go to

Amer i ca.” “Oh, Italy is a beautiful place!” rejoined the young man. “Can you get candy there?” Randolph loudly inquired. “I hope not,” said his sister. “I guess you have had enough candy, and

mother thinks so too.” “I haven’t had any for ever so long— for a hundred weeks!” cried the boy,

still jumping about. The young lady inspected her `ounces and smoothed her ribbons again;

and Winterbourne presently risked an observation upon the beauty of the view. He was ceasing to be embarrassed, for he had begun to perceive that she was not in the least embarrassed herself. There had not been the slightest alteration in her charming complexion; she was evidently neither offended nor `uttered. If she looked another way when he spoke to her, and seemed not particularly to hear him, this was simply her habit, her manner. Yet, as he talked a little more, and pointed out some of the objects of interest in the view, with which she appeared quite unacquainted, she gradually gave him more of the bene"t of her glance; and then he saw that this glance was per- fectly direct and unshrinking. It was not, however, what would have been called an immodest glance, for the young girl’s eyes were singularly honest and fresh. They were wonderfully pretty eyes; and, indeed, Winterbourne had not seen for a long time anything prettier than his fair countrywoman’s vari ous features— her complexion, her nose, her ears, her teeth. He had a great relish for feminine beauty; he was addicted to observing and analyz- ing it; and as regards this young lady’s face he made several observations. It was not at all insipid, but it was not exactly expressive; and though it was eminently delicate, Winterbourne mentally accused it— very forgivingly— of a want of "nish. He thought it very pos si ble that Master Randolph’s sister was a coquette; he was sure she had a spirit of her own; but in her bright, sweet, super"cial little visage there was no mockery, no irony. Before long it became obvious that she was much disposed towards conversation. She told him that they were going to Rome for the winter— she and her mother and Randolph. She asked him if he was a “real American”; she wouldn’t have taken him for one; he seemed more like a German— this was said after a little hesitation, especially when he spoke. Winterbourne, laughing, answered that he had met Germans who spoke like Americans; but that he had not, so far as he remembered, met an American who spoke like a German. Then he asked her if she would not be more comfortable in sitting upon the bench which he had just quitted. She answered that she liked standing up and walk-

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5. Railway cars.

ing about; but she presently sat down. She told him she was from New York State— “if you know where that is.” Winterbourne learned more about her by catching hold of her small, slippery brother and making him stand a few minutes by his side.

“Tell me your name, my boy,” he said. “Randolph C. Miller,” said the boy, sharply. “And I’ll tell you her name”;

and he leveled his alpenstock at his sister. “You had better wait till you are asked!” said this young lady, calmly. “I should like very much to know your name,” said Winterbourne. “Her name is Daisy Miller!” cried the child. “But that isn’t her real name;

that isn’t her name on her cards.” “It’s a pity you haven’t got one of my cards!” said Miss Miller. “Her real name is Annie P. Miller,” the boy went on. “Ask him his name,” said his sister, indicating Winterbourne. But on this point Randolph seemed perfectly indifferent; he continued to

supply information with regard to his own family. “My father’s name is Ezra B. Miller,” he announced. “My father ain’t in Eu rope; my father’s in a better place than Eu rope.”

Winterbourne imagined for a moment that this was the manner in which the child had been taught to intimate that Mr. Miller had been removed to the sphere of celestial rewards. But Randolph immediately added, “My father’s in Schenectady. He’s got a big business. My father’s rich, you bet.”

“Well!” ejaculated Miss Miller, lowering her parasol and looking at the embroidered border. Winterbourne presently released the child, who departed, dragging his alpenstock along the path. “He doesn’t like Eu rope,” said the young girl. “He wants to go back.”

“To Schenectady, you mean?” “Yes; he wants to go right home. He hasn’t got any boys here. There is one

boy here, but he always goes round with a teacher; they won’t let him play.” “And your brother hasn’t any teacher?” Winterbourne inquired. “ Mother thought of getting him one, to travel round with us. There was a

lady told her of a very good teacher; an American lady— perhaps you know her— Mrs.  Sanders. I think she came from Boston. She told her of this teacher, and we thought of getting him to travel round with us. But Randolph said he didn’t want a teacher traveling round with us. He said he wouldn’t have lessons when he was in the cars.5 And we are in the cars about half the time. There was an En glish lady we met in the cars— I think her name was Miss Featherstone; perhaps you know her. She wanted to know why I didn’t give Randolph lessons— give him ‘instruction,’ she called it. I guess he could give me more instruction than I could give him. He’s very smart.”

“Yes,” said Winterbourne; “he seems very smart.” “ Mother’s going to get a teacher for him as soon as we get to Italy. Can

you get good teachers in Italy?” “Very good, I should think,” said Winterbourne. “Or else she’s going to "nd some school. He ought to learn some more.

He’s only nine. He’s going to college.” And in this way Miss Miller contin- ued to converse upon the affairs of her family, and upon other topics. She

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6. Misconduct (French).

sat there with her extremely pretty hands, ornamented with very brilliant rings, folded in her lap, and with her pretty eyes now resting upon those of Winterbourne, now wandering over the garden, the people who passed by, and the beautiful view. She talked to Winterbourne as if she had known him a long time. He found it very pleasant. It was many years since he heard a young girl talk so much. It might have been said of this unknown young lady, who had come and sat down beside him upon a bench, that she chattered. She was very quiet, she sat in a charming tranquil attitude; but her lips and her eyes were constantly moving. She had a soft, slender, agreeable voice, and her tone was decidedly sociable. She gave Winterbourne a history of her movements and intentions, and those of her mother and brother, in Eu rope, and enumerated, in par tic u lar, the vari ous hotels at which they had stopped. “That En glish lady in the cars,” she said— “Miss Featherstone— asked me if we didn’t all live in hotels in Amer i ca. I told her I had never been in so many hotels in my life as since I came to Eu rope. I have never seen so many— it’s nothing but hotels.” But Miss Miller did not make this remark with a quer- ulous accent; she appeared to be in the best humor with every thing. She declared that the hotels were very good, when once you got used to their ways, and that Eu rope was perfectly sweet. She was not disappointed— not a bit. Perhaps it was because she had heard so much about it before. She had ever so many intimate friends that had been there ever so many times. And then she had had ever so many dresses and things from Paris. When- ever she put on a Paris dress she felt as if she were in Eu rope.

“It was a kind of wishing- cap,” said Winterbourne. “Yes,” said Miss Miller, without examining this analogy; “it always made

me wish I was here. But I needn’t have done that for dresses. I am sure they send all the pretty ones to Amer i ca; you see the most frightful things here. The only thing I don’t like,” she proceeded, “is the society. There isn’t any society; or, if there is, I don’t know where it keeps itself. Do you? I suppose there is some society somewhere, but I haven’t seen anything of it. I’m very fond of society, and I have always had a great deal of it. I don’t mean only in Schenectady, but in New York. I used to go to New York every winter. In New York I had lots of society. Last winter I had seventeen dinners given me; and three of them were by gentlemen,” added Daisy Miller. “I have more friends in New York than in Schenectady— more gentlemen friends; and more young lady friends too,” she resumed in a moment. She paused again for an instant; she was looking at Winterbourne with all her prettiness in her lively eyes and in her light, slightly monotonous smile. “I have always had,” she said, “a great deal of gentlemen’s society.”

Poor Winterbourne was amused, perplexed, and decidedly charmed. He had never yet heard a young girl express herself in just this fashion; never, at least, save in cases where to say such things seemed a kind of demonstra- tive evidence of a certain laxity of deportment. And yet was he to accuse Miss Daisy Miller of actual or potential inconduite,6 as they said at Geneva? He felt that he had lived at Geneva so long that he had lost a good deal; he had become dishabituated to the American tone. Never, indeed, since he had grown old enough to appreciate things, had he encountered a young Amer- ican girl of so pronounced a type as this. Certainly she was very charming;

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7. Social guide.

but how deucedly sociable! Was she simply a pretty girl from New York State— were they all like that, the pretty girls who had a good deal of gen- tlemen’s society? Or was she also a designing, an audacious, an unscrupu- lous young person? Winterbourne had lost his instinct in this matter, and his reason could not help him. Miss Daisy Miller looked extremely innocent. Some people had told him that, after all, American girls were exceedingly innocent; and others had told him that, after all, they were not. He was inclined to think Miss Daisy Miller was a `irt— a pretty American `irt. He had never, as yet, had any relations with young ladies of this category. He had known, here in Eu rope, two or three women— persons older than Miss Daisy Miller, and provided, for respectability’s sake, with husbands— who were great coquettes— dangerous, terrible women, with whom one’s relations were liable to take a serious turn. But this young girl was not a coquette in that sense; she was very unsophisticated; she was only a pretty American `irt. Winterbourne was almost grateful for having found the formula that applied to Miss Daisy Miller. He leaned back in his seat; he remarked to himself that she had the most charming nose he had ever seen; he wondered what were the regular conditions and limitations of one’s intercourse with a pretty American `irt. It presently became appar- ent that he was on the way to learn.

“Have you been to that old castle?” asked the young girl, pointing with her parasol to the far- gleaming walls of the Château de Chillon.

“Yes, formerly, more than once,” said Winterbourne. “You too, I suppose, have seen it?”

“No; we haven’t been there. I want to go there dreadfully. Of course I mean to go there. I wouldn’t go away from here without having seen that old castle.”

“It’s a very pretty excursion,” said Winterbourne, “and very easy to make. You can drive, you know, or you can go by the little steamer.”

“You can go in the cars,” said Miss Miller. “Yes; you can go in the cars,” Winterbourne assented. “Our courier7 says they take you right up to the castle,” the young girl con-

tinued. “We were going last week; but my mother gave out. She suffers dreadfully from dyspepsia. She said she couldn’t go. Randolph wouldn’t go either; he says he doesn’t think much of old castles. But I guess we’ll go this week, if we can get Randolph.”

“Your brother is not interested in ancient monuments?” Winterbourne inquired, smiling.

“He says he don’t care much about old castles. He’s only nine. He wants to stay at the hotel. Mother’s afraid to leave him alone, and the courier won’t stay with him; so we haven’t been to many places. But it will be too bad if we don’t go up there.” And Miss Miller pointed again at the Château de Chillon.

“I should think it might be arranged,” said Winterbourne. “ Couldn’t you get some one to stay— for the after noon— with Randolph?”

Miss Miller looked at him a moment; and then, very placidly— “I wish you would stay with him!” she said.

Winterbourne hesitated a moment. “I would much rather go to Chillon with you.”

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8. Grace, poise (French).

“With me?” asked the young girl, with the same placidity. She didn’t rise, blushing, as a young girl at Geneva would have done; and

yet Winterbourne, conscious that he had been very bold, thought it pos si ble she was offended. “With your mother,” he answered very respectfully.

But it seemed that both his audacity and his re spect were lost upon Miss Daisy Miller. “I guess my mother won’t go, after all,” she said. “She don’t like to ride round in the after noon. But did you really mean what you said just now; that you would like to go up there?”

“Most earnestly,” Winterbourne declared. “Then we may arrange it. If mother will stay with Randolph, I guess

Eugenio will.” “Eugenio?” the young man inquired. “Eugenio’s our courier. He doesn’t like to stay with Randolph; he’s the most

fastidious man I ever saw. But he’s a splendid courier. I guess he’ll stay at home with Randolph if mother does, and then we can go to the castle.”

Winterbourne re`ected for an instant as lucidly as pos si ble— “we” could only mean Miss Daisy Miller and himself. This programme seemed almost too agreeable for credence; he felt as if he ought to kiss the young lady’s hand. Possibly he would have done so— and quite spoiled the proj ect; but at this moment another person— presumably Eugenio— appeared. A tall, handsome man, with superb whis kers, wearing a velvet morning- coat and a brilliant watch- chain, approached Miss Miller, looking sharply at her companion. “Oh, Eugenio!” said Miss Miller, with the friendliest accent.

Eugenio had looked at Winterbourne from head to foot; he now bowed gravely to the young lady. “I have the honor to inform ma de moi selle that lun- cheon is upon the table.”

Miss Miller slowly rose. “See here, Eugenio,” she said. “I’m going to that old castle, any way.”

“To the Château de Chillon, ma de moi selle?” the courier inquired. “Ma de moi selle had made arrangements?” he added, in a tone which struck Winterbourne as very impertinent.

Eugenio’s tone apparently threw, even to Miss Miller’s own apprehension, a slightly ironical light upon the young girl’s situation. She turned to Winter- bourne, blushing a little— a very little. “You won’t back out?” she said.

“I shall not be happy till we go!” he protested. “And you are staying in this hotel?” she went on. “And you are really an

American?” The courier stood looking at Winterbourne, offensively. The young man,

at least, thought his manner of looking an offence to Miss Miller; it con- veyed an imputation that she “picked up” acquaintances. “I shall have the honor of presenting to you a person who will tell you all about me,” he said smiling, and referring to his aunt.

“Oh well, we’ll go some day,” said Miss Miller. And she gave him a smile and turned away. She put up her parasol and walked back to the inn beside Eugenio. Winterbourne stood looking after her; and as she moved away, drawing her muslin furbelows over the gravel, said to himself that she had the tournure8 of a princess.

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9. Rolls, coils (French). 1. A resort in Germany.

II

He had, however, engaged to do more than proved feasible, in promising to pres ent his aunt, Mrs. Costello, to Miss Daisy Miller. As soon as the former lady had got better of her headache he waited upon her in her apartment; and, after the proper inquiries in regard to her health, he asked her if she had observed, in the hotel, an American family— a mamma, a daughter, and a little boy.

“And a courier?” said Mrs. Costello. “Oh, yes, I have observed them. Seen them— heard them— and kept out of their way.” Mrs. Costello was a widow with a fortune; a person of much distinction, who frequently intimated that, if she were not so dreadfully liable to sick- headaches, she would prob ably have left a deeper impress upon her time. She had a long pale face, a high nose, and a great deal of very striking white hair, which she wore in large puffs and rouleaux9 over the top of her head. She had two sons married in New York, and another who was now in Eu rope. This young man was amus- ing himself at Homburg,1 and, though he was on his travels, was rarely per- ceived to visit any par tic u lar city at the moment selected by his mother for her own appearance there. Her nephew, who had come up to Vevey expressly to see her, was therefore more attentive than those who, as she said, were nearer to her. He had imbibed at Geneva the idea that one must always be attentive to one’s aunt. Mrs. Costello had not seen him for many years, and she was greatly pleased with him, manifesting her approbation by initiating him into many of the secrets of that social sway which, as she gave him to understand, she exerted in the American capital. She admitted that she was very exclusive; but, if he were acquainted with New York, he would see that one had to be. And her picture of the minutely hierarchical constitution of the society of that city, which she presented to him in many dif fer ent lights, was, to Winterbourne’s imagination, almost oppressively striking.

He immediately perceived, from her tone, that Miss Daisy Miller’s place in the social scale was low. “I am afraid you don’t approve of them,” he said.

“They are very common,” Mrs. Costello declared. “They are the sort of Americans that one does one’s duty by not— not accepting.”

“Ah, you don’t accept them?” said the young man. “I can’t, my dear Frederick. I would if I could, but I can’t.” “The young girl is very pretty,” said Winterbourne, in a moment. “Of course she’s pretty. But she is very common.” “I see what you mean, of course,” said Winterbourne, after another pause. “She has that charming look that they all have,” his aunt resumed. “I can’t

think where they pick it up; and she dresses in perfection—no, you don’t know how well she dresses. I can’t think where they get their taste.”

“But, my dear aunt, she is not, after all, a Comanche savage.” “She is a young lady,” said Mrs. Costello, “who has an intimacy with her

mamma’s courier?” “An intimacy with the courier?” the young man demanded. “Oh, the mother is just as bad! They treat the courier like a familiar

friend— like a gentleman. I shouldn’t won der if he dines with them. Very likely they have never seen a man with such good manners, such "ne clothes,

4 2 0 | H E N R Y J A M E S

2. Quite simply! (French).

so like a gentleman. He prob ably corresponds to the young lady’s idea of a Count. He sits with them in the garden, in the eve ning. I think he smokes.”

Winterbourne listened with interest to these disclosures; they helped him to make up his mind about Miss Daisy. Evidently she was rather wild. “Well,” he said, “I am not a courier, and yet she was very charming to me.”

“You had better have said at "rst,” said Mrs. Costello with dignity, “that you had made her acquaintance.”

“We simply met in the garden, and we talked a bit.” “Tout bonnement!2 And pray what did you say?” “I said I should take the liberty of introducing her to my admirable aunt.” “I am much obliged to you.” “It was to guarantee my respectability,” said Winterbourne. “And pray who is to guarantee hers?” “Ah, you are cruel!” said the young man. “She’s a very nice girl.” “You don’t say that as if you believed it,” Mrs. Costello observed. “She is completely uncultivated,” Winterbourne went on. “But she is won-

derfully pretty, and, in short, she is very nice. To prove that I believe it, I am going to take her to the Château de Chillon.”

“You two are going off there together? I should say it proved just the con- trary. How long had you known her, may I ask, when this in ter est ing proj ect was formed. You haven’t been twenty- four hours in the house.”

“I had known her half- an- hour!” said Winterbourne, smiling. “Dear me!” cried Mrs. Costello. “What a dreadful girl!” Her nephew was silent for some moments. “You really think, then,” he began earnestly, and with a desire for trust-

worthy information— “you really think that—” But he paused again. “Think what, sir,” said his aunt. “That she is the sort of young lady who expects a man— sooner or later—

to carry her off?” “I haven’t the least idea what such young ladies expect a man to do. But I

really think that you had better not meddle with little American girls that are uncultivated, as you call them. You have lived too long out of the coun- try. You will be sure to make some great mistake. You are too innocent.”

“My dear aunt, I am not so innocent,” said Winterbourne, smiling and curling his moustache.

“You are too guilty, then?” Winterbourne continued to curl his moustache, meditatively. “You won’t

let the poor girl know you then?” he asked at last. “Is it literally true that she is going to the Château de Chillon with you?” “I think that she fully intends it.” “Then, my dear Frederick,” said Mrs. Costello, “I must decline the honor

of her acquaintance. I am an old woman, but I am not too old— thank Heaven—to be shocked!”

“But don’t they all do these things— the young girls in Amer i ca?” Winter- bourne inquired.

Mrs. Costello stared a moment. “I should like to see my grand daughters do them!” she declared, grimly.

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3. A common table for guests in a restaurant or hotel (French). “Comme il faut”: well mannered (French).

This seemed to throw some light upon the matter, for Winterbourne remembered to have heard that his pretty cousins in New York were “tre- mendous `irts.” If, therefore, Miss Daisy Miller exceeded the liberal license allowed to these young ladies, it was probable that anything might be expected of her. Winterbourne was impatient to see her again, and he was vexed with himself that, by instinct, he should not appreciate her justly.

Though he was impatient to see her, he hardly knew what he should say to her about his aunt’s refusal to become acquainted with her; but he dis- covered, promptly enough, that with Miss Daisy Miller there was no great need of walking on tiptoe. He found her that eve ning in the garden, wan- dering about in the warm starlight, like an indolent sylph, and swinging to and fro the largest fan he had ever beheld. It was ten o’clock. He had dined with his aunt, had been sitting with her since dinner, and had just taken leave of her till the morrow. Miss Daisy Miller seemed very glad to see him; she declared it was the longest eve ning she had ever passed.

“Have you been all alone?” he asked. “I have been walking round with mother. But mother gets tired walking

round,” she answered. “Has she gone to bed?” “No; she doesn’t like to go to bed,” said the young girl. “She doesn’t sleep—

not three hours. She says she doesn’t know how she lives. She’s dreadfully ner- vous. I guess she sleeps more than she thinks. She’s gone somewhere after Randolph; she wants to try to get him to go to bed. He doesn’t like to go to bed.”

“Let us hope she will persuade him,” observed Winterbourne. “She will talk to him all she can; but he doesn’t like her to talk to him,”

said Miss Daisy, opening her fan. “She’s going to try to get Eugenio to talk to him. But he isn’t afraid of Eugenio. Eugenio’s a splendid courier, but he can’t make much impression on Randolph! I don’t believe he’ll go to bed before eleven.” It appeared that Randolph’s vigil was in fact triumphantly prolonged, for Winterbourne strolled about with the young girl for some time without meeting her mother. “I have been looking round for that lady you want to introduce me to,” his companion resumed. “She’s your aunt.” Then, on Winterbourne’s admitting the fact, and expressing some curiosity as to how she had learned it, she said she had heard all about Mrs. Costello from the chambermaid. She was very quiet and very comme il faut; she wore white puffs; she spoke to no one, and she never dined at the table d’hôte.3 Every two days she had a headache. “I think that’s a lovely description, headache and all!” said Miss Daisy, chattering along in her thin, gay voice. “I want to know her ever so much. I know just what your aunt would be; I know I should like her. She would be very exclusive. I like a lady to be exclusive; I’m dying to be exclusive myself. Well, we are exclusive, mother and I. We don’t speak to every one—or they don’t speak to us. I suppose it’s about the same thing. Any way, I shall be ever so glad to know your aunt.”

Winterbourne was embarrassed. “She would be most happy,” he said, “but I am afraid those headaches will interfere.”

The young girl looked at him through the dusk. “But I suppose she doesn’t have a headache every day,” she said, sympathetically.

4 2 2 | H E N R Y J A M E S

Winterbourne was silent a moment. “She tells me she does,” he answered at last— not knowing what to say.

Miss Daisy Miller stopped and stood looking at him. Her prettiness was still vis i ble in the darkness; she was opening and closing her enormous fan. “She doesn’t want to know me!” she said suddenly. “Why don’t you say so? You needn’t be afraid. I’m not afraid!” And she gave a little laugh.

Winterbourne fancied there was a tremor in her voice; he was touched, shocked, morti"ed by it. “My dear young lady,” he protested, “she knows no one. It’s her wretched health.”

The young girl walked on a few steps, laughing still. “You needn’t be afraid,” she repeated. “Why should she want to know me?” Then she paused again; she was close to the parapet of the garden, and in front of her was the starlit lake. There was a vague sheen upon its surface, and in the dis- tance were dimly- seen mountain forms. Daisy Miller looked out upon the mysterious prospect, and then she gave another little laugh. “Gracious! she is exclusive!” she said. Winterbourne wondered whether she was seriously wounded, and for a moment almost wished that her sense of injury might be such as to make it becoming in him to attempt to reassure and comfort her. He had a pleasant sense that she would be very approachable for con- solatory purposes. He felt then, for the instant, quite ready to sacri"ce his aunt, conversationally; to admit that she was a proud, rude woman, and to declare that they needn’t mind her. But before he had time to commit him- self to this perilous mixture of gallantry and impiety, the young lady, resum- ing her walk, gave an exclamation in quite another tone. “Well; here’s mother! I guess she hasn’t got Randolph to go to bed.” The "gure of a lady appeared, at a distance, very indistinct in the darkness, and advancing with a slow and wavering movement. Suddenly it seemed to pause.

“Are you sure it is your mother? Can you distinguish her in this thick dusk?” Winterbourne asked.

“Well!” cried Miss Daisy Miller, with a laugh, “I guess I know my own mother. And when she has got on my shawl, too! She is always wearing my things.”

The lady in question, ceasing to advance, hovered vaguely about the spot at which she had checked her steps.

“I am afraid your mother doesn’t see you,” said Winterbourne. “Or per- haps,” he added— thinking, with Miss Miller, the joke permissible— “perhaps she feels guilty about your shawl.”

“Oh, it’s a fearful old thing!” the young girl replied, serenely. “I told her she could wear it. She won’t come here, because she sees you.”

“Ah, then,” said Winterbourne, “I had better leave you.” “Oh, no; come on!” urged Miss Daisy Miller. “I’m afraid your mother doesn’t approve of my walking with you.” Miss Miller gave him a serious glance. “It isn’t for me; it’s for you— that

is, it’s for her. Well; I don’t know who it’s for! But mother doesn’t like any of my gentlemen friends. She’s right down timid. She always makes a fuss if I introduce a gentleman. But I do introduce them— almost always. If I didn’t introduce my gentlemen friends to mother,” the young girl added, in her little soft, `at monotone, “I shouldn’t think I was natu ral.”

“To introduce me,” said Winterbourne, “you must know my name.” And he proceeded to pronounce it.

D A I S Y M I L L E R : A S T U D Y | 4 2 3

4. En glish coastal town, across from France.

“Oh, dear; I can’t say all that!” said his companion, with a laugh. But by this time they had come up to Mrs. Miller, who, as they drew near, walked to the parapet of the garden and leaned upon it, looking intently at the lake and turning her back upon them. “ Mother!” said the young girl, in a tone of deci- sion. Upon this the el derly lady turned round. “Mr. Winterbourne,” said Miss Daisy Miller, introducing the young man very frankly and prettily. “Common” she was, as Mrs. Costello had pronounced her; yet it was a won der to Winter- bourne that, with her commonness, she had a singularly delicate grace.

Her mother was a small, spare, light person, with a wandering eye, a very exiguous nose, and a large forehead, decorated with a certain amount of thin, much- frizzled hair. Like her daughter, Mrs. Miller was dressed with extreme elegance; she had enormous diamonds in her ears. So far as Winterbourne could observe, she gave him no greeting— she certainly was not looking at him. Daisy was near her, pulling her shawl straight. “What are you doing, poking round here?” this young lady inquired; but by no means with that harshness of accent which her choice of words may imply.

“I don’t know,” said her mother, turning towards the lake again. “I shouldn’t think you’d want that shawl!” Daisy exclaimed. “Well— I do!” her mother answered, with a little laugh. “Did you get Randolph to go to bed?” asked the young girl. “No; I couldn’t induce him,” said Mrs. Miller, very gently. “He wants to

talk to the waiter. He likes to talk to that waiter.” “I was telling Mr. Winterbourne,” the young girl went on; and to the young

man’s ear her tone might have indicated that she had been uttering his name all her life.

“Oh, yes!” said Winterbourne; “I have the plea sure of knowing your son.” Randolph’s mamma was silent; she turned her attention to the lake. But

at last she spoke. “Well, I don’t see how he lives!” “Anyhow, it isn’t so bad as it was at Dover,”4 said Daisy Miller. “And what occurred at Dover?” Winterbourne asked. “He wouldn’t go to bed at all. I guess he sat up all night—in the public

parlour. He wasn’t in bed at twelve o’clock: I know that.” “It was half- past twelve,” declared Mrs. Miller, with mild emphasis. “Does he sleep much during the day?” Winterbourne demanded. “I guess he doesn’t sleep much,” Daisy rejoined. “I wish he would!” said her mother. “It seems as if he couldn’t.” “I think he’s real tiresome,” Daisy pursued. Then, for some moments, there was silence. “Well, Daisy Miller,” said the

elder lady, presently, “I shouldn’t think you’d want to talk against your own brother!”

“Well, he is tiresome, mother,” said Daisy, quite without the asperity of a retort.

“He’s only nine,” urged Mrs. Miller. “Well, he wouldn’t go to that castle,” said the young girl. “I’m going there

with Mr. Winterbourne.” To this announcement, very placidly made, Daisy’s mamma offered no

response. Winterbourne took for granted that she deeply disapproved of the

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5. Private talk (French).

projected excursion; but he said to himself that she was a simple, easily man- aged person, and that a few deferential protestations would take the edge from her dis plea sure. “Yes,” he began; “your daughter has kindly allowed me the honor of being her guide.”

Mrs. Miller’s wandering eyes attached themselves, with a sort of appeal- ing air, to Daisy, who, however, strolled a few steps farther, gently humming to herself. “I presume you will go in the cars,” said her mother.

“Yes; or in the boat,” said Winterbourne. “Well, of course, I don’t know,” Mrs. Miller rejoined. “I have never been

to that castle.” “It is a pity you shouldn’t go,” said Winterbourne, beginning to feel reas-

sured as to her opposition. And yet he was quite prepared to "nd that, as a matter of course, she meant to accompany her daughter.

“We’ve been thinking ever so much about going,” she pursued; “but it seems as if we couldn’t. Of course Daisy— she wants to go round. But there’s a lady here— I don’t know her name— she says she shouldn’t think we’d want to go to see castles here; she should think we’d want to wait till we got to Italy. It seems as if there would be so many there,” continued Mrs. Miller, with an air of increasing con"dence. “Of course, we only want to see the principal ones. We visited several in Eng land,” she presently added.

“Ah, yes! in Eng land there are beautiful castles,” said Winterbourne. “But Chillon, here, is very well worth seeing.”

“Well, if Daisy feels up to it— ,” said Mrs. Miller, in a tone impregnated with a sense of the magnitude of the enterprise. “It seems as if there was nothing she wouldn’t undertake.”

“Oh, I think she’ll enjoy it!” Winterbourne declared. And he desired more and more to make it a certainty that he was to have the privilege of a tête- à- tête5 with the young lady, who was still strolling along in front of them, softly vocal- izing. “You are not disposed, madam,” he inquired, “to undertake it yourself?”

Daisy’s mother looked at him, an instant, askance, and then walked for- ward in silence. Then— “I guess she had better go alone,” she said, simply.

Winterbourne observed to himself that this was a very dif fer ent type of maternity from that of the vigilant matrons who massed themselves in the forefront of social intercourse in the dark old city at the other end of the lake. But his meditations were interrupted by hearing his name very dis- tinctly pronounced by Mrs. Miller’s unprotected daughter.

“Mr. Winterbourne!” murmured Daisy. “Ma de moi selle!” said the young man. “ Don’t you want to take me out in a boat?” “At pres ent?” he asked. “Of course!” said Daisy. “Well, Annie Miller!” exclaimed her mother. “I beg you, madam, to let her go,” said Winterbourne, ardently; for he had

never yet enjoyed the sensation of guiding through the summer starlight a skiff freighted with a fresh and beautiful young girl.

“I shouldn’t think she’d want to,” said her mother. “I should think she’d rather go indoors.”

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“I’m sure Mr. Winterbourne wants to take me,” Daisy declared. “He’s so awfully devoted!”

“I will row you over to Chillon, in the starlight.” “I don’t believe it!” said Daisy. “Well!” ejaculated the el derly lady again. “You haven’t spoken to me for half- an- hour,” her daughter went on. “I have been having some very pleasant conversation with your mother,”

said Winterbourne. “Well; I want you to take me out in a boat!” Daisy repeated. They had all

stopped, and she had turned round and was looking at Winterbourne. Her face wore a charming smile, her pretty eyes were gleaming, she was swing- ing her great fan about. No; it’s impossible to be prettier than that, thought Winterbourne.

“ There are half- a- dozen boats moored at that landing- place,” he said, point- ing to certain steps which descended from the garden to the lake. “If you will do me the honor to accept my arm, we will go and select one of them.”

Daisy stood there smiling; she threw back her head and gave a little light laugh. “I like a gentleman to be formal!” she declared.

“I assure you it’s a formal offer.” “I was bound I would make you say something,” Daisy went on. “You see it’s not very dif"cult,” said Winterbourne. “But I am afraid you

are chaf"ng me.” “I think not, sir,” remarked Mrs. Miller, very gently. “Do, then, let me give you a row,” he said to the young girl. “It’s quite lovely, the way you say that!” said Daisy. “It will be still more lovely to do it.” “Yes, it would be lovely!” said Daisy. But she made no movement to accom-

pany him; she only stood there laughing. “I should think you had better "nd out what time it is,” interposed her

mother. “It is eleven o’clock, madam,” said a voice, with a foreign accent, out of

the neighboring darkness; and Winterbourne, turning, perceived the `orid personage who was in attendance upon the two ladies. He had apparently just approached.

“Oh, Eugenio,” said Daisy, “I am going out in a boat!” Eugenio bowed. “At eleven o’clock, ma de moi selle?” “I am going with Mr. Winterbourne. This very minute.” “Do tell her she can’t,” said Mrs. Miller to the courier. “I think you had better not go out in a boat, ma de moi selle,” Eugenio

declared. Winterbourne wished to Heaven this pretty girl were not so familiar with

her courier; but he said nothing. “I suppose you don’t think it’s proper!” Daisy exclaimed, “Eugenio doesn’t

think anything’s proper.” “I am at your ser vice,” said Winterbourne. “Does ma de moi selle propose to go alone?” asked Eugenio of Mrs. Miller. “Oh, no; with this gentleman!” answered Daisy’s mamma. The courier looked for a moment at Winterbourne— the latter thought

he was smiling— and then, solemnly, with a bow, “As ma de moi selle pleases!” he said.

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“Oh, I hoped you would make a fuss!” said Daisy. “I don’t care to go now.” “I myself shall make a fuss if you don’t go,” said Winterbourne. “That’s all I want— a little fuss!” And the young girl began to laugh again. “Mr. Randolph has gone to bed!” the courier announced, frigidly. “Oh, Daisy; now we can go!” said Mrs. Miller. Daisy turned away from Winterbourne, looking at him, smiling and fan-

ning herself. “Good night,” she said; “I hope you are disappointed, or dis- gusted, or something!”

He looked at her, taking the hand she offered him. “I am puzzled,” he answered.

“Well; I hope it won’t keep you awake!” she said, very smartly; and, under the escort of the privileged Eugenio, the two ladies passed towards the house.

Winterbourne stood looking after them; he was indeed puzzled. He lin- gered beside the lake for a quarter of an hour, turning over the mystery of the young girl’s sudden familiarities and caprices. But the only very de"nite conclusion he came to was that he should enjoy deucedly “ going off” with her somewhere.

Two days afterwards he went off with her to the Castle of Chillon. He waited for her in the large hall of the hotel, where the couriers, the servants, the foreign tourists were lounging about and staring. It was not the place he would have chosen, but she had appointed it. She came tripping downstairs, buttoning her long gloves, squeezing her folded parasol against her pretty "gure, dressed in the perfection of a soberly elegant travelling- costume. Win- terbourne was a man of imagination and, as our ancestors used to say, of sensibility; as he looked at her dress and, on the great staircase, her little rapid, con"ding step, he felt as if there were something romantic going for- ward. He could have believed he was going to elope with her. He passed out with her among all the idle people that were assembled there; they were all looking at her very hard; she had begun to chatter as soon as she joined him. Winterbourne’s preference had been that they should be conveyed to Chil- lon in a carriage; but she expressed a lively wish to go in the little steamer; she declared that she had a passion for steamboats. There was always such a lovely breeze upon the water, and you saw such lots of people. The sail was not long, but Winterbourne’s companion found time to say a great many things. To the young man himself their little excursion was so much of an escapade—an adventure— that, even allowing for her habitual sense of free- dom, he had some expectation of seeing her regard it in the same way. But it must be confessed that, in this par tic u lar, he was disappointed. Daisy Miller was extremely animated, she was in charming spirits; but she was apparently not at all excited; she was not `uttered; she avoided neither his eyes nor those of any one else; she blushed neither when she looked at him nor when she saw that people were looking at her. People continued to look at her a great deal, and Winterbourne took much satisfaction in his pretty companion’s distinguished air. He had been a little afraid that she would talk loud, laugh overmuch, and even, perhaps, desire to move about the boat a good deal. But he quite forgot his fears; he sat smiling, with his eyes upon her face, while, without moving from her place, she delivered herself of a great number of original re`ections. It was the most charming garrulity he had ever heard. He had assented to the idea that she was “common”; but was she so, after all, or was he simply getting used to her commonness? Her

D A I S Y M I L L E R : A S T U D Y | 4 2 7

6. An En glish dance similar to the jig. 7. Secret pitlike dungeons with an opening only at the top; places where one is forgotten (French). 8. Hero of Byron’s poem “The Prisoner of Chil-

lon”; François de Bonivard (1496–1570), Swiss patriot and martyr, was con"ned for seven years in the Castle of Chillon.

conversation was chie`y of what metaphysicans term the objective cast; but every now and then it took a subjective turn.

“What on earth are you so grave about?” she suddenly demanded, "xing her agreeable eyes upon Winterbourne’s.

“Am I grave?” he asked. “I had an idea I was grinning from ear to ear.” “You look as if you were taking me to a funeral. If that’s a grin, your ears

are very near together.” “Should you like me to dance a hornpipe6 on the deck?” “Pray do, and I’ll carry round your hat. It will pay the expenses of our

journey.” “I never was better pleased in my life,” murmured Winterbourne. She looked at him a moment, and then burst into a little laugh. “I like to

make you say those things! You’re a queer mixture!” In the castle, after they had landed, the subjective ele ment decidedly pre-

vailed. Daisy tripped about the vaulted chambers, rustled her skirts in the corkscrew staircases, `irted back with a pretty little cry and a shudder from the edge of the oubliettes,7 and turned a singularly well- shaped ear to every- thing that Winterbourne told her about the place. But he saw that she cared very little for feudal antiquities, and that the dusky traditions of Chillon made but a slight impression upon her. They had the good fortune to have been able to walk about without other companionship than that of the cus- todian; and Winterbourne arranged with this functionary that they should not be hurried— that they should linger and pause wherever they chose. The custodian interpreted the bargain generously— Winterbourne, on his side, had been generous— and ended by leaving them quite to themselves. Miss Miller’s observations were not remarkable for logical consistency; for any- thing she wanted to say she was sure to "nd a pretext. She found a great many pretexts in the rugged embrasures of Chillon for asking Winterbourne sudden questions about himself— his family, his previous history, his tastes, his habits, his intentions— and for supplying information upon correspond- ing points in her own personality. Of her own tastes, habits, and intentions Miss Miller was prepared to give the most de"nite, and indeed the most favourable, account.

“Well; I hope you know enough!” she said to her companion, after he had told her the history of the unhappy Bonivard.8 “I never saw a man that knew so much!” The history of Bonivard had evidently, as they say, gone into one ear and out of the other. But Daisy went on to say that she wished Winter- bourne would travel with them and “go round” with them; they might know something, in that case. “ Don’t you want to come and teach Ran- dolph?” she asked. Winterbourne said that nothing could possibly please him so much; but that he had unfortunately other occupations. “Other occupations? I don’t believe it!” said Miss Daisy. “What do you mean? You are not in business.” The young man admitted that he was not in business; but he had engagements which, even within a day or two, would force him to go back to Geneva. “Oh, bother!” she said. “I don’t believe it!” and she began to talk about something else. But a few moments later, when he was

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9. Frivolous, bantering talk (French).

pointing out to her the pretty design of an antique "replace, she broke out irrelevantly, “You don’t mean to say you are going back to Geneva?”

“It is a melancholy fact that I shall have to return to Geneva to- morrow.” “Well, Mr. Winterbourne,” said Daisy; “I think you’re horrid!” “Oh, don’t say such dreadful things!” said Winterbourne— “ just at the

last.” “The last!” cried the young girl; “I call it the "rst. I have half a mind to

leave you here and go straight back to the hotel alone.” And for the next ten minutes she did nothing but call him horrid. Poor Winterbourne was fairly bewildered; no young lady had as yet done him the honor to be so agitated by the announcement of his movements. His companion, after this, ceased to pay any attention to the curiosities of Chillon or the beauties of the lake; she opened "re upon the mysterious charmer in Geneva, whom she appeared to have instantly taken it for granted that he was hurrying back to see. How did Miss Daisy Miller know that there was a charmer in Geneva? Winter- bourne, who denied the existence of such a person, was quite unable to dis- cover; and he was divided between amazement at the rapidity of her induction and amusement at the frankness of her persi#age.9 She seemed to him, in all this, an extraordinary mixture of innocence and crudity. “Does she never allow you more than three days at a time?” asked Daisy, ironically. “ Doesn’t she give you a vacation in summer? There’s no one so hard worked but they can get leave to go off somewhere at this season. I suppose, if you stay another day, she’ll come after you in the boat. Do wait over till Friday, and I will go down to the landing to see her arrive!” Winterbourne began to think he had been wrong to feel disappointed in the temper in which the young lady had embarked. If he had missed the personal accent, the per- sonal accent was now making its appearance. It sounded very distinctly, at last, in her telling him she would stop “teasing” him if he would promise her solemnly to come down to Rome in the winter.

“That’s not a dif"cult promise to make,” said Winterbourne. “My aunt has taken an apartment in Rome for the winter, and has already asked me to come and see her.”

“I don’t want you to come for your aunt,” said Daisy; “I want you to come for me.” And this was the only allusion that the young man was ever to hear her make to his invidious kinswoman. He declared that, at any rate, he would certainly come. After this Daisy stopped teasing. Winterbourne took a car- riage, and they drove back to Vevey in the dusk; the young girl was very quiet.

In the eve ning Winterbourne mentioned to Mrs.  Costello that he had spent the after noon at Chillon, with Miss Daisy Miller.

“The Americans—of the courier?” asked this lady. “Ah, happily,” said Winterbourne, “the courier stayed at home.” “She went with you all alone?” “All alone.” Mrs.  Costello sniffed a little at her smelling- bottle. “And that,” she

exclaimed, “is the young person you wanted me to know!”

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1. Victor Cherbuliez (1829–1899), which James spelled “Cherbuliex,” a popu lar French novelist of Swiss origin. His 1865 novel Paule Méré focused

on a young woman who violates Geneva’s social conventions. 2. A fash ion able street in Rome.

III

Winterbourne, who had returned to Geneva the day after his excursion to Chillon, went to Rome towards the end of January. His aunt had been estab- lished there for several weeks, and he had received a couple of letters from her. “ Those people you were so devoted to last summer at Vevey have turned up here, courier and all,” she wrote. “They seem to have made several acquaintances, but the courier continues to be the most intime. The young lady, however, is also very intimate with some third- rate Italians, with whom she rackets about in a way that makes much talk. Bring me that pretty novel of Cherbuliez’s1— ‘Paule Méré’— and don’t come later than the 23rd.”

In the natu ral course of events, Winterbourne, on arriving in Rome, would presently have ascertained Mrs. Miller’s address at the American banker’s and have gone to pay his compliments to Miss Daisy. “ After what happened at Vevey I certainly think I may call upon them,” he said to Mrs. Costello.

“If, after what happens—at Vevey and everywhere— you desire to keep up the acquaintance, you are very welcome. Of course a man may know every one. Men are welcome to the privilege!”

“Pray what is it that happens— here, for instance?” Winterbourne demanded.

“The girl goes about alone with her foreigners. As to what happens far- ther, you must apply elsewhere for information. She has picked up half- a- dozen of the regular Roman fortune- hunters, and she takes them about to people’s houses. When she comes to a party she brings with her a gentle- man with a good deal of manner and a wonderful moustache.”

“And where is the mother?” “I haven’t the least idea. They are very dreadful people.” Winterbourne meditated a moment. “They are very ignorant— very inno-

cent only. Depend upon it they are not bad.” “They are hopelessly vulgar,” said Mrs.  Costello. “ Whether or no being

hopelessly vulgar is being ‘bad’ is a question for the metaphysicians. They are bad enough to dislike, at any rate; and for this short life that is quite enough.”

The news that Daisy Miller was surrounded by half- a- dozen wonderful moustaches checked Winterbourne’s impulse to go straightway to see her. He had perhaps not de"nitely `attered himself that he had made an inef- faceable impression upon her heart, but he was annoyed at hearing of a state of affairs so little in harmony with an image that had lately `itted in and out of his own meditations; the image of a very pretty girl looking out of an old Roman win dow and asking herself urgently when Mr. Winterbourne would arrive. If, however, he determined to wait a little before reminding Miss Miller of his claims to her consideration, he went very soon to call upon two or three other friends. One of these friends was an American lady who had spent several winters at Geneva, when she had placed her children at school. She was a very accomplished woman and she lived in the Via Grego- riana.2 Winterbourne found her in a little crimson drawing- room, on a third `oor; the room was "lled with southern sunshine. He had not been there

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ten minutes when the servant came in, announcing “Madame Mila!” This announcement was presently followed by the entrance of little Randolph Miller, who stopped in the middle of the room and stood staring at Winter- bourne. An instant later his pretty sister crossed the threshold; and then, after a considerable interval, Mrs. Miller slowly advanced.

“I know you!” said Randolph. “I’m sure you know a great many things,” exclaimed Winterbourne, tak-

ing him by the hand. “How is your education coming on?” Daisy was exchanging greetings very prettily with her hostess; but when

she heard Winterbourne’s voice she quickly turned her head. “Well, I declare!” she said.

“I told you I should come, you know,” Winterbourne rejoined smiling. “Well— I didn’t believe it,” said Miss Daisy. “I am much obliged to you,” laughed the young man. “You might have come to see me!” said Daisy. “I arrived only yesterday.” “I don’t believe that!” the young girl declared. Winterbourne turned with a protesting smile to her mother; but this lady

evaded his glance, and seating herself, "xed her eyes upon her son. “We’ve got a bigger place than this,” said Randolph. “It’s all gold on the walls.”

Mrs. Miller turned uneasily in her chair. “I told you if I were to bring you, you would say something!” she murmured.

“I told you!” Randolph exclaimed. “I tell you, sir!” he added jocosely, giving Winterbourne a thump on the knee. “It is bigger, too!”

Daisy had entered upon a lively conversation with her hostess; Winter- bourne judged it becoming to address a few words to her mother. “I hope you have been well since we parted at Vevey,” he said.

Mrs. Miller now certainly looked at him—at his chin. “Not very well, sir,” she answered.

“She’s got the dyspepsia,” said Randolph. “I’ve got it too. Father’s got it. I’ve got it worst!”

This announcement, instead of embarrassing Mrs.  Miller, seemed to relieve her. “I suffer from the liver,” she said. “I think it’s the climate; it’s less bracing than Schenectady, especially in the winter season. I don’t know whether you know we reside at Schenectady. I was saying to Daisy that I certainly hadn’t found any one like Dr. Davis, and I didn’t believe I should. Oh, at Schenectady, he stands "rst; they think every thing of him. He has so much to do, and yet there was nothing he wouldn’t do for me. He said he never saw anything like my dyspepsia, but he was bound to cure it. I’m sure there was nothing he wouldn’t try. He was just going to try something new when we came off. Mr. Miller wanted Daisy to see Eu rope for herself. But I wrote to Mr. Miller that it seems as if I couldn’t get on without Dr. Davis. At Schenectady he stands at the very top; and there’s a great deal of sick- ness there, too. It affects my sleep.”

Winterbourne had a good deal of pathological gossip with Dr.  Davis’s patient, during which Daisy chattered unremittingly to her own companion. The young man asked Mrs. Miller how she was pleased with Rome. “Well, I must say I am disappointed,” she answered. “We had heard so much about it; I suppose we had heard too much. But we couldn’t help that. We had been led to expect something dif fer ent.”

D A I S Y M I L L E R : A S T U D Y | 4 3 1

3. The Cartha ginian general (247–183 b.c.e.), from his infancy, had a lifelong hatred of Rome.

“Ah, wait a little, and you will become very fond of it,” said Winterbourne. “I hate it worse and worse every day!” cried Randolph. “You are like the infant Hannibal,”3 said Winterbourne. “No, I ain’t!” Randolph declared, at a venture. “You are not much like an infant,” said his mother. “But we have seen

places,” she resumed, “that I should put a long way before Rome.” And in reply to Winterbourne’s interrogation, “ There’s Zu rich,” she observed; “I think Zu rich is lovely; and we hadn’t heard half so much about it.”

“The best place we’ve seen is the City of Richmond!” said Randolph. “He means the ship,” his mother explained. “We crossed in that ship. Ran-

dolph had a good time on the City of Richmond.” “It’s the best place I’ve seen,” the child repeated. “Only it was turned the

wrong way.” “Well, we’ve got to turn the right way some time,” said Mrs. Miller, with

a little laugh. Winterbourne expressed the hope that her daughter at least found some grati"cation in Rome, and she declared that Daisy was quite carried away. “It’s on account of the society— the society’s splendid. She goes round everywhere; she has made a great number of acquaintances. Of course she goes round more than I do. I must say they have been very sociable; they have taken her right in. And then she knows a great many gentlemen. Oh, she thinks there’s nothing like Rome. Of course, it’s a great deal pleasanter for a young lady if she knows plenty of gentlemen.”

By this time Daisy had turned her attention again to Winterbourne. “I’ve been telling Mrs. Walker how mean you were!” the young girl announced.

“And what is the evidence you have offered?” asked Winterbourne, rather annoyed at Miss Miller’s want of appreciation of the zeal of an admirer who on his way down to Rome had stopped neither at Bologna nor at Florence, simply because of a certain sentimental impatience. He remembered that a cynical compatriot had once told him that American women— the pretty ones, and this gave a largeness to the axiom— were at once the most exact- ing in the world and the least endowed with a sense of indebtedness.

“Why, you were awfully mean at Vevey,” said Daisy. “You wouldn’t do any- thing. You wouldn’t stay there when I asked you.”

“My dearest young lady,” cried Winterbourne, with eloquence, “have I come all the way to Rome to encounter your reproaches?”

“Just hear him say that!” said Daisy to her hostess, giving a twist to a bow on this lady’s dress. “Did you ever hear anything so quaint?”

“So quaint, my dear?” murmured Mrs. Walker, in the tone of a partisan of Winterbourne.

“Well, I don’t know,” said Daisy, "ngering Mrs.  Walker’s ribbons. “Mrs. Walker, I want to tell you something.”

“Mother-r,” interposed Randolph, with his rough ends to his words, “I tell you you’ve got to go. Eugenio’ll raise something!”

“I’m not afraid of Eugenio,” said Daisy, with a toss of her head. “Look here, Mrs. Walker,” she went on, “you know I’m coming to your party.”

“I am delighted to hear it.” “I’ve got a lovely dress.”

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4. The Pincian Hill, offering a "ne view of Rome. 5. Malaria, whose means of transmission (the

mosquito) was unknown in James’s day, but which was associated with damp, dark places.

“I am very sure of that.” “But I want to ask a favor— permission to bring a friend.” “I shall be happy to see any of your friends,” said Mrs. Walker, turning

with a smile to Mrs. Miller. “Oh, they are not my friends,” answered Daisy’s mamma, smiling shyly,

in her own fashion. “I never spoke to them!” “It’s an intimate friend of mine— Mr. Giovanelli,” said Daisy, without a

tremor in her clear little voice or a shadow on her brilliant little face. Mrs. Walker was silent a moment, she gave a rapid glance at Winterbourne.

“I shall be glad to see Mr. Giovanelli,” she then said. “He’s an Italian,” Daisy pursued, with the prettiest serenity. “He’s a great

friend of mine— he’s the handsomest man in the world— except Mr. Win- terbourne! He knows plenty of Italians, but he wants to know some Ameri- cans. He thinks ever so much of Americans. He’s tremendously clever. He’s perfectly lovely!”

It was settled that this brilliant personage should be brought to Mrs. Walk- er’s party, and then Mrs. Miller prepared to take her leave. “I guess we’ll go back to the hotel,” she said.

“You may go back to the hotel, mother, but I’m going to take a walk,” said Daisy.

“She’s going to walk with Mr. Giovanelli,” Randolph proclaimed. “I am going to the Pincio,”4 said Daisy, smiling. “Alone, my dear at this hour?” Mrs. Walker asked. The after noon was

drawing to a close—it was the hour for the throng of carriages and of con- templative pedestrians. “I don’t think it’s safe, my dear,” said Mrs. Walker.

“Neither do I,” subjoined Mrs. Miller. “You’ll get the fever5 as sure as you live. Remember what Dr. Davis told you!”

“Give her some medicine before she goes,” said Randolph. The com pany had risen to its feet; Daisy, still showing her pretty teeth,

bent over and kissed her hostess. “Mrs. Walker, you are too perfect,” she said. “I’m not going alone; I am going to meet a friend.”

“Your friend won’t keep you from getting the fever,” Mrs. Miller observed. “Is it Mr. Giovanelli?” asked the hostess. Winterbourne was watching the girl; at this question his attention quick-

ened. She stood there smiling and smoothing her bonnet- ribbons; she glanced at Winterbourne. Then, while she glanced and smiled, she answered without a shade of hesitation, “Mr. Giovanelli— the beautiful Giovanelli.”

“My dear young friend,” said Mrs. Walker, taking her hand, pleadingly, “ don’t walk off to the Pincio at this hour to meet a beautiful Italian.”

“Well, he speaks En glish,” said Mrs. Miller. “Gracious me!” Daisy exclaimed, “I don’t want to do anything improper.

There’s an easy way to settle it.” She continued to glance at Winterbourne. “The Pincio is only a hundred yards distant, and if Mr. Winterbourne were as polite as he pretends he would offer to walk with me!”

Winterbourne’s politeness hastened to af"rm itself, and the young girl gave him gracious leave to accompany her. They passed downstairs before her mother, and at the door Winterbourne perceived Mrs. Miller’s carriage drawn

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up, with the ornamental courier whose acquaintance he had made at Vevey seated within. “Good- bye, Eugenio!” cried Daisy, “I’m going to take a walk.” The distance from the Via Gregoriana to the beautiful garden at the other end of the Pincian Hill is, in fact, rapidly traversed. As the day was splen- did, however, and the concourse of vehicles, walkers, and loungers numer- ous, the young Americans found their pro gress much delayed. This fact was highly agreeable to Winterbourne, in spite of his consciousness of his sin- gular situation. The slow- moving, idly- gazing Roman crowd bestowed much attention upon the extremely pretty young foreign lady who was passing through it upon his arm; and he wondered what on earth had been in Daisy’s mind when she proposed to expose herself, unattended, to its appre- ciation. His own mission, to her sense, apparently, was to consign her to the hands of Mr. Giovanelli; but Winterbourne, at once annoyed and grati"ed, resolved that he would do no such thing.

“Why haven’t you been to see me?” asked Daisy. “You can’t get out of that.” “I have had the honor of telling you that I have only just stepped out of

the train.” “You must have stayed in the train a good while after it stopped!” cried

the young girl, with her little laugh. “I suppose you were asleep. You have had time to go to see Mrs. Walker.”

“I knew Mrs. Walker—” Winterbourne began to explain. “I knew where you knew her. You knew her at Geneva. She told me so.

Well, you knew me at Vevey. That’s just as good. So you ought to have come.” She asked him no other question than this; she began to prattle about her own affairs. “We’ve got splendid rooms at the hotel; Eugenio says they’re the best rooms in Rome. We are going to stay all winter—if we don’t die of the fever; and I guess we’ll stay then. It’s a great deal nicer than I thought; I thought it would be fearfully quiet; I was sure it would be awfully poky. I was sure we should be going round all the time with one of those dreadful old men that explain about the pictures and things. But we only had about a week of that, and now I’m enjoying myself. I know ever so many people, and they are all so charming. The society’s extremely select. There are all kinds— English, and Germans, and Italians. I think I like the En glish best. I like their style of conversation. But there are some lovely Americans. I never saw anything so hospitable. There’s something or other every day. There’s not much dancing; but I must say I never thought dancing was every thing. I was always fond of conversation. I guess I shall have plenty at Mrs. Walker’s— her rooms are so small.” When they had passed the gate of the Pincian Gardens, Miss Miller began to won der where Mr. Giovanelli might be. “We had better go straight to that place in front,” she said, “where you look at the view.”

“I certainly shall not help you to "nd him,” Winterbourne declared. “Then I shall "nd him without you,” said Miss Daisy. “You certainly won’t leave me!” cried Winterbourne. She burst into her little laugh. “Are you afraid you’ll get lost—or run over?

But there’s Giovanelli, leaning against that tree. He’s staring at the women in the carriages: did you ever see anything so cool?”

Winterbourne perceived at some distance a little man standing with folded arms, nursing his cane. He had a handsome face, an artfully poised hat, a glass in one eye, and a nosegay in his button- hole. Winterbourne looked at him a moment and then said, “Do you mean to speak to that man?”

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6. Hack writer.

“Do I mean to speak to him? Why, you don’t suppose I mean to commu- nicate by signs?”

“Pray understand, then,” said Winterbourne, “that I intend to remain with you.”

Daisy stopped and looked at him, without a sign of troubled conscious- ness in her face; with nothing but the presence of her charming eyes and her happy dimples. “Well, she’s a cool one!” thought the young man.

“I don’t like the way you say that,” said Daisy. “It’s too imperious.” “I beg your pardon if I say it wrong. The main point is to give you an idea

of my meaning.” The young girl looked at him more gravely, but with eyes that were prettier

than ever. “I have never allowed a gentleman to dictate to me, or to interfere with anything I do.”

“I think you have made a mistake,” said Winterbourne. “You should some- times listen to a gentleman— the right one?”

Daisy began to laugh again, “I do nothing but listen to gentlemen!” she exclaimed. “Tell me if Mr. Giovanelli is the right one?”

The gentleman with the nosegay in his bosom had now perceived our two friends, and was approaching the young girl with obsequious rapidity. He bowed to Winterbourne as well as to the latter’s companion; he had a bril- liant smile, an intelligent eye; Winterbourne thought him not a bad- looking fellow. But he nevertheless said to Daisy— “No, he’s not the right one.”

Daisy evidently had a natu ral talent for performing introductions; she mentioned the name of each of her companions to the other. She strolled along with one of them on each side of her; Mr.  Giovanelli, who spoke En glish very cleverly— Winterbourne afterwards learned that he had prac- ticed the idiom upon a great many American heiresses— addressed her a great deal of very polite nonsense; he was extremely urbane, and the young American, who said nothing, re`ected upon that profundity of Italian clever- ness which enables people to appear more gracious in proportion as they are more acutely disappointed. Giovanelli, of course, had counted upon something more intimate; he had not bargained for a party of three. But he kept his temper in a manner which suggested far- stretching intentions. Win- terbourne `attered himself that he had taken his mea sure. “He is not a gentleman,” said the young American; “he is only a clever imitation of one. He is a music- master, or a penny- a- liner,6 or a third- rate artist. Damn his good looks!” Mr. Giovanelli had certainly a very pretty face; but Winter- bourne felt a superior indignation at his own lovely fellow- countrywoman’s not knowing the difference between a spurious gentleman and a real one. Giovanelli chattered and jested and made himself wonderfully agreeable. It was true that if he was an imitation the imitation was very skillful. “Never- theless,” Winterbourne said to himself, “a nice girl ought to know!” And then he came back to the question whether this was in fact a nice girl. Would a nice girl— even allowing for her being a little American `irt— make a ren- dezvous with a presumably low- lived foreigner? The rendezvous in this case, indeed, had been in broad daylight, and in the most crowded corner of Rome; but was it not impossible to regard the choice of these circumstances as a proof of extreme cynicism? Singular though it may seem, Winterbourne was

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7. Lover (Italian).

vexed that the young girl, in joining her amoroso,7 should not appear more impatient of his own com pany, and he was vexed because of his inclination. It was impossible to regard her as a perfectly well- conducted young lady; she was wanting in a certain indispensable delicacy. It would therefore simplify matters greatly to be able to treat her as the object of one of those senti- ments which are called by romancers “lawless passions.” That she should seem to wish to get rid of him would help him to think more lightly of her, and to be able to think more lightly of her would make her much less per- plexing. But Daisy, on this occasion, continued to pres ent herself as an inscrutable combination of audacity and innocence.

She had been walking some quarter of an hour, attended by her two cava- liers, and responding in a tone of very childish gaiety, as it seemed to Winter- bourne, to the pretty speeches of Mr. Giovanelli, when a carriage that had detached itself from the revolving train drew up beside the path. At the same moment Winterbourne perceived that his friend Mrs.  Walker— the lady whose house he had lately left— was seated in the vehicle and was beckoning to him. Leaving Miss Miller’s side, he hastened to obey her sum- mons. Mrs. Walker was `ushed; she wore an excited air. “It is really too dreadful,” she said. “That girl must not do this sort of thing. She must not walk here with you two men. Fifty people have noticed her.”

Winterbourne raised his eyebrows. “I think it’s a pity to make too much fuss about it.”

“It’s a pity to let the girl ruin herself!” “She is very innocent,” said Winterbourne. “She’s very crazy!” cried Mrs. Walker. “Did you ever see anything so imbe-

cile as her mother? After you had all left me, just now, I could not sit still for thinking of it. It seemed too pitiful, not even to attempt to save her. I ordered the carriage and put on my bonnet, and came here as quickly as pos si ble. Thank heaven I have found you!”

“What do you propose to do with us?” asked Winterbourne, smiling. “To ask her to get in, to drive her about here for half- an- hour, so that the

world may see she is not running absolutely wild, and then to take her safely home.”

“I don’t think it’s a very happy thought,” said Winterbourne; “but you can try.”

Mrs. Walker tried. The young man went in pursuit of Miss Miller, who had simply nodded and smiled at his interlocutrix in the carriage and had gone her way with her own companion. Daisy, on learning that Mrs. Walker wished to speak to her, retraced her steps with a perfect good grace and with Mr.  Giovanelli at her side. She declared that she was delighted to have a chance to pres ent this gentleman to Mrs. Walker. She immediately achieved the introduction, and declared that she had never in her life seen anything so lovely as Mrs. Walker’s carriage- rug.

“I am glad you admire it,” said this lady, smiling sweetly. “ Will you get in and let me put it over you?”

“Oh, no, thank you,” said Daisy. “I shall admire it much more as I see you driving round with it.”

“Do get in and drive with me,” said Mrs. Walker.

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8. A horse- drawn carriage for two with a raised seat in front for the driver.

“That would be charming, but it’s so enchanting just as I am!” and Daisy gave a brilliant glance at the gentlemen on either side of her.

“It may be enchanting, dear child, but it is not the custom here,” urged Mrs.  Walker, leaning forward in her victoria8 with her hands devoutly clasped.

“Well, it ought to be, then!” said Daisy. “If I didn’t walk I should expire.” “You should walk with your mother, dear,” cried the lady from Geneva,

losing patience. “With my mother dear!” exclaimed the young girl. Winterbourne saw that

she scented interference. “My mother never walked ten steps in her life. And then, you know,” she added with a laugh, “I am more than "ve years old.”

“You are old enough to be more reasonable. You are old enough, dear Miss Miller, to be talked about.”

Daisy looked at Mrs. Walker, smiling intensely. “Talked about? What do you mean?”

“Come into my carriage and I will tell you.” Daisy turned her quickened glance again from one of the gentlemen beside

her to the other. Mr. Giovanelli was bowing to and fro, rubbing down his gloves and laughing very agreeably; Winterbourne thought it a most unpleas- ant scene. “I don’t think I want to know what you mean,” said Daisy pres- ently. “I don’t think I should like it.”

Winterbourne wished that Mrs. Walker would tuck in her carriage- rug and drive away; but this lady did not enjoy being de"ed, as she afterwards told him. “Should you prefer being thought a very reckless girl?” she demanded.

“Gracious me!” exclaimed Daisy. She looked again at Mr. Giovanelli, then she turned to Winterbourne. There was a little pink `ush in her check; she was tremendously pretty. “Does Mr. Winterbourne think,” she asked slowly, smiling, throwing back her head and glancing at him from head to foot, “that—to save my reputation— I ought to get into the carriage?”

Winterbourne colored; for an instant he hesitated greatly. It seemed so strange to hear her speak that way of her “reputation.” But he himself, in fact, must speak in accordance with gallantry. The "nest gallantry, here, was simply to tell her the truth; and the truth, for Winterbourne, as the few indications I have been able to give have made him known to the reader, was that Daisy Miller should take Mrs. Walker’s advice. He looked at her exqui- site prettiness; and then he said very gently, “I think you should get into the carriage.”

Daisy gave a violent laugh. “I never heard anything so stiff! If this is improper, Mrs. Walker,” she pursued, “then I am all improper, and you must give me up. Good- bye; I hope you’ll have a lovely ride!” and, with Mr. Giovanelli, who made a triumphantly obsequious salute, she turned away.

Mrs. Walker sat looking after her, and there were tears in Mrs. Walker’s eyes. “Get in here, sir,” she said to Winterbourne, indicating the place beside her. The young man answered that he felt bound to accompany Miss Miller; whereupon Mrs. Walker declared that if he refused her this favor she would never speak to him again. She was evidently in earnest. Winterbourne over- took Daisy and her companion and, offering the young girl his hand, told

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9. Seventeenth- century palace.

her that Mrs. Walker had made an imperious claim upon his society. He expected that in answer she would say something rather free, something to commit herself still farther to that “recklessness” from which Mrs. Walker had so charitably endeavored to dissuade her. But she only shook his hand, hardly looking at him, while Mr.  Giovanelli bade him farewell with a too emphatic `ourish of the hat.

Winterbourne was not in the best pos si ble humor as he took his seat in Mrs. Walker’s victoria. “That was not clever of you,” he said candidly, while the vehicle mingled again with the throng of carriages.

“In such a case,” his companion answered, “I don’t wish to be clever, I wish to be earnest!”

“Well, your earnestness has only offended her and put her off.” “It has happened very well,” said Mrs. Walker. “If she is so perfectly deter-

mined to compromise herself, the sooner one knows it the better; one can act accordingly.”

“I suspect she meant no harm,” Winterbourne rejoined. “So I thought a month ago. But she has been going too far.” “What has she been doing?” “Every thing that is not done here. Flirting with any man she could pick

up; sitting in corners with mysterious Italians; dancing all the eve ning with the same partners; receiving visits at eleven o’clock at night. Her mother goes away when visitors come.”

“But her brother,” said Winterbourne, laughing, “sits up till midnight.” “He must be edi"ed by what he sees. I’m told that at their hotel every one

is talking about her, and that a smile goes round among the servants when a gentleman comes and asks for Miss Miller.”

“The servants be hanged!” said Winterbourne angrily. “The poor girl’s only fault,” he presently added, “is that she is very uncultivated.”

“She is naturally indelicate,” Mrs. Walker declared. “Take that example this morning. How long had you known her at Vevey?”

“A couple of days.” “Fancy, then, her making it a personal matter that you should have left

the place!” Winterbourne was silent for some moments; then he said, “I suspect,

Mrs. Walker, that you and I have lived too long at Geneva!” And he added a request that she should inform him with what par tic u lar design she had made him enter her carriage.

“I wished to beg you to cease your relations with Miss Miller— not to `irt with her—to give her no farther opportunity to expose herself—to let her alone, in short.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” said Winterbourne. “I like her extremely.” “All the more reason that you shouldn’t help her to make a scandal.” “ There shall be nothing scandalous in my attentions to her.” “ There certainly will be in the way she takes them. But I have said what

I had on my conscience,” Mrs. Walker pursued. “If you wish to rejoin the young lady I will put you down. Here, by- the- way, you have a chance.”

The carriage was traversing that part of the Pincian Garden which over- hangs the wall of Rome and overlooks the beautiful Villa Borghese.9 It is

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bordered by a large parapet, near which there are several seats. One of the seats, at a distance, was occupied by a gentleman and a lady, towards whom Mrs. Walker gave a toss of her head. At the same moment these persons rose and walked towards the parapet. Winterbourne had asked the coachman to stop; he now descended from the carriage. His companion looked at him a moment in silence; then, while he raised his hat, she drove majestically away. Winterbourne stood there; he had turned his eyes towards Daisy and her cavalier. They evidently saw no one; they were too deeply occupied with each other. When they reached the low garden- wall they stood a moment looking off at the great `at- topped pine- clusters of the Villa Borghese; then Giovanelli seated himself familiarly upon the broad ledge of the wall. The western sun in the opposite sky sent out a brilliant shaft through a couple of cloud- bars; whereupon Daisy’s companion took her parasol out of her hands and opened it. She came a little nearer and he held the parasol over her; then, still holding it, he let it rest upon her shoulder, so that both of their heads were hidden from Winterbourne. This young man lingered a moment, then he began to walk. But he walked— not towards the couple with the parasol; towards the residence of his aunt, Mrs. Costello.

IV

He `attered himself on the following day that there was no smiling among the servants when he, at least, asked for Mrs. Miller at her hotel. This lady and her daughter, however, were not at home; and on the next day, after repeating his visit, Winterbourne again had the misfortune not to "nd them. Mrs. Walker’s party took place on the eve ning of the third day, and in spite of the frigidity of his last interview with the hostess, Winterbourne was among the guests. Mrs. Walker was one of those American ladies who, while residing abroad, make a point, in their own phrase, of studying Eu ro pean society; and she had on this occasion collected several specimens of her diversely- born fellow- mortals to serve, as it were, as text- books. When Winter- bourne arrived Daisy Miller was not there; but in a few moments he saw her mother come in alone, very shyly and ruefully. Mrs. Miller’s hair, above her exposed- looking temples, was more frizzled than ever. As she approached Mrs. Walker, Winterbourne also drew near.

“You see I’ve come all alone,” said poor Mrs. Miller. “I’m so frightened; I don’t know what to do; it’s the "rst time I’ve ever been to a party alone— especially in this country. I wanted to bring Randolph or Eugenio, or some- one, but Daisy just pushed me off by myself. I ain’t used to going round alone.”

“And does not your daughter intend to favor us with her society?” demanded Mrs. Walker, impressively.

“Well, Daisy’s all dressed,” said Mrs. Miller, with that accent of the dispas- sionate, if not of the philosophic, historian with which she always recorded the current incidents of her daughter’s career. “She’s got dressed on purpose before dinner. But she’s got a friend of hers there; that gentleman— the Italian— that she wanted to bring. They’ve got going at the piano; it seems as if they couldn’t leave off. Mr. Giovanelli sings splendidly. But I guess they’ll come before very long,” concluded Mrs. Miller hopefully.

“I’m sorry she should come—in that way,” said Mrs. Walker.

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1. She’s making a spectacle of herself (French).

“Well, I told her that there was no use in her getting dressed before dinner if she was going to wait three hours,” responded Daisy’s mamma. “I didn’t see the use of her putting on such a dress as that to sit round with Mr. Giovanelli.”

“This is most horrible!” said Mrs. Walker, turning away and addressing herself to Winterbourne. “Elle s’af"che.1 It’s her revenge for my having ven- tured to remonstrate with her. When she comes I shall not speak to her.”

Daisy came after eleven o’clock, but she was not, on such an occasion, a young lady to wait to be spoken to. She rustled forward in radiant loveli- ness, smiling and chattering, carry ing a large bouquet and attended by Mr.  Giovanelli. Every one stopped talking, and turned and looked at her. She came straight to Mrs. Walker. “I’m afraid you thought I never was com- ing, so I sent mother off to tell you. I wanted to make Mr. Giovanelli prac- tice some things before he came; you know he sings beautifully, and I want you to ask him to sing. This is Mr. Giovanelli; you know I introduced him to you; he’s got the most lovely voice and he knows the most charming set of songs. I made him go over them this eve ning, on purpose; we had the great- est time at the hotel.” Of all this Daisy delivered herself with the sweetest, brightest audibleness, looking now at her hostess and now round the room, while she gave a series of little pats, round her shoulders, to the edges of her dress. “Is there anyone I know?” she asked.

“I think every one knows you!” said Mrs. Walker pregnantly, and she gave a very cursory greeting to Mr. Giovanelli. This gentleman bore himself gal- lantly. He smiled and bowed and showed his white teeth, he curled his mous- taches and rolled his eyes, and performed all the proper functions of a handsome Italian at an eve ning party. He sang, very prettily, half- a- dozen songs, though Mrs. Walker afterwards declared that she had been quite unable to "nd out who asked him. It was apparently not Daisy who had given him his orders. Daisy sat at a distance from the piano, and though she had publicly, as it were, professed a high admiration for his singing, talked, not inaudibly, while it was going on.

“It’s a pity these rooms are so small; we can’t dance,” she said to Winter- bourne, as if she had seen him "ve minutes before.

“I am not sorry we can’t dance,” Winterbourne answered; “I don’t dance.” “Of course you don’t dance; you’re too stiff,” said Miss Daisy. “I hope you

enjoyed your drive with Mrs. Walker.” “No, I didn’t enjoy it; I preferred walking with you.” “We paired off, that was much better,” said Daisy. “But did you ever hear

anything so cool as Mrs. Walker’s wanting me to get into her carriage and drop poor Mr. Giovanelli; and under the pretext that it was proper? People have dif fer ent ideas! It would have been most unkind; he had been talking about that walk for ten days.”

“He should not have talked about it at all,” said Winterbourne; “he would never have proposed to a young lady of this country to walk about the streets with him.”

“About the streets?” cried Daisy, with her pretty stare. “Where then would he have proposed to her to walk? The Pincio is not the streets, either; and I, thank goodness, am not a young lady of this country. The young ladies of

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this country have a dreadfully pokey time of it, so far as I can learn; I don’t see why I should change my habits for them.”

“I am afraid your habits are those of a `irt,” said Winterbourne gravely. “Of course they are,” she cried, giving him her little smiling stare again.

“I’m a fearful, frightful `irt! Did you ever hear of a nice girl that was not? But I suppose you will tell me now that I am not a nice girl.”

“ You’re a very nice girl, but I wish you would `irt with me, and me only,” said Winterbourne.

“Ah! thank you, thank you very much; you are the last man I should think of `irting with. As I have had the plea sure of informing you, you are too stiff.”

“You say that too often,” said Winterbourne. Daisy gave a delighted laugh. “If I could have the sweet hope of making

you angry, I would say it again.” “ Don’t do that; when I am angry I’m stiffer than ever. But if you won’t

`irt with me, do cease at least to `irt with your friend at the piano; they don’t understand that sort of thing here.”

“I thought they understood nothing else!” exclaimed Daisy. “Not in young unmarried women.” “It seems to me much more proper in young unmarried women than in

old married ones,” Daisy declared. “Well,” said Winterbourne, “when you deal with natives you must go by

the custom of the place. Flirting is a purely American custom; it doesn’t exist here. So when you show yourself in public with Mr. Giovanelli and without your mother—”

“Gracious! Poor mother!” interposed Daisy. “Though you may be `irting, Mr. Giovanelli is not; he means something

else.” “He isn’t preaching, at any rate,” said Daisy with vivacity. “And if you want

very much to know, we are neither of us `irting; we are too good friends for that; we are very intimate friends.”

“Ah,” rejoined Winterbourne, “if you are in love with each other it is another affair.”

She had allowed him up to this point to talk so frankly that he had no expectation of shocking her by this ejaculation; but she immediately got up, blushing visibly, and leaving him to exclaim mentally that little American `irts were the queerest creatures in the world. “Mr. Giovanelli, at least,” she said, giving her interlocutor a single glance, “never says such very disagree- able things to me.”

Winterbourne was bewildered; he stood staring. Mr. Giovanelli had "n- ished singing; he left the piano and came over to Daisy. “ Won’t you come into the other room and have some tea?” he asked, bending before her with his decorative smile.

Daisy turned to Winterbourne, beginning to smile again. He was still more perplexed, for this inconsequent smile made nothing clear, though it seemed to prove, indeed, that she had a sweetness and softness that reverted instinc- tively to the pardon of offences. “It has never occurred to Mr. Winterbourne to offer me any tea,” she said, with her little tormenting manner.

“I have offered you advice,” Winterbourne rejoined. “I prefer weak tea!” cried Daisy, and she went off with the brilliant

Giovanelli. She sat with him in the adjoining room, in the embrasure of the

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win dow, for the rest of the eve ning. There was an in ter est ing per for mance at the piano, but neither of these young people gave heed to it. When Daisy came to take leave of Mrs.  Walker, this lady conscientiously repaired the weakness of which she had been guilty at the moment of the young girl’s arrival. She turned her back straight upon Miss Miller and left her to depart with what grace she might. Winterbourne was standing near the door; he saw it all. Daisy turned very pale and looked at her mother, but Mrs. Miller was humbly unconscious of any violation of the usual social forms. She appeared, indeed, to have felt an incongruous impulse to draw attention to her own striking observance of them. “Good night, Mrs. Walker,” she said; “ we’ve had a beautiful eve ning. You see if I let Daisy come to parties with- out me, I don’t want her to go away without me.” Daisy turned away, looking with a pale, grave face at the circle near the door; Winterbourne saw that, for the "rst moment, she was too much shocked and puzzled even for indig- nation. He on his side was greatly touched.

“That was very cruel,” he said to Mrs. Walker. “She never enters my drawing- room again,” replied his hostess. Since Winterbourne was not to meet her in Mrs. Walker’s drawing- room,

he went as often as pos si ble to Mrs. Miller’s hotel. The ladies were rarely at home, but when he found them the devoted Giovanelli was always pres ent. Very often the polished little Roman was in the drawing- room with Daisy alone, Mrs. Miller being apparently constantly of the opinion that discre- tion is the better part of surveillance. Winterbourne noted, at "rst with sur- prise, that Daisy on these occasions was never embarrassed or annoyed by his own entrance; but he very presently began to feel that she had no more surprises for him; the unexpected in her be hav ior was the only thing to expect. She showed no dis plea sure at her tête- à- tête with Giovanelli being interrupted; she could chatter as freshly and freely with two gentlemen as with one; there was always, in her conversation, the same odd mixture of audacity and puerility. Winterbourne remarked to himself that if she was seriously interested in Giovanelli it was very singular that she should not take more trou ble to preserve the sanctity of their interviews, and he liked her the more for her innocent- looking indifference and her apparently inexhausti- ble good humor. He could hardly have said why, but she seemed to him a girl who would never be jealous. At the risk of exciting a somewhat derisive smile on the reader’s part, I may af"rm that with regard to the women who had hitherto interested him it very often seemed to Winterbourne among the possibilities that, given certain contingencies, he should be afraid— literally afraid—of these ladies. He had a pleasant sense that he should never be afraid of Daisy Miller. It must be added that this sentiment was not altogether `attering to Daisy; it was part of his conviction, or rather of his apprehension, that she would prove a very light young person.

But she was evidently very much interested in Giovanelli. She looked at him whenever he spoke; she was perpetually telling him to do this and to do that; she was constantly “chaf"ng” and abusing him. She appeared com- pletely to have forgotten that Winterbourne had said anything to displease her at Mrs.  Walker’s little party. One Sunday after noon, having gone to St. Peter’s2 with his aunt, Winterbourne perceived Daisy strolling about the

2. Ornate Re nais sance church in Vatican City, and the worldwide center of Catholic observances.

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3. A dandy. 4. Lawyer (Italian). “Cavaliere”: a term of re spect.

5. Marquis (Italian).

great church in com pany with the inevitable Giovanelli. Presently he pointed out the young girl and her cavalier to Mrs. Costello. This lady looked at them a moment through her eyeglasses, and then she said:

“That’s what makes you so pensive in these days, eh?” “I had not the least idea I was pensive,” said the young man. “You are very much preoccupied, you are thinking of something.” “And what is it,” he asked, “that you accuse me of thinking of?” “Of that young lady’s, Miss Baker’s, Miss Chandler’s— what’s her name?—

Miss Miller’s intrigue with that little barber’s block.”3 “Do you call it an intrigue,” Winterbourne asked— “an affair that goes on

with such peculiar publicity?” “That’s their folly,” said Mrs. Costello, “it’s not their merit.” “No,” rejoined Winterbourne, with something of that pensiveness to which

his aunt had alluded. “I don’t believe that there is anything to be called an intrigue.”

“I have heard a dozen people speak of it; they say she is quite carried away by him.”

“They are certainly very intimate,” said Winterbourne. Mrs. Costello inspected the young couple again with her optical instru-

ment. “He is very handsome. One easily sees how it is. She thinks him the most elegant man in the world, the "nest gentleman. She has never seen anything like him; he is better even than the courier. It was the courier prob- ably who introduced him, and if he succeeds in marrying the young lady, the courier will come in for a magni"cent commission.”

“I don’t believe she thinks of marrying him,” said Winterbourne, “and I don’t believe he hopes to marry her.”

“You may be very sure she thinks of nothing. She goes on from day to day, from hour to hour, as they did in the Golden Age. I can imagine nothing more vulgar. And at the same time,” added Mrs. Costello, “depend upon it that she may tell you any moment that she is ‘engaged.’ ”

“I think that is more than Giovanelli expects,” said Winterbourne. “Who is Giovanelli?” “The little Italian. I have asked questions about him and learned some-

thing. He is apparently a perfectly respectable little man. I believe he is in a small way a cavaliere avvocato.4 But he doesn’t move in what are called the "rst circles. I think it is really not absolutely impossible that the courier intro- duced him. He is evidently im mensely charmed with Miss Miller. If she thinks him the "nest gentleman in the world, he, on his side, has never found himself in personal contact with such splendor, such opulence, such expen- siveness, as this young lady’s. And then she must seem to him wonderfully pretty and in ter est ing. I rather doubt whether he dreams of marrying her. That must appear to him too impossible a piece of luck. He has nothing but his handsome face to offer, and there is a substantial Mr. Miller in that mys- terious land of dollars. Giovanelli knows that he hasn’t a title to offer. If he were only a count or a marchese!5 He must won der at his luck at the way they have taken him up.”

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6. Who is indulging her whims (French). 7. Via del Corso: main street in Central Rome. 8. Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velásquez (1599– 1660), Spanish painter. Velásquez’s painting of

Pope Innocent X is exhibited in a small gallery of the Doria Palace. 9. Of the better society (French).

“He accounts for it by his handsome face, and thinks Miss Miller a young lady qui se passe ses fantaisies!”6 said Mrs. Costello.

“It is very true,” Winterbourne pursued, “that Daisy and her mamma have not yet risen to that stage of— what shall I call it?—of culture, at which the idea of catching a count or a marchese begins. I believe that they are intel- lectually incapable of that conception.”

“Ah! but the cavalier can’t believe it,” said Mrs. Costello. Of the observation excited by Daisy’s “intrigue,” Winterbourne gathered

that day at St. Peter’s suf"cient evidence. A dozen of the American colonists in Rome came to talk with Mrs. Costello, who sat on a little portable stool at the base of one of the great pilasters. The vesper- service was going for- ward in splendid chants and organ- tones in the adjacent choir, and mean- while, between Mrs. Costello and her friends, there was a great deal said about poor little Miss Miller’s going really “too far.” Winterbourne was not pleased with what he heard; but when, coming out upon the great steps of the church, he saw Daisy, who had emerged before him, get into an open cab with her accomplice and roll away through the cynical streets of Rome, he could not deny to himself that she was going very far indeed. He felt very sorry for her— not exactly that he believed that she had completely lost her head, but because it was painful to hear so much that was pretty and unde- fended and natu ral assigned to a vulgar place among the categories of dis- order. He made an attempt after this to give a hint to Mrs. Miller. He met one day in the Corso7 a friend— a tourist like himself— who had just come out of the Doria Palace, where he had been walking through the beautiful gal- lery. His friend talked for a moment about the superb portrait of Inno- cent X. by Velasquez,8 which hangs in one of the cabinets of the palace, and then said, “And in the same cabinet, by- the- way, I had the plea sure of con- templating a picture of a dif fer ent kind— that pretty American girl whom you pointed out to me last week.” In answer to Winterbourne’s inquiries, his friend narrated that the pretty American girl— prettier than ever— was seated with a companion in the secluded nook in which the great papal por- trait is enshrined.

“Who was her companion?” asked Winterbourne. “A little Italian with a bouquet in his button- hole. The girl is delightfully

pretty, but I thought I understood from you the other day that she was a young lady du meilleur monde.”9

“So she is!” answered Winterbourne; and having assured himself that his in for mant had seen Daisy and her companion but "ve minutes before, he jumped into a cab and went to call on Mrs. Miller. She was at home; but she apologized to him for receiving him in Daisy’s absence.

“She’s gone out somewhere with Mr. Giovanelli,” said Mrs. Miller. “She’s always going round with Mr. Giovanelli.”

“I have noticed that they are very intimate,” Winterbourne observed. “Oh! it seems as if they couldn’t live without each other!” said Mrs. Miller.

“Well, he’s a real gentleman, anyhow. I keep telling Daisy she’s engaged!” “And what does Daisy say?”

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1. A park on a hill in the center of Rome, with palatial ruins and historical monuments.

“Oh, she says she isn’t engaged. But she might as well be!” this impartial parent resumed. “She goes on as if she was. But I’ve made Mr. Giovanelli promise to tell me, if she doesn’t. I should want to write to Mr. Miller about it— shouldn’t you?”

Winterbourne replied that he certainly should; and the state of mind of Daisy’s mamma struck him as so unpre ce dented in the annals of parental vigilance that he gave up as utterly irrelevant the attempt to place her upon her guard.

After this Daisy was never at home, and Winterbourne ceased to meet her at the houses of their common acquaintances, because, as he perceived, these shrewd people had quite made up their minds that she was going too far. They ceased to invite her, and they intimated that they desired to express to observant Eu ro pe ans the great truth that, though Miss Daisy Miller was a young American lady, her be hav ior was not representative— was regarded by her compatriots as abnormal. Winterbourne wondered how she felt about all the cold shoulders that were turned towards her, and sometimes it annoyed him to suspect that she did not feel at all. He said to himself that she was too light and childish, too uncultivated and unreasoning, too pro- vincial, to have re`ected upon her ostracism or even to have perceived it. Then at other moments he believed that she carried about in her elegant and irresponsible little organism a de"ant, passionate, perfectly observant con- sciousness of the impression she produced. He asked himself whether Dai- sy’s de"ance came from the consciousness of innocence or from her being, essentially, a young person of the reckless class. It must be admitted that holding oneself to a belief in Daisy’s “innocence” came to seem to Winter- bourne more and more a matter of "ne- spun gallantry. As I have already had occasion to relate, he was angry at "nding himself reduced to chopping logic about this young lady; he was vexed at his want of instinctive certitude as to how far her eccentricities were generic, national, and how far they were per- sonal. From either view of them he had somehow missed her, and now it was too late. She was “carried away” by Mr. Giovanelli.

A few days after his brief interview with her mother, he encountered her in that beautiful abode of `owering desolation known as the Palace of the Cæsars. The early Roman spring had "lled the air with bloom and perfume, and the rugged surface of the Palatine1 was muf`ed with tender verdure. Daisy was strolling along the top of one of those great mounds of ruin that are embanked with mossy marble and paved with monumental inscriptions. It seemed to him that Rome had never been so lovely as just then. He stood looking off at the enchanting harmony of line and color that remotely encir- cles the city, inhaling the softly humid odors and feeling the freshness of the year and the antiquity of the place reaf"rm themselves in mysterious interfusion. It seemed to him also that Daisy had never looked so pretty; but this had been an observation of his whenever he met her. Giovanelli was at her side, and Giovanelli, too, wore an aspect of even unwonted brilliancy.

“Well,” said Daisy, “I should think you would be lonesome!” “Lonesome?” asked Winterbourne. “You are always going round by yourself. Can’t you get any one to walk

with you?”

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“I am not so fortunate,” said Winterbourne, “as your companion.” Giovanelli, from the "rst, had treated Winterbourne with distinguished

politeness; he listened with a deferential air to his remarks; he laughed, punctiliously, at his pleasantries; he seemed disposed to testify to his belief that Winterbourne was a superior young man. He carried himself in no degree like a jealous wooer; he had obviously a great deal of tact; he had no objection to your expecting a little humility of him. It even seemed to Win- terbourne at times that Giovanelli would "nd a certain mental relief in being able to have a private understanding with him—to say to him, as an intel- ligent man, that, bless you, he knew how extraordinary was this young lady, and didn’t `atter himself with delusive—or at least too delusive— hopes of matrimony and dollars. On this occasion he strolled away from his compan- ion to pluck a sprig of almond blossom, which he carefully arranged in his button- hole.

“I know why you say that,” said Daisy, watching Giovanelli. “ Because you think I go round too much with him!” And she nodded at her attendant.

“Every one thinks so—if you care to know,” said Winterbourne. “Of course I care to know!” Daisy exclaimed seriously. “But I don’t believe

it. They are only pretending to be shocked. They don’t really care a straw what I do. Besides, I don’t go round so much.”

“I think you will "nd they do care. They will show it— disagreeably.” Daisy looked at him a moment. “How— disagreeably?” “ Haven’t you noticed anything?” Winterbourne asked. “I have noticed you. But I noticed you were as stiff as an umbrella the

"rst time I saw you.” “You will "nd I am not so stiff as several others,” said Winterbourne,

smiling. “How shall I "nd it?” “By going to see the others.” “What will they do to me?” “They will give you the cold shoulder. Do you know what that means?” Daisy was looking at him intently; she began to color. “Do you mean as

Mrs. Walker did the other night?” “Exactly!” said Winterbourne. She looked away at Giovanelli, who was decorating himself with his

almond- blossom. Then looking back at Winterbourne— “I shouldn’t think you would let people be so unkind!” she said.

“How can I help it?” he asked. “I should think you would say something.” “I do say something”; and he paused a moment. “I say that your mother

tells me that she believes you are engaged.” “Well, she does,” said Daisy very simply. Winterbourne began to laugh. “And does Randolph believe it?” he asked. “I guess Randolph doesn’t believe anything,” said Daisy. Randolph’s scep-

ticism excited Winterbourne to farther hilarity, and he observed that Giovanelli was coming back to them. Daisy, observing it too, addressed her- self again to her countryman. “Since you have mentioned it,” she said, “I am engaged.” . . . Winterbourne looked at her; he had stopped laughing. “You don’t believe it!” she added.

He was silent a moment; and then, “Yes, I believe it!” he said.

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2. Guide (Italian). 3. One of the seven hills upon which ancient Rome had been built. 4. Ruins of the governmental and religious cen- ter of ancient Rome. “Arch of Constantine”: built in the fourth century to celebrate a key military victory of Rome’s "rst Christian emperor. 5. Ancient Roman amphitheater, known for its battles between gladiators and public execu- tions of Christians. 6. Byron’s 1817 dramatic poem contains the fol-

lowing lines: “. . . the night / Hath been to me a more familiar face / Than that of man; and in her starry shade / Of dim and solitary loveliness, / I learn’d the language of another world. / I do remember me, that in my youth, / When I was wandering,— upon such a night / I stood within the Colosseum’s wall, / ’Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome; / The trees which grew along the broken arches / Waved dark in the blue mid- night, and the stars / Shone through the rents of ruin. . . .”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” she answered. “Well, then— I am not!” The young girl and her cicerone2 were on their way to the gate of the enclo-

sure, so that Winterbourne, who had but lately entered, presently took leave of them. A week afterwards he went to dine at a beautiful villa on the Cælian Hill,3 and, on arriving, dismissed his hired vehicle. The eve ning was charm- ing, and he promised himself the satisfaction of walking home beneath the Arch of Constantine and past the vaguely- lighted monuments of the Forum.4 There was a waning moon in the sky, and her radiance was not brilliant, but she was veiled in a thin cloud- curtain which seemed to diffuse and equalize it. When, on his return from the villa (it was eleven o’clock), Winterbourne approached the dusky circle of the Colosseum,5 it occurred to him, as a lover of the picturesque, that the interior, in the pale moonshine, would be well worth a glance. He turned aside and walked to one of the empty arches, near which, as he observed, an open carriage— one of the little Roman street- cabs— was stationed. Then he passed in among the cavernous shad- ows of the great structure, and emerged upon the clear and silent arena. The place had never seemed to him more impressive. One- half of the gigantic circus was in deep shade; the other was sleeping in the luminous dusk. As he stood there he began to murmur Byron’s famous lines, out of “Manfred”;6 but before he had "nished his quotation he remembered that if nocturnal meditations in the Colosseum are recommended by the poets, they are dep- recated by the doctors. The historic atmosphere was there, certainly; but the historic atmosphere, scienti"cally considered, was not better than a villain- ous miasma. Winterbourne walked to the middle of the arena, to take a more general glance, intending thereafter to make a hasty retreat. The great cross in the center was covered with shadow; it was only as he drew near it that he made it out distinctly. Then he saw that two persons were stationed upon the low steps which formed its base. One of these was a woman, seated; her companion was standing in front of her.

Presently the sound of the woman’s voice came to him distinctly in the warm night air. “Well, he looks at us as one of the old lions or tigers may have looked at the Christian martyrs!” These were the words he heard, in the familiar accent of Miss Daisy Miller.

“Let us hope he is not very hungry,” responded the ingenious Giovanelli. “He will have to take me "rst; you will serve for dessert!”

Winterbourne stopped, with a sort of horror; and, it must be added, with a sort of relief. It was as if a sudden illumination had been `ashed upon the ambiguity of Daisy’s be hav ior and the riddle had become easy to read. She was a young lady whom a gentleman need no longer be at pains to re spect. He stood there looking at her— looking at her companion, and not re`ect- ing that though he saw them vaguely, he himself must have been more

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7. Malaria (Italian).

brightly vis i ble. He felt angry with himself that he had bothered so much about the right way of regarding Miss Daisy Miller. Then, as he was going to advance again, he checked himself; not from the fear that he was doing her injustice, but from a sense of the danger of appearing unbecomingly exhila- rated by this sudden revulsion from cautious criticism. He turned away towards the entrance of the place; but as he did so he heard Daisy speak again.

“Why, it was Mr. Winterbourne! He saw me— and he cuts me!” What a clever little reprobate she was, and how smartly she played an

injured innocence! But he wouldn’t cut her. Winterbourne came forward again, and went towards the great cross. Daisy had got up; Giovanelli lifted his hat. Winterbourne had now begun to think simply of the craziness, from a sanitary point of view, of a delicate young girl lounging away the eve ning in this nest of malaria. What if she were a clever little reprobate? that was no reason for her dying of the perniciosa.7 “How long have you been there?” he asked, almost brutally.

Daisy, lovely in the `attering moonlight, looked at him a moment. Then— “All the eve ning,” she answered gently. . . . “I never saw anything so pretty.”

“I am afraid,” said Winterbourne, “that you will not think Roman fever very pretty. This is the way people catch it. I won der,” he added, turning to Giovanelli, “that you, a native Roman, should countenance such a terrible indiscretion.”

“Ah,” said the handsome native, “for myself, I am not afraid.” “Neither am I— for you! I am speaking for this young lady.” Giovanelli lifted his well- shaped eyebrows and showed his brilliant teeth.

But he took Winterbourne’s rebuke with docility. “I told the Signorina it was a grave indiscretion; but when was the Signorina ever prudent?”

“I never was sick, and I don’t mean to be!” the Signorina declared. “I don’t look like much, but I’m healthy! I was bound to see the Colosseum by moon- light; I shouldn’t have wanted to go home without that; and we have had the most beautiful time, haven’t we, Mr. Giovanelli! If there has been any dan- ger, Eugenio can give me some pills. He has got some splendid pills.”

“I should advise you,” said Winterbourne, “to drive home as fast as pos si- ble and take one!”

“What you say is very wise,” Giovanelli rejoined. “I will go and make sure the carriage is at hand.” And he went forward rapidly.

Daisy followed with Winterbourne. He kept looking at her; she seemed not in the least embarrassed. Winterbourne said nothing; Daisy chattered about the beauty of the place. “Well, I have seen the Colosseum by moon- light!” she exclaimed. “That’s one good thing.” Then, noticing Winterbourne’s silence, she asked him why he didn’t speak. He made no answer; he only began to laugh. They passed under one of the dark archways; Giovanelli was in front with the carriage. Here Daisy stopped a moment, looking at the young American. “Did you believe I was engaged the other day?” she asked.

“It doesn’t matter what I believed the other day,” said Winterbourne, still laughing.

“Well, what do you believe now?” “I believe that it makes very little difference whether you are engaged or

not!”

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He felt the young girl’s pretty eyes "xed upon him through the thick gloom of the archway; she was apparently going to answer. But Giovanelli hurried her forward. “Quick, quick,” he said; “if we get in by midnight we are quite safe.”

Daisy took her seat in the carriage, and the fortunate Italian placed him- self beside her. “ Don’t forget Eugenio’s pills!” said Winterbourne, as he lifted his hat.

“I don’t care,” said Daisy, in a little strange tone, “ whether I have Roman fever or not!” Upon this the cab- driver cracked his whip, and they rolled away over the desultory patches of the antique pavement.

Winterbourne—to do him justice, as it were— mentioned to no one that he had encountered Miss Miller, at midnight, in the Colosseum with a gentle- man; but nevertheless, a couple of days later, the fact of her having been there under these circumstances was known to every member of the little American circle, and commented accordingly. Winterbourne re`ected that they had of course known it at the hotel, and that, after Daisy’s return, there had been an exchange of jokes between the porter and the cab- driver. But the young man was conscious at the same moment that it had ceased to be a matter of serious regret to him that the little American `irt should be “talked about” by low- minded menials. These people, a day or two later, had serious information to give: the little American `irt was alarmingly ill. Win- terbourne, when the rumor came to him, immediately went to the hotel for more news. He found that two or three charitable friends had preceded him, and that they were being entertained in Mrs. Miller’s salon by Randolph.

“It’s going round at night,” said Randolph— “that’s what made her sick. She’s always going round at midnight. I shouldn’t think she’d want to— it’s so plaguey dark. You can’t see anything here at night, except when there’s a moon. In Amer i ca there’s always a moon!” Mrs. Miller was invisible; she was now, at least, giving her daughter the advantage of her society. It was evi- dent that Daisy was dangerously ill.

Winterbourne went often to ask for news of her, and once he saw Mrs. Miller, who, though deeply alarmed, was— rather to his surprise— perfectly composed, and, as it appeared, a most ef"cient and judicious nurse. She talked a good deal about Dr. Davis, but Winterbourne paid her the compliment of saying to himself that she was not, after all, such a mon- strous goose. “Daisy spoke of you the other day,” she said to him. “Half the time she doesn’t know what she’s saying, but that time I think she did. She gave me a message: she told me to tell you. She told me to tell you that she never was engaged to that handsome Italian. I am sure I am very glad; Mr. Giovanelli hasn’t been near us since she was taken ill. I thought he was so much of a gentleman; but I don’t call that very polite! A lady told me that he was afraid I was angry with him for taking Daisy round at night. Well, so I am; but I suppose he knows I’m a lady. I would scorn to scold him. Any way, she says she’s not engaged. I don’t know why she wanted you to know; but she said to me three times— ‘Mind you tell Mr. Winterbourne.’ And then she told me to ask if you remembered the time you went to that castle, in Switzerland. But I said I wouldn’t give any such messages as that. Only, if she is not engaged, I’m sure I’m glad to know it.”

But, as Winterbourne had said, it mattered very little. A week after this the poor girl died; it had been a terrible case of the fever. Daisy’s grave was

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in the little Protestant cemetery, in an angle of the wall of imperial Rome, beneath the cypresses and the thick spring- ̀ owers. Winterbourne stood there beside it, with a number of other mourners; a number larger than the scandal excited by the young lady’s career would have led you to expect. Near him stood Giovanelli, who came nearer still before Winterbourne turned away. Giovanelli was very pale; on this occasion he had no `ower in his button- hole; he seemed to wish to say something. At last he said, “She was the most beautiful young lady I ever saw, and the most amiable.” And then he added in a moment, “And she was the most innocent.”

Winterbourne looked at him, and presently repeated his words, “And the most innocent?”

“The most innocent!” Winterbourne felt sore and angry. “Why the devil,” he asked, “did you take

her to that fatal place?” Mr. Giovanelli’s urbanity was apparently imperturbable. He looked on

the ground a moment, and then he said, “For myself, I had no fear; and she wanted to go.”

“That was no reason!” Winterbourne declared. The subtle Roman again dropped his eyes. “If she had lived, I should have

got nothing. She would never have married me, I am sure.” “She would never have married you?” “For a moment I hoped so. But no, I am sure.” Winterbourne listened to him; he stood staring at the raw protuberance

among the April daisies. When he turned away again Mr. Giovanelli, with his light slow step, had retired.

Winterbourne almost immediately left Rome; but the following summer he again met his aunt, Mrs. Costello, at Vevey. Mrs. Costello was fond of Vevey. In the interval Winterbourne had often thought of Daisy Miller and her mystifying manners. One day he spoke of her to his aunt— said it was on his conscience that he had done her injustice.

“I am sure I don’t know,” said Mrs. Costello. “How did your injustice affect her?”

“She sent me a message before her death which I didn’t understand at the time. But I have understood it since. She would have appreciated one’s esteem.”

“Is that a modest way,” asked Mrs. Costello, “of saying that she would have reciprocated one’s affection?”

Winterbourne offered no answer to this question; but he presently said, “You were right in that remark that you made last summer. I was booked to make a mistake. I have lived too long in foreign parts.”

Nevertheless, he went back to live at Geneva, whence there continue to come the most contradictory accounts of his motives of sojourn: a report that he is “studying” hard—an intimation that he is much interested in a very clever foreign lady.

1878, 1879

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1. This “ little gem of bright, quick vivid form,” as James called it, "rst appeared in the April 16, 1892, issue of Black and White; then in “The Real Thing” and Other Tales (1893); and " nally in Vol. 18 (1909) of the New York edition, the

source of the text printed here. 2. When colors lose their brilliance after they have dried on the canvas, they are said to have “sunk in.” 3. Decorative `aps or folds.

The Real Thing1

I

When the porter’s wife, who used to answer the house- bell, announced “A gentleman and a lady, sir” I had, as I often had in those days— the wish being father to the thought—an immediate vision of sitters. Sitters my visitors in this case proved to be; but not in the sense I should have preferred. There was nothing at "rst however to indicate that they mightn’t have come for a portrait. The gentleman, a man of "fty, very high and very straight, with a moustache slightly grizzled and a dark grey walking- coat admirably "tted, both of which I noted professionally— I don’t mean as a barber or yet as a tailor— would have struck me as a celebrity if celebrities often were strik- ing. It was a truth of which I had for some time been conscious that a "gure with a good deal of frontage was, as one might say, almost never a public institution. A glance at the lady helped to remind me of this paradoxical law: she also looked too distinguished to be a “personality.” Moreover one would scarcely come across two variations together.

Neither of the pair immediately spoke— they only prolonged the prelimi- nary gaze suggesting that each wished to give the other a chance. They were visibly shy; they stood there letting me take them in— which, as I afterwards perceived, was the most practical thing they could have done. In this way their embarrassment served their cause. I had seen people painfully reluc- tant to mention that they desired anything so gross as to be represented on canvas; but the scruples of my new friends appeared almost insurmountable. Yet the gentleman might have said “I should like a portrait of my wife,” and the lady might have said “I should like a portrait of my husband.” Perhaps they weren’t husband and wife— this naturally would make the matter more delicate. Perhaps they wished to be done together—in which case they ought to have brought a third person to break the news.

“We come from Mr. Rivet,” the lady " nally said with a dim smile that had the effect of a moist sponge passed over a “sunk”2 piece of painting, as well as of a vague allusion to vanished beauty. She was as tall and straight, in her degree, as her companion, and with ten years less to carry. She looked as sad as a woman could look whose face was not charged with expression; that is her tinted oval mask showed waste as an exposed surface shows fric- tion. The hand of time had played over her freely, but to an effect of elimi- nation. She was slim and stiff, and so well- dressed, in dark blue cloth, with lappets3 and pockets and buttons, that it was clear she employed the same tailor as her husband. The couple had an inde"nable air of prosperous thrift— they evidently got a good deal of luxury for their money. If I was to be one of their luxuries it would behove me to consider my terms.

“Ah Claude Rivet recommended me?” I echoed; and I added that it was very kind of him, though I could re`ect that, as he only painted landscape, this wasn’t a sacri"ce.

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The lady looked very hard at the gentleman, and the gentleman looked round the room. Then staring at the `oor a moment and stroking his mous- tache, he rested his pleasant eyes on me with the remark: “He said you were the right one.”

“I try to be, when people want to sit.” “Yes, we should like to,” said the lady anxiously. “Do you mean together?” My visitors exchanged a glance. “If you could do anything with me I sup-

pose it would be double,” the gentleman stammered. “Oh yes, there’s naturally a higher charge for two "gures than for one.” “We should like to make it pay,” the husband confessed. “That’s very good of you,” I returned, appreciating so unwonted a

sympathy— for I supposed he meant pay the artist. A sense of strangeness seemed to draw on the lady. “We mean for the illustrations— Mr. Rivet said you might put one in.” “Put in—an illustration?” I was equally confused. “Sketch her off, you know,” said the gentleman, colouring. It was only then that I understood the ser vice Claude Rivet had rendered

me; he had told them how I worked in black- and- white, for magazines, for story books, for sketches of con temporary life, and consequently had copi- ous employment for models. These things were true, but it was not less true— I may confess it now; whether because the aspiration was to lead to every thing or to nothing I leave the reader to guess— that I couldn’t get the honours, to say nothing of the emoluments, of a great painter of portraits out of my head. My “illustrations” were my pot- boilers; I looked to a dif fer- ent branch of art— far and away the most in ter est ing it had always seemed to me—to perpetuate my fame. There was no shame in looking to it also to make my fortune; but that fortune was by so much further from being made from the moment my visitors wished to be “done” for nothing. I was disappointed; for in the pictorial sense I had immediately seen them. I had seized their type— I had already settled what I would do with it. Some- thing that wouldn’t absolutely have pleased them, I afterwards re`ected.

“Ah you’re— you’re— a— ?” I began as soon as I had mastered my surprise. I couldn’t bring out the dingy word “models”: it seemed so little to "t the case.

“We haven’t had much practice,” said the lady. “We’ve got to do something, and we’ve thought that an artist in your line

might perhaps make something of us,” her husband threw off. He further mentioned that they didn’t know many artists and that they had gone "rst, on the off- chance—he painted views of course, but sometimes put in "g- ures; perhaps I remembered—to Mr. Rivet, whom they had met a few years before at a place in Norfolk where he was sketching.

“We used to sketch a little ourselves,” the lady hinted. “It’s very awkward, but we absolutely must do something,” her husband

went on. “Of course we’re not so very young,” she admitted with a wan smile. With the remark that I might as well know something more about them

the husband had handed me a card extracted from a neat new pocket- book— their appurtenances were all of the freshest— and inscribed with the words “Major Monarch.” Impressive as these words were they didn’t carry my

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4. Host’s table (French); a common dining table for guests at a hotel.

knowledge much further; but my visitor presently added: “I’ve left the army and we’ve had the misfortune to lose our money. In fact our means are dread- fully small.”

“It’s awfully trying— a regular strain,” said Mrs. Monarch. They evidently wished to be discreet—to take care not to swagger because

they were gentlefolk. I felt them willing to recognise this as something of a drawback, at the same time that I guessed at an under lying sense— their consolation in adversity— that they had their points. They certainly had; but these advantages struck me as preponderantly social; such for instance as would help to make a drawing- room look well. However, a drawing- room was always, or ought to be, a picture.

In consequence of his wife’s allusion to their age Major Monarch observed: “Naturally it’s more for the "gure that we thought of going in. We can still hold ourselves up.” On the instant I saw that the "gure was indeed their strong point. His “naturally” didn’t sound vain, but it lighted up the ques- tion. “She has the best one,” he continued, nodding at his wife with a pleas- ant after- dinner absence of circumlocution. I could only reply, as if we were in fact sitting over our wine, that this didn’t prevent his own from being very good; which led him in turn to make answer: “We thought that if you ever have to do people like us we might be something like it. She particularly— for a lady in a book, you know.”

I was so amused by them that, to get more of it, I did my best to take their point of view; and though it was an embarrassment to "nd myself apprais- ing physically, as if they were animals on hire or useful blacks, a pair whom I should have expected to meet only in one of the relations in which criti- cism is tacit, I looked at Mrs. Monarch judicially enough to be able to exclaim after a moment with conviction: “Oh yes, a lady in a book!” She was singu- larly like a bad illustration.

“ We’ll stand up, if you like,” said the Major; and he raised himself before me with a really grand air.

I could take his mea sure at a glance—he was six feet two and a perfect gentleman. It would have paid any club in pro cess of formation and in want of a stamp to engage him at a salary to stand in the principal win dow. What struck me at once was that in coming to me they had rather missed their vocation; they could surely have been turned to better account for advertis- ing purposes. I couldn’t of course see the thing in detail, but I could see them make somebody’s fortune— I don’t mean their own. There was something in them for a waistcoat- maker, an hotel- keeper or a soap- vendor. I could imagine “We always use it” pinned on their bosoms with the greatest effect; I had a vision of the brilliancy with which they would launch a table d’hôte.4

Mrs. Monarch sat still, not from pride but from shyness, and presently her husband said to her; “Get up, my dear, and show how smart you are.” She obeyed, but she had no need to get up to show it. She walked to the end of the studio and then came back blushing, her `uttered eyes on the part- ner of her appeal. I was reminded of an incident I had accidentally had a glimpse of in Paris— being with a friend there, a dramatist about to produce a play, when an actress came to him to ask to be entrusted with a part. She went through her paces before him, walked up and down as Mrs. Monarch

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was doing. Mrs. Monarch did it quite as well, but I abstained from applaud- ing. It was very odd to see such people apply for such poor pay. She looked as if she had ten thousand a year. Her husband had used the word that described her: she was in the London current jargon essentially and typi- cally “smart.” Her "gure was, in the same order of ideas, conspicuously and irreproachably “good.” For a woman of her age her waist was surprisingly small; her elbow moreover had the orthodox crook. She held her head at the conventional angle, but why did she come to me? She ought to have tried on jackets at a big shop. I feared my visitors were not only destitute but “artistic”— which would be a great complication. When she sat down again I thanked her, observing that what a draughtsman most valued in his model was the faculty of keeping quiet.

“Oh she can keep quiet,” said Major Monarch. Then he added jocosely: “I’ve always kept her quiet.”

“I’m not a nasty "dget, am I?” It was going to wring tears from me, I felt, the way she hid her head, ostrich- like, in the other broad bosom.

The owner of this expanse addressed his answer to me. “Perhaps it isn’t out of place to mention— because we ought to be quite business- like, oughtn’t we?— that when I married her she was known as the Beautiful Statue.”

“Oh dear!” said Mrs. Monarch ruefully. “Of course I should want a certain amount of expression,” I rejoined. “Of course!”— and I had never heard such una nim i ty. “And then I suppose you know that you’ll get awfully tired.” “Oh we never get tired!” they eagerly cried. “Have you had any kind of practice?” They hesitated— they looked at each other. “We’ve been photographed—

immensely,” said Mrs. Monarch. “She means the fellows have asked us themselves,” added the Major. “I see— because you’re so good- looking.” “I don’t know what they thought, but they were always after us.” “We always got our photo graphs for nothing,” smiled Mrs. Monarch. “We might have brought some, my dear,” her husband remarked. “I’m not sure we have any left. We’ve given quantities away,” she explained

to me. “With our autographs and that sort of thing,” said the Major. “Are they to be got in the shops?” I enquired as a harmless pleasantry. “Oh yes, hers— they used to be.” “Not now,” said Mrs. Monarch with her eyes on the `oor.

II

I could fancy the “sort of thing” they put on the pre sen ta tion copies of their photo graphs, and I was sure they wrote a beautiful hand. It was odd how quickly I was sure of every thing that concerned them. If they were now so poor as to have to earn shillings and pence they could never have had much of a margin. Their good looks had been their capital, and they had good- humouredly made the most of the career that this resource marked out for them. It was in their faces, the blankness, the deep intellectual repose of the twenty years of country- house visiting that had given them pleasant into- nations. I could see the sunny drawing- rooms, sprinkled with periodicals

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5. Game birds.

she didn’t read, in which Mrs. Monarch had continuously sat; I could see the wet shrubberies in which she had walked, equipped to admiration for either exercise. I could see the rich covers5 the Major had helped to shoot and the wonderful garments in which, late at night, he repaired to the smoking- room to talk about them. I could imagine their leggings and waterproofs, their knowing tweeds and rugs, their rolls of sticks and cases of tackle and neat umbrellas; and I could evoke the exact appearance of their servants and the compact variety of their luggage on the platforms of country stations.

They gave small tips, but they were liked; they didn’t do anything them- selves, but they were welcome. They looked so well everywhere; they grati- "ed the general relish for stature, complexion and “form.” They knew it without fatuity or vulgarity, and they respected themselves in consequence. They weren’t super"cial; they were thorough and kept themselves up—it had been their line. People with such a taste for activity had to have some line. I could feel how even in a dull house they could have been counted on for the joy of life. At pres ent something had happened—it didn’t matter what, their little income had grown less, it had grown least— and they had to do something for pocket- money. Their friends could like them, I made out, with- out liking to support them. There was something about them that repre- sented credit— their clothes, their manners, their type; but if credit is a large empty pocket in which an occasional chink reverberates, the chink at least must be audible. What they wanted of me was to help to make it so. Fortu- nately they had no children— I soon divined that. They would also perhaps wish our relations to be kept secret: this was why it was “for the "gure”— the reproduction of the face would betray them.

I liked them— I felt, quite as their friends must have done— they were so simple; and I had no objection to them if they would suit. But somehow with all their perfections I didn’t easily believe in them. After all they were ama- teurs, and the ruling passion of my life was the detestation of the amateur. Combined with this was another perversity—an innate preference for the represented subject over the real one: the defect of the real one was so apt to be a lack of repre sen ta tion. I liked things that appeared; then one was sure. Whether they were or not was a subordinate and almost always a prof- itless question. There were other considerations, the "rst of which was that I already had two or three recruits in use, notably a young person with big feet, in alpaca, from Kilburn, who for a couple of years had come to me regu- larly for my illustrations and with whom I was still— perhaps ignobly— satis"ed. I frankly explained to my visitors how the case stood, but they had taken more precautions than I supposed. They had reasoned out their oppor- tunity, for Claude Rivet had told them of the projected édition de luxe of one of the writers of our day— the rarest of the novelists— who, long neglected by the multitudinous vulgar and dearly prized by the attentive (need I men- tion Philip Vincent?) had had the happy fortune of seeing, late in life, the dawn and then the full light of a higher criticism; an estimate in which on the part of the public there was something really of expiation. The edition preparing, planned by a publisher of taste, was practically an act of high reparation; the wood- cuts with which it was to be enriched were the hom-

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6. What! (French). 7. Delayed. The term comes from an unexpected

delay between the triggering of a "rearm and its "ring— a common prob lem in older "rearms.

age of En glish art to one of the most in de pen dent representatives of En glish letters. Major and Mrs. Monarch confessed to me they had hoped I might be able to work them into my branch of the enterprise. They knew I was to do the "rst of the books, “Rutland Ramsay,” but I had to make clear to them that my participation in the rest of the affair— this "rst book was to be a test— must depend on the satisfaction I should give. If this should be lim- ited my employers would drop me with scarce common forms. It was there- fore a crisis for me, and naturally I was making special preparations, looking about for new people, should they be necessary, and securing the best types. I admitted however that I should like to settle down to two or three good models who would do for every thing.

“Should we have often to— a— put on special clothes?” Mrs. Monarch tim- idly demanded.

“Dear yes— that’s half the business.” “And should we be expected to supply our own costumes?” “Oh no; I’ve got a lot of things. A paint er’s models put on—or put off—

anything he likes.” “And you mean— a— the same?” “The same?” Mrs. Monarch looked at her husband again. “Oh she was just wondering,” he explained, “if the costumes are in gen-

eral use.” I had to confess that they were, and I mentioned further that some of them— I had a lot of genuine greasy last- century things— had served their time, a hundred years ago, on living world- stained men and women; on "g- ures not perhaps so far removed, in that vanished world, from their type, the Monarchs’, quoi!6 of a breeched and bewigged age. “ We’ll put on any- thing that "ts,” said the Major.

“Oh I arrange that— they "t in the pictures.” “I’m afraid I should do better for the modern books. I’d come as you like,”

said Mrs. Monarch. “She has got a lot of clothes at home: they might do for con temporary life,”

her husband continued. “Oh I can fancy scenes in which you’d be quite natu ral.” And indeed I

could see the slipshod rearrangements of stale properties— the stories I tried to produce pictures for without the exasperation of reading them— whose sandy tracts the good lady might help to people. But I had to return to the fact that for this sort of work— the daily mechanical grind— I was already equipped: the people I was working with were fully adequate.

“We only thought we might be more like some characters,” said Mrs. Mon- arch mildly, getting up.

Her husband also rose; he stood looking at me with a dim wistfulness that was touching in so "ne a man. “ Wouldn’t it be rather a pull sometimes to have— a—to have— ?” He hung "re;7 he wanted me to help him by phrasing what he meant. But I couldn’t— I didn’t know. So he brought it out awk- wardly: “The real thing; a gentleman, you know, or a lady.” I was quite ready to give a general assent— I admitted that there was a great deal in that. This encouraged Major Monarch to say, following up his appeal with an unacted

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8. Large suitcases. 9. Residential district in West London. 1. Native of London, especially the East End. The cockney dialect is known for dropping h’s;

e.g., hair would be pronounced air. 2. Imaginary magazine named after a main business street in London.

gulp: “It’s awfully hard— we’ve tried every thing.” The gulp was communica- tive; it proved too much for his wife. Before I knew it Mrs. Monarch had dropped again upon a divan and burst into tears. Her husband sat down beside her, holding one of her hands; whereupon she quickly dried her eyes with the other, while I felt embarrassed as she looked up at me. “ There isn’t a confounded job I haven’t applied for— waited for— prayed for. You can fancy we’d be pretty bad "rst. Secretaryships and that sort of thing? You might as well ask for a peerage. I’d be anything— I’m strong; a messenger or a coal- heaver. I’d put on a gold- laced cap and open carriage- doors in front of the haberdasher’s; I’d hang about a station to carry portmanteaux;8 I’d be a postman. But they won’t look at you; there are thousands as good as your- self already on the ground. Gentlemen, poor beggars, who’ve drunk their wine, who’ve kept their hunters!”

I was as reassuring as I knew how to be, and my visitors were presently on their feet again while, for the experiment, we agreed on an hour. We were discussing it when the door opened and Miss Churm came in with a wet umbrella. Miss Churm had to take the omnibus to Maida Vale9 and then walk half a mile. She looked a tri`e blowsy and slightly splashed. I scarcely ever saw her come in without thinking afresh how odd it was that, being so little in herself, she should yet be so much in others. She was a meagre little Miss Churm, but was such an ample heroine of romance. She was only a freckled cockney,1 but she could represent every thing, from a "ne lady to a shepherdess; she had the faculty as she might have had a "ne voice or long hair. She couldn’t spell and she loved beer, but she had two or three “points,” and practice, and a knack, and mother- wit, and a whimsical sensibility, and a love of the theatre, and seven sisters, and not an ounce of re spect, espe- cially for the h. The "rst thing my visitors saw was that her umbrella was wet, and in their spotless perfection they visibly winced at it. The rain had come on since their arrival.

“I’m all in a soak; there was a mess of people in the ’bus. I wish you lived near a stytion,” said Miss Churm. I requested her to get ready as quickly as pos si ble, and she passed into the room in which she always changed her dress. But before going out she asked me what she was to get into this time.

“It’s the Rus sian princess, don’t you know?” I answered; “the one with the ‘golden eyes,’ in black velvet, for the long thing in the Cheapside.”2

“Golden eyes? I say!” cried Miss Churm, while my companions watched her with intensity as she withdrew. She always arranged herself, when she was late, before I could turn around; and I kept my visitors a little on pur- pose, so that they might get an idea, from seeing her, what would be expected of themselves. I mentioned that she was quite my notion of an excellent model— she was really very clever.

“Do you think she looks like a Rus sian princess?” Major Monarch asked with lurking alarm.

“When I make her, yes.” “Oh if you have to make her— !” he reasoned, not without point. “That’s the most you can ask. There are so many who are not makeable.”

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“Well now, here’s a lady”— and with a persuasive smile he passed his arm into his wife’s— “who’s already made!”

“Oh I’m not a Rus sian princess,” Mrs. Monarch protested a little coldly. I could see she had known some and didn’t like them. There at once was a complication of a kind I never had to fear with Miss Churm.

This young lady came back in black velvet— the gown was rather rusty and very low on her lean shoulders— and with a Japa nese fan in her red hands. I reminded her that in the scene I was doing she had to look over some one’s head. “I forget whose it is; but it doesn’t matter. Just look over a head.”

“I’d rather look over a stove,” said Miss Churm; and she took her station near the "re. She fell into position, settled herself into a tall attitude, gave a certain backward inclination to her head and a certain forward droop to her fan, and looked, at least to my prejudiced sense, distinguished and charming, foreign and dangerous. We left her looking so while I went down- stairs with Major and Mrs. Monarch.

“I believe I could come about as near it as that,” said Mrs. Monarch. “Oh, you think she’s shabby, but you must allow for the alchemy of art.” However, they went off with an evident increase of comfort founded on

their demonstrable advantage in being the real thing. I could fancy them shuddering over Miss Churm. She was very droll about them when I went back, for I told her what they wanted.

“Well, if she can sit I’ll tyke to bookkeeping,” said my model. “She’s very ladylike,” I replied as an innocent form of aggravation. “So much the worse for you. That means she can’t turn round.” “ She’ll do for the fash ion able novels.” “Oh yes, she’ll do for them!” my model humorously declared. “ Ain’t they

bad enough without her?” I had often sociably denounced them to Miss Churm.

III

It was for the elucidation of a mystery in one of these works that I "rst tried Mrs. Monarch. Her husband came with her, to be useful if necessary—it was suf"ciently clear that as a general thing he would prefer to come with her. At "rst I wondered if this were for “propriety’s” sake—if he were going to be jealous and meddling. The idea was too tiresome, and if it had been con"rmed it would speedily have brought our acquaintance to a close. But I soon saw there was nothing in it and that if he accompanied Mrs. Mon- arch it was—in addition to the chance of being wanted— simply because he had nothing else to do. When they were separate his occupation was gone and they never had been separate. I judged rightly that in their awkward situ- ation their close union was their main comfort and that this union had no weak spot. It was a real marriage, an encouragement to the hesitating, a nut for pessimists to crack. Their address was humble— I remember afterwards thinking it had been the only thing about them that was really professional— and I could fancy the la men ta ble lodgings in which the Major would have been left alone. He could sit there more or less grimly with his wife—he couldn’t sit there anyhow without her.

He had too much tact to try and make himself agreeable when he couldn’t be useful; so when I was too absorbed in my work to talk he simply sat and

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waited. But I liked to hear him talk—it made my work, when not interrupt- ing it, less mechanical, less special. To listen to him was to combine the excitement of going out with the economy of staying at home. There was only one hindrance— that I seemed not to know any of the people this bril- liant couple had known. I think he wondered extremely, during the term of our intercourse, whom the deuce I did know. He hadn’t a stray sixpence of an idea to fumble for, so we didn’t spin it very "ne; we con"ned ourselves to questions of leather and even of liquor— saddlers and breeches- makers and how to get excellent claret cheap— and matters like “good trains” and the habits of small game. His lore on these last subjects was astonishing— he managed to interweave the station- master with the ornithologist. When he couldn’t talk about greater things he could talk cheerfully about smaller, and since I couldn’t accompany him into reminiscences of the fash ion able world he could lower the conversation without a vis i ble effort to my level.

So earnest a desire to please was touching in a man who could so easily have knocked one down. He looked after the "re and had an opinion on the draught of the stove without my asking him, and I could see that he thought many of my arrangements not half knowing. I remember telling him that if I were only rich I’d offer him a salary to come and teach me how to live. Sometimes he gave a random sigh of which the essence might have been: “Give me even such a bare old barrack as this, and I’d do something with it!” When I wanted to use him he came alone; which was an illustration of the superior courage of women. His wife could bear her solitary second `oor, and she was in general more discreet; showing by vari ous small reserves that she was alive to the propriety of keeping our relations markedly professional— not letting them slide into sociability. She wished it to remain clear that she and the Major were employed, not cultivated, and if she approved of me as a superior, who could be kept in his place, she never thought me quite good enough for an equal.

She sat with great intensity, giving the whole of her mind to it, and was capable of remaining for an hour almost as motionless as before a photog- rapher’s lens. I could see she had been photographed often, but somehow the very habit that made her good for that purpose un"tted her for mine. At "rst I was extremely pleased with her ladylike air, and it was a satisfaction, on coming to follow her lines, to see how good they were and how far they could lead the pencil. But after a little skirmishing I began to "nd her too insurmountably stiff; do what I would with it my drawing looked like a photo- graph or a copy of a photo graph. Her "gure had no variety of expression— she herself had no sense of variety. You may say that this was my business and was only a question of placing her. Yet I placed her in every conceivable position and she managed to obliterate their differences. She was always a lady certainly, and into the bargain was always the same lady. She was the real thing, but always the same thing. There were moments when I rather writhed under the serenity of her con"dence that she was the real thing. All her dealings with me and all her husband’s were an implication that this was lucky for me. Meanwhile I found myself trying to invent types that approached her own, instead of making her own transform itself—in the clever way that was not impossible for instance to poor Miss Churm. Arrange as I would and take the precautions I would, she always came out, in my pictures, too tall— landing me in the dilemma of having represented a fas-

T H E R E A L T H I N G | 4 5 9

3. Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), Florentine painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer. Raffa- ello Santi or Sanzio (1483–1520), Italian painter.

4. Unthinkingly (French). 5. Lost pro"les (French); poses in which the subject turns away.

cinating woman as seven feet high, which (out of re spect perhaps to my own very much scantier inches) was far from my idea of such a personage.

The case was worse with the Major— nothing I could do would keep him down, so that he became useful only for repre sen ta tion of brawny giants. I adored variety and range, I cherished human accidents, the illustrative note; I wanted to characterise closely, and the thing in the world I most hated was the danger of being ridden by a type. I had quarrelled with some of my friends about it; I had parted com pany with them for maintaining that one had to be, and that if the type was beautiful— witness Raphael and Leonardo3— the servitude was only a gain. I was neither Leonardo nor Raphael— I might only be a presumptuous young modern searcher; but I held that every thing was to be sacri"ced sooner than character. When they claimed that the obsessional form could easily be character I retorted, perhaps super"cially, “Whose?” It couldn’t be every body’s—it might end in being nobody’s.

After I had drawn Mrs. Monarch a dozen times I felt surer even than before that the value of such a model as Miss Churm resided precisely in the fact that she had no positive stamp, combined of course with the other fact that what she did have was a curious and inexplicable talent for imita- tion. Her usual appearance was like a curtain which she could draw up at request for a capital per for mance. This per for mance was simply suggestive; but it was a word to the wise—it was vivid and pretty. Sometimes even I thought it, though she was plain herself, too insipidly pretty; I made it a reproach to her that the "gures drawn from her were monotonously (bête- ment,4 as we used to say) graceful. Nothing made her more angry: it was so much her pride to feel she could sit for characters that had nothing in com- mon with each other. She would accuse me at such moments of taking away her “reputytion.”

It suffered a certain shrinkage, this queer quantity, from the repeated vis- its of my new friends. Miss Churm was greatly in demand, never in want of employment, so I had no scruple in putting her off occasionally, to try them more at my ease. It was certainly amusing at "rst to do the real thing—it was amusing to do Major Monarch’s trousers. There were the real thing, even if he did come out colossal. It was amusing to do his wife’s back hair—it was so mathematically neat— and the par tic u lar “smart” tension of her tight stays. She lent herself especially to positions in which the face was some- what averted or blurred; she abounded in ladylike back views and pro"ls per- dus.5 When she stood erect she took naturally one of the attitudes in which court- painters represent queens and princesses; so that I found myself won- dering whether, to draw out this accomplishment, I couldn’t get the editor of the Cheapside to publish a really royal romance, “A Tale of Buckingham Palace.” Sometimes however the real thing and the make- believe came into contact; by which I mean that Miss Churm, keeping an appointment or com- ing to make one on days when I had much work in hand, encountered her invidious rivals. The encounter was not on their part, for they noticed her no more than if she had been the house maid; not from intentional loftiness, but simply because as yet, professionally, they didn’t know how to fraternise,

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6. London. The “City” also speci"cally means the old part of London around St. Paul’s Cathedral, espe- cially the "nancial and legal institutions there.

as I could imagine they would have liked—or at least that the Major would. They couldn’t talk about the omnibus— they always walked; and they didn’t know what else to try— she wasn’t interested in good trains or cheap claret. Besides, they must have felt—in the air— that she was amused at them, secretly derisive of their ever knowing how. She wasn’t a person to conceal the limits of her faith if she had had a chance to show them. On the other hand Mrs. Monarch didn’t think her tidy; for why else did she take pains to say to me—it was going out of the way, for Mrs. Monarch— that she didn’t like dirty women?

One day when my young lady happened to be pres ent with my other sitters— she even dropped in, when it was con ve nient, for a chat— I asked her to be so good as to lend a hand in getting tea, a ser vice with which she was familiar and which was one of a class that, living as I did in a small way, with slender domestic resources, I often appealed to my models to ren- der. They liked to lay hands on my property, to break the sitting, and some- times the china—it made them feel Bohemian. The next time I saw Miss Churm after this incident she surprised me greatly by making a scene about it— she accused me of having wished to humiliate her. She hadn’t resented the outrage at the time, but had seemed obliging and amused, enjoying the comedy of asking Mrs. Monarch, who sat vague and silent, whether she would have cream and sugar, and putting an exaggerated simper into the question. She had tried intonations—as if she too wished to pass for the real thing— till I was afraid my other visitors would take offence.

Oh they were determined not to do this, and their touching patience was the mea sure of their great need. They would sit by the hour, uncomplain- ing, till I was ready to use them; they would come back on the chance of being wanted and would walk away cheerfully if it failed. I used to go to the door with them to see in what magni"cent order they retreated. I tried to "nd other employment for them— I introduced them to several artists. But they didn’t “take,” for reasons I could appreciate, and I became rather anx- iously aware that after such disappointments they fell back upon me with a heavier weight. They did me the honour to think me most their form. They weren’t romantic enough for the paint ers, and in those days there were few serious workers in black- and- white. Besides, they had an eye to the great job I had mentioned to them— they had secretly set their hearts on supplying the right essence for my pictorial vindication of our "ne novelist. They knew that for this undertaking I should want no costume- effects, none of the frip- pery of past ages— that it was a case in which every thing would be con- temporary and satirical and presumably genteel. If I could work them into it their future would be assured, for the labour would of course be long and the occupation steady.

One day Mrs. Monarch came without her husband— she explained his absence by his having had to go to the City.6 While she sat there in her usual relaxed majesty there came at the door a knock which I immediately recog- nised as the subdued appeal of a model out of work. It was followed by the entrance of a young man whom I at once saw to be a foreigner and who proved in fact an Italian acquainted with no En glish word but my name,

T H E R E A L T H I N G | 4 6 1

7. Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), Italian poet, "rst saw Beatrice Portinari when they were both nine. Though he saw her only a few times, she made a lasting impression on him and became his ideal, his life’s inspiration, and the direct

agent of his salvation (as his greatest work, The Divine Comedy, makes clear). 8. Instinct for striking poses (French). 9. Beggar (Italian).

which he uttered in a way that made it seem to include all others. I hadn’t then visited his country, nor was I pro"cient in his tongue; but as he was not so meanly constituted— what Italian is?—as to depend only on that mem- ber for expression he conveyed to me, in familiar but graceful mimicry, that he was in search of exactly the employment in which the lady before me was engaged. I was not struck with him at "rst, and while I continued to draw I dropped few signs of interest or encouragement. He stood his ground however— not importunately, but with a dumb dog- like "delity in his eyes that amounted to innocent impudence, the manner of a devoted servant— he might have been in the house for years— unjustly suspected. Suddenly it struck me that this very attitude and expression made a picture; whereupon I told him to sit down and wait till I should be free. There was another pic- ture in the way he obeyed me, and I observed as I worked that there were others still in the way he looked wonderingly, with his head thrown back, about the high studio. He might have been crossing himself in Saint Peter’s. Before I "nished I said to myself “The fellow’s a bankrupt orange- monger, but a trea sure.”

When Mrs. Monarch withdrew he passed across the room like a `ash to open the door for her, standing there with the rapt pure gaze of the young Dante spellbound by the young Beatrice.7 As I never insisted, in such situa- tions, on the blankness of the British domestic, I re`ected that he had the making of a servant— and I needed one, but couldn’t pay him to be only that—as well as of a model; in short I resolved to adopt my bright adven- turer if he would agree to of"ciate in the double capacity. He jumped at my offer, and in the event my rashness— for I had really known nothing about him— wasn’t brought home to me. He proved a sympathetic though a desul- tory ministrant, and had in a wonderful degree the sentiment de la pose.8 It was uncultivated, instinctive, a part of the happy instinct that had guided him to my door and helped him to spell out my name on the card nailed to it. He had had no other introduction to me than a guess, from the shape of my high north win dow, seen outside, that my place was a studio and that as a studio it would contain an artist. He had wandered to Eng land in search of fortune, like other itinerants, and had embarked, with a partner and a small green hand- cart, on the sale of penny ices. The ices had melted away and the partner had dissolved in their train. My young man wore tight yel- low trousers with reddish stripes and his name was Oronte. He was sallow but fair, and when I put him into some old clothes of my own he looked like an En glishman. He was as good as Miss Churm, who could look, when requested, like an Italian.

IV

I thought Mrs. Monarch’s face slightly convulsed when, on her coming back with her husband, she found Oronte installed. It was strange to have to rec- ognise in a scrap of a lazzarone9 a competitor to her magni"cent Major. It

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1. Knickerbockers (close- "tting short pants gathered at the knee) and kilts (knee- length pleated skirts, usually of tartan, worn by Scottish men) suggest a rural, outdoor attire.

was she who scented danger "rst, for the Major was anecdotically uncon- scious. But Oronte gave us tea, with a hundred eager confusions—he had never been concerned in so queer a process— and I think she thought better of me for having at last an “establishment.” They saw a couple of drawings that I had made of the establishment, and Mrs. Monarch hinted that it never would have struck her he had sat for them. “Now the drawings you make from us, they look exactly like us,” she reminded me, smiling in triumph; and I recognised that this was indeed just their defect. When I drew the Mon- archs I couldn’t anyhow get away from them— get into the character I wanted to represent; and I hadn’t the least desire my model should be discoverable in my picture. Miss Churm never was, and Mrs.  Monarch thought I hid her, very properly, because she was vulgar; whereas if she was lost it was only as the dead who go to heaven are lost—in the gain of an angel the more.

By this time I had got a certain start with “Rutland Ramsay,” the "rst novel in the great projected series; that is I had produced a dozen drawings, several with the help of the Major and his wife, and I had sent them in for approval. My understanding with the publishers, as I have already hinted, had been that I was to be left to do my work, in this par tic u lar case, as I liked, with the whole book committed to me; but my connexion with the rest of the series was only contingent. There were moments when, frankly, it was a comfort to have the real thing under one’s hand; for there were characters in “Rutland Ramsay” that were very much like it. There were people presumably as erect as the Major and women of as good a fashion as Mrs. Monarch. There was a great deal of country- house life— treated, it is true, in a "ne fanciful ironical generalised way— and there was a considerable implication of knickerbockers and kilts.1 There were certain things I had to settle at the outset; such things for instance as the exact appearance of the hero and the par tic u lar bloom and "gure of the heroine. The author of course gave me a lead, but there was a margin for interpretation. I took the Monarchs into my con"dence, I told them frankly what I was about, I mentioned my embarrassments and alterna- tives. “Oh take him!” Mrs. Monarch murmured sweetly, looking at her hus- band; and “What could you want better than my wife?” the Major enquired with the comfortable candour that now prevailed between us.

I wasn’t obliged to answer these remarks— I was only obliged to place my sitters. I wasn’t easy in mind, and I postponed a little timidly perhaps the solving of my question. The book was a large canvas, the other "gures were numerous, and I worked off at "rst some of the episodes in which the hero and the heroine were not concerned. When once I had set them up I should have to stick to them— I couldn’t make my young man seven feet high in one place and "ve feet nine in another. I inclined on the whole to the latter mea sure ment, though the Major more than once reminded me that he looked about as young as any one. It was indeed quite pos si ble to arrange him, for the "gure, so that it would have been dif"cult to detect his age. After the spontaneous Oronte had been with me a month, and after I had given him to understand several times over that his native exuberance would presently constitute an insurmountable barrier to our further intercourse, I waked to a sense of his heroic capacity. He was only "ve feet seven, but the remain-

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ing inches were latent. I tried him almost secretly at "rst, for I was really rather afraid of the judgment my other models would pass on such a choice. If they regarded Miss Churm as little better than a snare what would they think of the repre sen ta tion by a person so little the real thing as an Italian street- vendor of a protagonist formed by a public school?

If I went a little in fear of them it wasn’t because they bullied me, because they had got an oppressive foothold, but because in their really pathetic deco- rum and mysteriously permanent newness they counted on me so intensely. I was therefore very glad when Jack Hawley came home: he was always of such good counsel. He painted badly himself, but there was no one like him for putting his "n ger on the place. He had been absent from Eng land for a year; he had been somewhere— I don’t remember where—to get a fresh eye. I was in a good deal of dread of any such organ, but we were old friends; he had been away for months and a sense of emptiness was creeping into my life. I hadn’t dodged a missile for a year.

He came back with a fresh eye, but with the same old black velvet blouse, and the "rst eve ning he spent in my studio we smoked cigarettes till the small hours. He had done no work himself, he had only got the eye; so the "eld was clear for the production of my little things. He wanted to see what I had produced for the Cheapside, but he was disappointed in the exhibition. That at least seemed the meaning of two or three comprehensive groans which, as he lounged on my big divan, his leg folded under him, looking at my latest drawings, issued from his lips with the smoke of the cigarette.

“What’s the matter with you?” I asked. “What’s the matter with you?” “Nothing save that I’m mysti"ed.” “You are indeed. You’re quite off the hinge. What’s the meaning of this

new fad?” And he tossed me, with vis i ble irreverence, a drawing in which I happened to have depicted both my elegant models. I asked if he didn’t think it good, and he replied that it struck him as execrable, given the sort of thing I had always represented myself to him as wishing to arrive at; but I let that pass— I was so anxious to see exactly what he meant. The two "gures in the picture looked colossal, but I supposed this was not what he meant, inasmuch as, for aught he knew the contrary, I might have been trying for some such effect. I maintained that I was working exactly in the same way as when he last had done me the honour to tell me I might do something some day. “Well, there’s a screw loose somewhere,” he answered; “wait a bit and I’ll discover it.” I depended upon him to do so: where else was the fresh eye? But he produced at last nothing more luminous than “I don’t know— I don’t like your types.” This was lame for a critic who had never consented to discuss with me anything but the question of execu- tion, the direction of strokes and the mystery of values.

“In the drawings you’ve been looking at I think my types are very hand- some.”

“Oh they won’t do!” “I’ve been working with new models.” “I see you have. They won’t do.” “Are you very sure of that?” “Absolutely— they’re stupid.” “You mean I am— for I ought to get round that.”

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2. Such people should be shown the door (French). 3. A misquotation of a phrase Dante applied to Aristotle in The Divine Comedy, “Inferno,” 4.131,

which reads, “el maestro di color che sanno,” liter- ally, “the master of those who know.”

“You can’t— with such people. Who are they?” I told him, so far as was necessary, and he concluded heartlessly: “Ce sont

des gens qu’il faut mettre à la porte.”2 “ You’ve never seen them; they’re awfully good”— I `ew to their defence. “Not seen them? Why all this recent work of yours drops to pieces with

them. It’s all I want to see of them.” “No one else has said anything against it— the Cheapside people are pleased.” “Every one else is an ass, and the Cheapside people the biggest asses of

all. Come, don’t pretend at this time of day to have pretty illusions about the public, especially about publishers and editors. It’s not for such animals you work— it’s for those who know, coloro che sanno;3 so keep straight for me if you can’t keep straight for yourself. There was a certain sort of thing you used to try for— and a very good thing it was. But this twaddle isn’t in it.” When I talked with Hawley later about “Rutland Ramsay” and its pos si- ble successors he declared that I must get back into my boat again or I should go to the bottom. His voice in short was the voice of warning.

I noted the warning, but I didn’t turn my friends out of doors. They bored me a good deal; but the very fact that they bored me admonished me not to sacri"ce them—if there was anything to be done with them— simply to irri- tation. As I look back at this phase they seem to me to have pervaded my life not a little. I have a vision of them as most of the time in my studio, seated against the wall on an old velvet bench to be out of the way, and resembling the while a pair of patient courtiers in a royal ante- chamber. I’m convinced that during the coldest weeks of the winter they held their ground because it saved them "re. Their newness was losing its gloss, and it was impossible not to feel them objects of charity. Whenever Miss Churm arrived they went away, and after I was fairly launched in “Rutland Ramsay” Miss Churm arrived pretty often. They managed to express to me tacitly that they supposed I wanted her for the low life of the book, and I let them suppose it, since they had attempted to study the work—it was lying about the studio— without discovering that it dealt only with the highest circles. They had dipped into the most brilliant of our novelists without deciphering many passages. I still took an hour from them, now and again, in spite of Jack Haw- ley’s warning: it would be time enough to dismiss them, if dismissal should be necessary, when the rigour of the season was over. Hawley had made their acquaintance—he had met them at my "reside— and thought them a ridicu- lous pair. Learning that he was a painter they tried to approach him, to show him too that they were the real thing; but he looked at them, across the big room, as if they were miles away: they were a compendium of every- thing he most objected to in the social system of his country. Such people as that, all convention and patent- leather, with ejaculations that stopped con- versation, had no business in a studio. A studio was a place to learn to see, and how could you see through a pair of feather- beds?

The main incon ve nience I suffered at their hands was that at "rst I was shy of letting it break upon them that my artful little servant had begun to sit to me for “Rutland Ramsay.” They knew I had been odd enough— they

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were prepared by this time to allow oddity to artists—to pick a foreign vaga- bond out of the streets when I might have had a person with whis kers and credentials, but it was some time before they learned how high I rated his accomplishments. They found him in an attitude more than once, but they never doubted I was doing him as an organ- grinder. There were several things they never guessed, and one of them was that for a striking scene in the novel, in which a footman brie`y "gured, it occurred to me to make use of Major Monarch as the menial. I kept putting this off, I didn’t like to ask him to don the livery— besides the dif"culty of "nding a livery to "t him. At last, one day late in the winter, when I was at work on the despised Oronte, who caught one’s idea on the wing, and was in the glow of feeling myself go very straight, they came in, the Major and his wife, with their society laugh about nothing ( there was less and less to laugh at); came in like country- callers— they always reminded me of that— who have walked across the park after church and are presently persuaded to stay to luncheon. Luncheon was over, but they could stay to tea— I knew they wanted it. The "t was on me, how- ever, and I couldn’t let my ardour cool and my work wait, with the fading daylight, while my model prepared it. So I asked Mrs. Monarch if she would mind laying it out— a request which for an instant brought all the blood to her face. Her eyes were on her husband’s for a second, and some mute teleg- raphy passed between them. Their folly was over the next instant; his cheer- ful shrewdness put an end to it. So far from pitying their wounded pride, I must add, I was moved to give it as complete a lesson as I could. They bus- tled about together and got out the cups and saucers and made the kettle boil. I know they felt as if they were waiting on my servant, and when the tea was prepared I said: “ He’ll have a cup, please— he’s tired.” Mrs. Mon- arch brought him one where he stood, and he took it from her as if he had been a gentleman at a party squeezing a crush- hat with an elbow.

Then it came over me that she had made a great effort for me— made it with a kind of nobleness— and that I owed her a compensation. Each time I saw her after this I wondered what the compensation could be. I couldn’t go on doing the wrong thing to oblige them. Oh it was the wrong thing, the stamp of the work for which they sat— Hawley was not the only person to say it now. I sent in a large number of the drawings I had made for “Rutland Ramsay,” and I received a warning that was more to the point than Haw- ley’s. The artistic adviser of the house for which I was working was of opin- ion that many of my illustrations were not what had been looked for. Most of these illustrations were the subjects in which the Monarchs had "gured. Without going into the question of what had been looked for, I had to face the fact that at this rate I shouldn’t get the other books to do. I hurled myself in despair on Miss Churm— I put her through all her paces. I not only adopted Oronte publicly as my hero, but one morning when the Major looked in to see if I didn’t require him to "nish a Cheapside "gure for which he had begun to sit the week before, I told him I had changed my mind— I’d do the drawing from my man. At this my visitor turned pale and stood looking at me. “Is he your idea of an En glish gentleman?” he asked.

I was disappointed, I was ner vous, I wanted to get on with my work; so I replied with irritation: “Oh my dear Major— I can’t be ruined for you!”

It was a horrid speech, but he stood another moment— after which, with- out a word, he quitted the studio. I drew a long breath, for I said to myself

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that I shouldn’t see him again. I hadn’t told him de"nitely that I was in dan- ger of having my work rejected, but I was vexed at his not having felt the catastrophe in the air, read with me the moral of our fruitless collaboration, the lesson that in the deceptive atmosphere of art even the highest respect- ability may fail of being plastic.

I didn’t owe my friends money, but I did see them again. They reappeared together three days later, and, given all the other facts, there was something tragic in that one. It was a clear proof they could "nd nothing else in life to do. They had threshed the matter out in a dismal conference— they had digested the bad news that they were not in for the series. If they weren’t useful to me even for the Cheapside their function seemed dif"cult to deter- mine, and I could only judge at "rst that they had come, forgivingly, deco- rously, to take a last leave. This made me rejoice in secret that I had little leisure for a scene; for I had placed both my other models in position together and I was pegging away at a drawing from which I hoped to derive glory. It had been suggested by the passage in which Rutland Ramsay, drawing up a chair to Artemisia’s piano- stool, says extraordinary things to her while she ostensibly "n gers out a dif"cult piece of music. I had done Miss Churm at the piano before—it was an attitude in which she knew how to take on an absolutely poetic grace. I wished the two "gures to “compose” together with intensity, and my little Italian had entered perfectly into my conception. The pair were vividly before me, the piano had been pulled out; it was a charm- ing show of blended youth and murmured love, which I had only to catch and keep. My visitors stood and looked at it, and I was friendly to them over my shoulder.

They made no response, but I was used to silent com pany and went on with my work, only a little disconcerted— even though exhilarated by the sense that this was at least the ideal thing—at not having got rid of them after all. Presently I heard Mrs. Monarch’s sweet voice beside or rather above me: “I wish her hair were a little better done.” I looked up and she was star- ing with a strange "xedness at Miss Churm, whose back was turned to her. “Do you mind my just touching it?” she went on— a question which made me spring up for an instant as with the instinctive fear that she might do the young lady a harm. But she quieted me with a glance I shall never for- get— I confess I should like to have been able to paint that— and went for a moment to my model. She spoke to her softly, laying a hand on her shoulder and bending over her; and as the girl, understanding, gratefully assented, she disposed her rough curls, with a few quick passes, in such a way as to make Miss Churm’s head twice as charming. It was one of the most heroic personal ser vices I’ve ever seen rendered. Then Mrs. Monarch turned away with a low sigh and, looking about her as if for something to do, stooped to the `oor with a noble humility and picked up a dirty rag that had dropped out of my paint- box.

The Major meanwhile had also been looking for something to do, and, wandering to the other end of the studio, saw before him my breakfast- things neglected, unremoved. “I say, can’t I be useful here?” he called out to me with an irrepressible quaver. I assented with a laugh that I fear was awk- ward, and for the next ten minutes, while I worked, I heard the light clatter of china and the tinkle of spoons and glass. Mrs.  Monarch assisted her husband— they washed up my crockery, they put it away. They wandered off

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1. James initially recorded the idea for this story in 1895, but it "rst appeared in the collection The Better Sort (1903). It was reprinted, with

minor revisions, in the Altar of the Dead volume of the New York edition, Vol. 17 (1909), the source of the text printed here.

into my little scullery, and I afterwards found that they had cleaned my knives and that my slender stock of plate had an unpre ce dented surface. When it came over me, the latent eloquence of what they were doing, I con- fess that my drawing was blurred for a moment— the picture swam. They had accepted their failure, but they couldn’t accept their fate. They had bowed their heads in bewilderment to the perverse and cruel law in virtue of which the real thing could be so much less precious than the unreal; but they didn’t want to starve. If my servants were my models, then my models might be my servants. They would reverse the parts— the others would sit for the ladies and gentlemen and they would do the work. They would still be in the studio—it was an intense dumb appeal to me not to turn them out. “Take us on,” they wanted to say— “ we’ll do anything.”

My pencil dropped from my hand; my sitting was spoiled and I got rid of my sitters, who were also evidently rather mysti"ed and awestruck. Then, alone with the Major and his wife I had a most uncomfortable moment. He put their prayer into a single sentence: “I say, you know— just let us do for you, can’t you?” I couldn’t—it was dreadful to see them emptying my slops; but I pretended I could, to oblige them, for about a week. Then I gave them a sum of money to go away, and I never saw them again. I obtained the remaining books, but my friend Hawley repeats that Major and Mrs. Mon- arch did me a permanent harm, got me into false ways. If it be true I’m con- tent to have paid the price— for the memory.

1892, 1909

The Beast in the Jungle1

I

What determined the speech that startled him in the course of their encoun- ter scarcely matters, being prob ably but some words spoken by himself quite without intention— spoken as they lingered and slowly moved together after their renewal of acquaintance. He had been conveyed by friends an hour or two before to the house at which she was staying; the party of visi- tors at the other house, of whom he was one, and thanks to whom it was his theory, as always, that he was lost in the crowd, had been invited over to luncheon. There had been after luncheon much dispersal, all in the interest of the original motive, a view of Weatherend itself and the "ne things, intrin- sic features, pictures, heirlooms, trea sures of all the arts, that made the place almost famous; and the great rooms were so numerous that guests could wander at their will, hang back from the principal group and in cases where they took such matters with the last seriousness give themselves up to mysterious appreciations and mea sure ments. There were persons to be observed, singly or in couples, bending toward objects in out- of- the- way corners with their hands on their knees and their heads nodding quite as

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with the emphasis of an excited sense of smell. When they were two they either mingled their sounds of ecstasy or melted into silences of even deeper import, so that there were aspects of the occasion that gave it for Marcher much the air of the “look round,” previous to a sale highly advertised, that excites or quenches, as may be, the dream of acquisition. The dream of acquisition at Weatherend would have had to be wild indeed, and John Marcher found himself, among such suggestions, disconcerted almost equally by the presence of those who knew too much and by that of those who knew nothing. The great rooms caused so much poetry and history to press upon him that he needed some straying apart to feel in a proper rela- tion with them, though this impulse was not, as happened, like the gloating of some of his companions, to be compared to the movements of a dog sniff- ing a cupboard. It had an issue promptly enough in a direction that was not to have been calculated.

It led, brie`y, in the course of the October after noon, to his closer meet- ing with May Bartram, whose face, a reminder, yet not quite a remembrance, as they sat much separated at a very long table, had begun merely by trou- bling him rather pleasantly. It affected him as the sequel of something of which he had lost the beginning. He knew it, and for the time quite wel- comed it, as a continuation, but didn’t know what it continued, which was an interest or an amusement the greater as he was also somehow aware— yet without a direct sign from her— that the young woman herself hadn’t lost the thread. She hadn’t lost it, but she wouldn’t give it back to him, he saw, without some putting forth of his hand for it; and he not only saw that, but saw several things more, things odd enough in the light of the fact that at the moment some accident of grouping brought them face to face he was still merely fumbling with the idea that any contact between them in the past would have had no importance. If it had had no importance he scarcely knew why his actual impression of her should so seem to have so much; the answer to which, however, was that in such a life as they all appeared to be leading for the moment one could but take things as they came. He was satis- "ed, without in the least being able to say why, that this young lady might roughly have ranked in the house as a poor relation; satis"ed also that she was not there on a brief visit, but was more or less a part of the establishment— almost a working, a remunerated part. Didn’t she enjoy at periods a protec- tion that she paid for by helping, among other ser vices, to show the place and explain it, deal with the tiresome people, answer questions about the dates of the building, the styles of the furniture, the authorship of the pic- tures, the favourite haunts of the ghost? It wasn’t that she looked as if you could have given her shillings—it was impossible to look less so. Yet when she " nally drifted toward him, distinctly handsome, though ever so much older— older than when he had seen her before—it might have been as an effect of her guessing that he had, within the couple of hours, devoted more imagination to her than to all the others put together, and had thereby pen- etrated to a kind of truth that the others were too stupid for. She was there on harder terms than any one; she was there as a consequence of things suffered, one way and another, in the interval of years; and she remembered him very much as she was remembered— only a good deal better.

By the time they at last thus came to speech they were alone in one of the rooms— remarkable for a "ne portrait over the chimney- place— out of which

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2. Pompeii is near Naples, not Rome.

their friends had passed, and the charm of it was that even before they had spoken they had practically arranged with each other to stay behind for talk. The charm, happily, was in other things too— partly in there being scarce a spot at Weatherend without something to stay behind for. It was in the way the autumn day looked into the high win dows as it waned; the way the red light, breaking at the close from under a low sombre sky, reached out in a long shaft and played over old wainscots, old tapestry, old gold, old colour. It was most of all perhaps in the way she came to him as if, since she had been turned on to deal with the simpler sort, he might, should he choose to keep the whole thing down, just take her mild attention for a part of her general business. As soon as he heard her voice, however, the gap was "lled up and the missing link supplied; the slight irony he divined in her attitude lost its advan- tage. He almost jumped at it to get there before her. “I met you years and years ago in Rome. I remember all about it.” She confessed to disappointment— she had been so sure he didn’t; and to prove how well he did he began to pour forth the par tic u lar recollections that popped up as he called for them. Her face and her voice, all at his ser vice now, worked the miracle— the impression operating like the torch of a lamplighter who touches into `ame, one by one, a long row of gas- jets. Marcher `attered himself the illumination was brilliant, yet he was really still more pleased on her showing him, with amusement, that in his haste to make every thing right he had got most things rather wrong. It hadn’t been at Rome—it had been at Naples; and it hadn’t been eight years before—it had been more nearly ten. She hadn’t been, either, with her uncle and aunt, but with her mother and her brother; in addition to which it was not with the Pembles he had been, but with the Boyers, coming down in their com pany from Rome— a point on which she insisted, a little to his confusion, and as to which she had her evidence in hand. The Boyers she had known, but didn’t know the Pembles, though she had heard of them, and it was the people he was with who had made them acquainted. The incident of the thunderstorm that had raged round them with such vio lence as to drive them for refuge into an excavation— this incident had not occurred at the Palace of the Cæsars, but at Pompeii,2 on an occasion when they had been pres ent there at an impor tant "nd.

He accepted her amendments, he enjoyed her corrections, though the moral of them was, she pointed out, that he really didn’t remember the least thing about her; and he only felt it as a drawback that when all was made strictly historic there didn’t appear much of anything left. They lingered together still, she neglecting her of"ce— for from the moment he was so clever she had no proper right to him— and both neglecting the house, just waiting as to see if a memory or two more wouldn’t again breathe on them. It hadn’t taken them many minutes, after all, to put down on the table, like the cards of a pack, those that constituted their respective hands; only what came out was that the pack was unfortunately not perfect— that the past, invoked, invited, encouraged, could give them, naturally, no more than it had. It had made them anciently meet— her at twenty, him at twenty- "ve; but nothing was so strange, they seemed to say to each other, as that, while so occupied, it hadn’t done a little more for them. They looked at each other as with the feeling of an occasion missed; the pres ent would have been so

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3. Beggar (Italian). 4. Resort town across the bay from Naples.

much better if the other, in the far distance, in the foreign land, hadn’t been so stupidly meagre. There weren’t apparently, all counted, more than a dozen little old things that had succeeded in coming to pass between them; trivi- alities of youth, simplicities of freshness, stupidities of ignorance, small pos- si ble germs, but too deeply buried— too deeply ( didn’t it seem?) to sprout after so many years. Marcher could only feel he ought to have rendered her some service— saved her from a capsized boat in the Bay or at least recov- ered her dressing- bag, "lched from her cab in the streets of Naples by a laz- zarone3 with a stiletto. Or it would have been nice if he could have been taken with fever all alone at his hotel, and she could have come to look after him, to write to his people, to drive him out in convalescence. Then they would be in possession of the something or other that their actual show seemed to lack. It yet somehow presented itself, this show, as too good to be spoiled; so that they were reduced for a few minutes more to wondering a little helplessly why— since they seemed to know a certain number of the same people— their reunion had been so long averted. They didn’t use that name for it, but their delay from minute to minute to join the others was a kind of confession that they didn’t quite want it to be a failure. Their attempted supposition of reasons for their not having met but showed how little they knew of each other. There came in fact a moment when Marcher felt a positive pang. It was vain to pretend she was an old friend, for all the communities were wanting, in spite of which it was as an old friend that he saw she would have suited him. He had new ones enough— was surrounded with them for instance on the stage of the other house; as a new one he prob- ably wouldn’t have so much as noticed her. He would have liked to invent something, get her to make- believe with him that some passage of a roman- tic or critical kind had originally occurred. He was really almost reaching out in imagination—as against time— for something that would do, and say- ing to himself that if it didn’t come this sketch of a fresh start would show for quite awkwardly bungled. They would separate, and now for no second or no third chance. They would have tried and not succeeded. Then it was, just at the turn, as he afterwards made it out to himself, that, every thing else failing, she herself deci ded to take up the case and, as it were, save the situation. He felt as soon as she spoke that she had been consciously keep- ing back what she said and hoping to get on without it; a scruple in her that im mensely touched him when, by the end of three or four minutes more, he was able to mea sure it. What she brought out, at any rate, quite cleared the air and supplied the link— the link it was so odd he should frivolously have managed to lose.

“You know you told me something I’ve never forgotten and that again and again has made me think of you since; it was that tremendously hot day when we went to Sorrento,4 across the bay, for the breeze. What I allude to was what you said to me, on the way back, as we sat under the awning of the boat enjoying the cool. Have you forgotten?”

He had forgotten and was even more surprised than ashamed. But the great thing was that he saw in this no vulgar reminder of any “sweet” speech. The vanity of women had long memories, but she was making no claim on him of a compliment or a mistake. With another woman, a totally dif fer ent

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5. I.e., proceeded boldly; “burned her bridges.”

one, he might have feared the recall possibly of even some imbecile “offer.” So, in having to say that he had indeed forgotten, he was conscious rather of a loss than of a gain; he already saw an interest in the matter of her men- tion. “I try to think— but I give it up. Yet I remember the Sorrento day.”

“I’m not very sure you do,” May Bartram after a moment said; “and I’m not very sure I ought to want you to. It’s dreadful to bring a person back at any time to what he was ten years before. If you’ve lived away from it,” she smiled, “so much the better.”

“Ah if you haven’t why should I?” he asked. “Lived away, you mean, from what I myself was?” “From what I was. I was of course an ass,” Marcher went on; “but I would

rather know from you just the sort of ass I was than— from the moment you have something in your mind— not know anything.”

Still, however, she hesitated. “But if you’ve completely ceased to be that sort— ?”

“Why I can then all the more bear to know. Besides, perhaps I haven’t.” “Perhaps. Yet if you haven’t,” she added. “I should suppose you’d remem-

ber. Not indeed that I in the least connect with my impression the invidious name you use. If I had only thought you foolish,” she explained, “the thing I speak of wouldn’t so have remained with me. It was about yourself.” She waited as if it might come to him; but as, only meeting her eyes in won der, he gave no sign, she burnt her ships.5 “Has it ever happened?”

Then it was that, while he continued to stare, a light broke for him and the blood slowly came to his face, which began to burn with recognition. “Do you mean I told you— ?” But he faltered, lest what came to him shouldn’t be right, lest he should only give himself away.

“It was something about yourself that it was natu ral one shouldn’t forget— that is if one remembered you at all. That’s why I ask you,” she smiled, “if the thing you then spoke of has ever come to pass?”

Oh then he saw, but he was lost in won der and found himself embarrassed. This, he also saw, made her sorry for him, as if her allusion had been a mistake. It took him but a moment, however, to feel it hadn’t been, much as it had been a surprise. After the "rst little shock of it her knowledge on the contrary began, even if rather strangely, to taste sweet to him. She was the only other person in the world then who would have it, and she had had it all these years, while the fact of his having so breathed his secret had unac- countably faded from him. No won der they couldn’t have met as if nothing had happened. “I judge,” he " nally said, “that I know what you mean. Only I had strangely enough lost any sense of having taken you so far into my con- "dence.”

“Is it because you’ve taken so many others as well?” “I’ve taken nobody. Not a creature since then.” “So that I’m the only person who knows?” “The only person in the world.” “Well,” she quickly replied, “I myself have never spoken. I’ve never, never

repeated of you what you told me.” She looked at him so that he perfectly believed her. Their eyes met over it in such a way that he was without a doubt. “And I never will.”

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She spoke with an earnestness that, as if almost excessive, put him at ease about her pos si ble derision. Somehow the whole question was a new luxury to him— that is from the moment she was in possession. If she didn’t take the sarcastic view she clearly took the sympathetic, and that was what he had had, in all the long time, from no one whomsoever. What he felt was that he couldn’t at pres ent have begun to tell her, and yet could pro"t per- haps exquisitely by the accident of having done so of old. “Please don’t then. We’re just right as it is.”

“Oh I am,” she laughed, “if you are!” To which she added: “Then you do still feel in the same way?”

It was impossible he shouldn’t take to himself that she was really inter- ested, though it all kept coming as perfect surprise. He had thought of him- self so long as abominably alone, and lo he wasn’t alone a bit. He hadn’t been, it appeared, for an hour— since those moments on the Sorrento boat. It was she who had been, he seemed to see as he looked at her— she who had been made so by the graceless fact of his lapse of "delity. To tell her what he had told her— what had it been but to ask something of her? some- thing that she had given, in her charity, without his having, by a remem- brance, by a return of the spirit, failing another encounter, so much as thanked her. What he had asked of her had been simply at "rst not to laugh at him. She had beautifully not done so for ten years, and she was not doing so now. So he had endless gratitude to make up. Only for that he must see just how he had "gured to her. “What, exactly, was the account I gave— ?”

“Of the way you did feel? Well, it was very simple. You said you had had from your earliest time, as the deepest thing within you, the sense of being kept for something rare and strange, possibly prodigious and terrible, that was sooner or later to happen to you, that you had in your bones the fore- boding and the conviction of, and that would perhaps overwhelm you.”

“Do you call that very simple?” John Marcher asked. She thought a moment. “It was perhaps because I seemed, as you spoke,

to understand it.” “You do understand it?” he eagerly asked. Again she kept her kind eyes on him. “You still have the belief?” “Oh!” he exclaimed helplessly. There was too much to say. “What ever it’s to be,” she clearly made out, “it hasn’t yet come.” He shook his head in complete surrender now. “It hasn’t yet come. Only,

you know, it isn’t anything I’m to do, to achieve in the world, to be distin- guished or admired for. I’m not such an ass as that. It would be much better, no doubt, if I were.”

“It’s to be something you’re merely to suffer?” “Well, say to wait for—to have to meet, to face, to see suddenly break out

in my life; possibly destroying all further consciousness, possibly annihilat- ing me; possibly, on the other hand, only altering every thing, striking at the root of all my world and leaving me to the consequences, however they shape themselves.”

She took this in, but the light in her eyes continued for him not to be that of mockery. “ Isn’t what you describe perhaps but the expectation—or at any rate the sense of danger, familiar to so many people—of falling in love?”

John Marcher wondered. “Did you ask me that before?” “No— I wasn’t so free- and- easy then. But it’s what strikes me now.”

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6. Final event, usually of a play, and not necessarily catastrophic.

“Of course,” he said after a moment, “it strikes you. Of course it strikes me. Of course what’s in store for me may be no more than that. The only thing is,” he went on, “that I think if it had been that I should by this time know.”

“Do you mean because you’ve been in love?” And then as he but looked at her in silence: “ You’ve been in love, and it hasn’t meant such a cataclysm, hasn’t proved the great affair?”

“ Here I am, you see. It hasn’t been overwhelming.” “Then it hasn’t been love,” said May Bartram. “Well, I at least thought it was. I took it for that— I’ve taken it till now. It

was agreeable, it was delightful, it was miserable,” he explained. “But it wasn’t strange. It wasn’t what my affair’s to be.”

“You want something all to yourself— something that nobody else knows or has known?”

“It isn’t a question of what I ‘want’— God knows I don’t want anything. It’s only a question of the apprehension that haunts me— that I live with day by day.”

He said this so lucidly and consistently that he could see it further impose itself. If she hadn’t been interested before she’d have been interested now. “Is it a sense of coming vio lence?”

Evidently now too again he liked to talk of it. “I don’t think of it as— when it does come— necessarily violent. I only think of it as natu ral and as of course above all unmistakeable. I think of it simply as the thing. The thing will of itself appear natu ral.”

“Then how will it appear strange?” Marcher bethought himself. “It won’t—to me.” “To whom then?” “Well,” he replied, smiling at last, “say to you.” “Oh then I’m to be pres ent?” “Why you are pres ent— since you know.” “I see.” She turned it over. “But I mean at the catastrophe.”6 At this, for a minute, their lightness gave way to their gravity; it was as if

the long look they exchanged held them together. “It will only depend on yourself—if you’ll watch with me.”

“Are you afraid?” she asked. “ Don’t leave me now,” he went on. “Are you afraid?” she repeated. “Do you think me simply out of my mind?” he pursued instead of answer-

ing. “Do I merely strike you as a harmless lunatic?” “No,” said May Bartram. “I understand you. I believe you.” “You mean you feel how my obsession— poor old thing!— may correspond

to some pos si ble real ity?” “To some pos si ble real ity.” “Then you will watch with me?” She hesitated, then for the third time put her question. “Are you afraid?” “Did I tell you I was—at Naples?” “No, you said nothing about it.” “Then I don’t know. And I should like to know,” said John Marcher. “You’ll

tell me yourself whether you think so. If you’ll watch with me you’ll see.”

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7. Art museums in London; the South Ken sington Museum is now called the Victoria and Albert Museum.

“Very good then.” They had been moving by this time across the room, and at the door, before passing out, they paused as for the full wind-up of their understanding. “I’ll watch with you,” said May Bartram.

II

The fact that she “knew”— knew and yet neither chaffed him nor betrayed him— had in a short time begun to constitute between them a goodly bond, which became more marked when, within the year that followed their after- noon at Weatherend, the opportunities for meeting multiplied. The event that thus promoted these occasions was the death of the ancient lady her great- aunt, under whose wing, since losing her mother, she had to such an extent found shelter, and who, though but the widowed mother of the new successor to the property, had succeeded— thanks to a high tone and a high temper—in not forfeiting the supreme position at the great house. The depo- sition of this personage arrived but with her death, which, followed by many changes, made in par tic u lar a difference for the young woman in whom Marcher’s expert attention had recognised from the "rst a dependent with a pride that might ache though it didn’t bristle. Nothing for a long time had made him easier than the thought that the aching must have been much soothed by Miss Bartram’s now "nding herself able to set up a small home in London. She had acquired property, to an amount that made that luxury just pos si ble, under her aunt’s extremely complicated will, and when the whole matter began to be straightened out, which indeed took time, she let him know that the happy issue was at last in view. He had seen her again before that day, both because she had more than once accompanied the ancient lady to town and because he had paid another visit to the friends who so con ve niently made of Weatherend one of the charms of their own hospitality. These friends had taken him back there; he had achieved there again with Miss Bartram some quiet detachment; and he had in London suc- ceeded in persuading her to more than one brief absence from her aunt. They went together, on these latter occasions, to the National Gallery and the South Ken sington Museum,7 where, among vivid reminders, they talked of Italy at large— not now attempting to recover, as at "rst, the taste of their youth and their ignorance. That recovery, the "rst day at Weatherend, had served its purpose well, had given them quite enough; so that they were, to Marcher’s sense, no longer hovering about the headwaters of their stream, but had felt their boat pushed sharply off and down the current.

They were literally a`oat together; for our gentleman this was marked, quite as marked as that the fortunate cause of it was just the buried trea sure of her knowledge. He had with his own hands dug up this little hoard, brought to light— that is to within reach of the dim day constituted by their discre- tions and privacies— the object of value the hiding- place of which he had, after putting it into the ground himself, so strangely, so long forgotten. The rare luck of his having again just stumbled on the spot made him indiffer- ent to any other question; he would doubtless have devoted more time to the odd accident of his lapse of memory if he hadn’t been moved to devote

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so much to the sweetness, the comfort, as he felt, for the future, that this accident itself had helped to keep fresh. It had never entered into his plan that any one should “know,” and mainly for the reason that it wasn’t in him to tell any one. That would have been impossible, for nothing but the amuse- ment of a cold world would have waited on it. Since, however, a mysterious fate had opened his mouth betimes, in spite of him, he would count that a compensation and pro"t by it to the utmost. That the right person should know tempered the asperity of his secret more even than his shyness had permitted him to imagine; and May Bartram was clearly right, because— well, because there she was. Her knowledge simply settled it; he would have been sure enough by this time had she been wrong. There was that in his situation, no doubt, that disposed him too much to see her as a mere con"dant, taking all her light for him from the fact— the fact only—of her interest in his pre- dicament; from her mercy, sympathy, seriousness, her consent not to regard him as the funniest of the funny. Aware, in "ne, that her price for him was just in her giving him this constant sense of his being admirably spared, he was careful to remember that she had also a life of her own, with things that might happen to her, things that in friendship one should likewise take account of. Something fairly remarkable came to pass with him, for that matter, in this connexion— something represented by a certain passage of his consciousness, in the suddenest way, from one extreme to the other.

He had thought himself, so long as nobody knew, the most disinterested person in the world, carry ing his concentrated burden, his perpetual sus- pense, ever so quietly, holding his tongue about it, giving others no glimpse of it nor of its effect upon his life, asking of them no allowance and only making on his side all those that were asked. He hadn’t disturbed people with the queerness of their having to know a haunted man, though he had had moments of rather special temptation on hearing them say they were forsooth “unsettled.” If they were as unsettled as he was—he who had never been settled for an hour in his life— they would know what it meant. Yet it wasn’t, all the same, for him to make them, and he listened to them civilly enough. This was why he had such good— though possibly such rather colourless— manners; this was why, above all, he could regard himself, in a greedy world, as decently—as in fact perhaps even a little sublimely— unsel"sh. Our point is accordingly that he valued this character quite suf- "ciently to mea sure his pres ent danger of letting it lapse, against which he promised himself to be much on his guard. He was quite ready, none the less, to be sel"sh just a little, since surely no more charming occasion for it had come to him. “Just a little,” in a word, was just as much as Miss Bartram, taking one day with another, would let him. He never would be in the least coercive, and would keep well before him the lines on which consideration for her— the very highest— ought to proceed. He would thoroughly establish the heads under which her affairs, her requirements, her peculiarities—he went so far as to give them the latitude of that name— would come into their intercourse. All this naturally was a sign of how much he took the inter- course itself for granted. There was nothing more to be done about that. It simply existed; had sprung into being with her "rst penetrating question to him in the autumn light there at Weatherend. The real form it should have taken on the basis that stood out large was the form of their marry- ing. But the devil in this was that the very basis itself put marrying out of

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the question. His conviction, his apprehension, his obsession, in short, wasn’t a privilege he could invite a woman to share; and that consequence of it was precisely what was the matter with him. Something or other lay in wait for him, amid the twists and the turns of the months and the years, like a crouching beast in the jungle. It signi"ed little whether the crouching beast were destined to slay him or to be slain. The de"nite point was the inevitable spring of the creature; and the de"nite lesson from that was that a man of feeling didn’t cause himself to be accompanied by a lady on a tiger- hunt. Such was the image under which he had ended by "guring his life.

They had at "rst, none the less, in the scattered hours spent together, made no allusion to that view of it; which was a sign he was handsomely alert to give that he didn’t expect, that he in fact didn’t care, always to be talking about it. Such a feature in one’s outlook was really like a hump on one’s back. The difference it made every minute of the day existed quite in de pen dently of discussion. One discussed of course like a hunchback, for there was always, if nothing else, the hunchback face. That remained, and she was watching him; but people watched best, as a general thing, in silence, so that such would be predominantly the manner of their vigil. Yet he didn’t want, at the same time, to be tense and solemn; tense and solemn was what he imagined he too much showed for with other people. The thing to be, with the one person who knew, was easy and natu ral—to make the reference rather than be seeming to avoid it, to avoid it rather than be seeming to make it, and to keep it, in any case, familiar, facetious even, rather than pedantic and portentous. Some such consideration as the latter was doubtless in his mind for instance when he wrote pleasantly to Miss Bartram that perhaps the great thing he had so long felt as in the lap of the gods was no more than this circumstance, which touched him so nearly, of her acquiring a house in London. It was the "rst allusion they had yet again made, needing any other hitherto so little; but when she replied, after having given him the news, that she was by no means satis"ed with such a tri`e as the climax to so special a suspense, she almost set him wondering if she hadn’t even a larger conception of singularity for him than he had for himself. He was at all events destined to become aware little by little, as time went by, that she was all the while looking at his life, judging it, mea sur ing it, in the light of the thing she knew, which grew to be at last, with the consecration of the years, never mentioned between them save as “the real truth” about him. That had always been his own form of reference to it, but she adopted the form so quietly that, looking back at the end of a period, he knew there was no moment at which it was traceable that she had, as he might say, got inside his idea, or exchanged the attitude of beautifully indulging for that of still more beautifully believing him.

It was always open to him to accuse her of seeing him but as the most harmless of maniacs, and this, in the long run— since it covered so much ground— was his easiest description of their friendship. He had a screw loose for her, but she liked him in spite of it and was practically, against the rest of the world, his kind wise keeper, unremunerated but fairly amused and, in the absence of other near ties, not disreputably occupied. The rest of the world of course thought him queer, but she, she only, knew how, and above all why, queer; which was precisely what enabled her to dispose the conceal- ing veil in the right folds. She took his gaiety from him— since it had to pass

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8. I.e., his position as a minor government of"cial.

with them for gaiety—as she took every thing else; but she certainly so far justi"ed by her unerring touch his "ner sense of the degree to which he had ended by convincing her. She at least never spoke of the secret of his life except as “the real truth about you,” and she had in fact a wonderful way of making it seem, as such, the secret of her own life too. That was in "ne how he so constantly felt her as allowing for him; he couldn’t on the whole call it anything else. He allowed for himself, but she, exactly, allowed still more; partly because, better placed for a sight of the matter, she traced his unhappy perversion through reaches of its course into which he could scarce follow it. He knew how he felt, but, besides knowing that, she knew how he looked as well; he knew each of the things of importance he was insidiously kept from doing, but she could add up the amount they made, understand how much, with a lighter weight on his spirit, he might have done, and thereby estab- lish how, clever as he was, he fell short. Above all she was in the secret of the difference between the forms he went through— those of his little of"ce under Government,8 those of caring for his modest patrimony, for his library, for his garden in the country, for the people in London whose invi- tations he accepted and repaid— and the detachment that reigned beneath them and that made of all behaviour, all that could in the least be called behaviour, a long act of dissimulation. What it had come to was that he wore a mask painted with the social simper, out of the eyeholes of which there looked eyes of an expression not in the least matching the other features. This the stupid world, even after years, had never more than half- discovered. It was only May Bartram who had, and she achieved, by an art indescrib- able, the feat of at once—or perhaps it was only alternately— meeting the eyes from in front and mingling her own vision, as from over his shoulder, with their peep through the apertures.

So while they grew older together she did watch with him, and so she let this association give shape and colour to her own existence. Beneath her forms as well detachment had learned to sit, and behaviour had become for her, in the social sense, a false account of herself. There was but one account of her that would have been true all the while and that she could give straight to nobody, least of all to John Marcher. Her whole attitude was a virtual statement, but the perception of that only seemed called to take its place for him as one of the many things necessarily crowded out of his consciousness. If she had moreover, like himself, to make sacri"ces to their real truth, it was to be granted that her compensation might have affected her as more prompt and more natu ral. They had long periods, in this London time, dur- ing which, when they were together, a stranger might have listened to them without in the least pricking up his ears; on the other hand the real truth was equally liable at any moment to rise to the surface, and the auditor would then have wondered indeed what they were talking about. They had from an early hour made up their mind that society was, luckily, unintelligent, and the margin allowed them by this had fairly become one of their com- monplaces. Yet there were still moments when the situation turned almost fresh— usually under the effect of some expression drawn from herself. Her expressions doubtless repeated themselves, but her intervals were generous. “What saves us, you know, is that we answer so completely to so usual an

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appearance: that of the man and woman whose friendship has become such a daily habit—or almost—as to be at last indispensable.” That for instance was a remark she had frequently enough had occasion to make, though she had given it at dif fer ent times dif fer ent developments. What we are espe- cially concerned with is the turn it happened to take from her one after- noon when he had come to see her in honour of her birthday. This anniversary had fallen on a Sunday, at a season of thick fog and general outward gloom; but he had brought her his customary offering, having known her now long enough to have established a hundred small traditions. It was one of his proofs to himself, the pres ent he made her on her birthday, that he hadn’t sunk into real sel"shness. It was mostly nothing more than a small trinket, but it was always "ne of its kind, and he was regularly careful to pay for it more than he thought he could afford. “Our habit saves you at least, don’t you see? because it makes you, after all, for the vulgar, indistinguishable from other men. What’s the most inveterate mark of men in general? Why the capacity to spend endless time with dull women—to spend it I won’t say without being bored, but without minding that they are, without being driven off at a tangent by it; which comes to the same thing. I’m your dull woman, a part of the daily bread for which you pray at church. That covers your tracks more than anything.”

“And what covers yours?” asked Marcher, whom his dull woman could mostly to this extent amuse. “I see of course what you mean by your saving me, in this way and that, so far as other people are concerned— I’ve seen it all along. Only what is it that saves you? I often think, you know, of that.”

She looked as if she sometimes thought of that too, but rather in a dif fer- ent way. “Where other people, you mean, are concerned?”

“Well, you’re really so in with me, you know—as a sort of result of my being so in with yourself. I mean of my having such an im mense regard for you, being so tremendously mindful of all you’ve done for me. I sometimes ask myself if it’s quite fair. Fair I mean to have so involved and— since one may say it— interested you. I almost feel as if you hadn’t really had time to do anything else.”

“Anything else but be interested?” she asked. “Ah what else does one ever want to be? If I’ve been ‘watching’ with you, as we long ago agreed I was to do, watching’s always in itself an absorption.”

“Oh certainly,” John Marcher said, “if you hadn’t had your curiosity— ! Only doesn’t it sometimes come to you as time goes on that your curiosity isn’t being particularly repaid?”

May Bartram had a pause. “Do you ask that, by any chance, because you feel at all that yours isn’t? I mean because you have to wait so long.”

Oh he understood what she meant! “For the thing to happen that never does happen? For the beast to jump out? No, I’m just where I was about it. It isn’t a matter as to which I can choose, I can decide for a change. It isn’t one as to which there can be a change. It’s in the lap of the gods. One’s in the hands of one’s law— there one is. As to the form the law will take, the way it will operate, that’s its own affair.”

“Yes,” Miss Bartram replied; “of course one’s fate’s coming, of course it has come in its own form and its own way, all the while. Only, you know, the form and the way in your case were to have been— well, something so exceptional and, as one may say, so particularly your own.”

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Something in this made him look at her with suspicion. “You say ‘ were to have been,’ as if in your heart you had begun to doubt.”

“Oh!” she vaguely protested. “As if you believed,” he went on, “that nothing will now take place.” She shook her head slowly but rather inscrutably. “ You’re far from my

thought.” He continued to look at her. “What then is the matter with you?” “Well,” she said after another wait, “the matter with me is simply that I’m

more sure than ever my curiosity, as you call it, will be but too well repaid.” They were frankly grave now; he had got up from his seat, had turned

once more about the little drawing- room to which, year after year, he brought his inevitable topic; in which he had, as he might have said, tasted their inti- mate community with every sauce, where every object was as familiar to him as the things of his own house and the very carpets were worn with his "tful walk very much as the desks in old counting- houses are worn by the elbows of generations of clerks. The generations of his ner vous moods had been at work there, and the place was the written history of his whole middle life. Under the impression of what his friend had just said he knew himself, for some reason, more aware of these things; which made him, after a moment, stop again before her. “Is it possibly that you’ve grown afraid?”

“Afraid?” He thought, as she repeated the word, that his question had made her, a little, change colour; so that, lest he should have touched on a truth, he explained very kindly: “You remember that that was what you asked me long ago— that "rst day at Weatherend.”

“Oh yes, and you told me you didn’t know— that I was to see for myself. We’ve said little about it since, even in so long a time.”

“Precisely,” Marcher interposed— “quite as if it were too delicate a matter for us to make free with. Quite as if we might "nd, on pressure, that I am afraid. For then,” he said, “we shouldn’t, should we? quite know what to do.”

She had for the time no answer to his question. “ There have been days when I thought you were. Only, of course,” she added, “ there have been days when we have thought almost anything.”

“Every thing. Oh!” Marcher softly groaned as with a gasp, half- spent, at the face, more uncovered just then than it had been for a long while, of the imagination always with them. It had always had its incalculable moments of glaring out, quite as with the very eyes of the very Beast, and, used as he was to them, they could still draw from him the tribute of a sigh that rose from the depths of his being. All they had thought, "rst and last, rolled over him; the past seemed to have been reduced to mere barren speculation. This in fact was what the place had just struck him as so full of— the simpli"ca- tion of every thing but the state of suspense. That remained only by seeming to hang in the void surrounding it. Even his original fear, if fear it had been, had lost itself in the desert. “I judge, however,” he continued, “that you see I’m not afraid now.”

“What I see, as I make it out, is that you’ve achieved something almost unpre ce dented in the way of getting used to danger. Living with it so long and so closely you’ve lost your sense of it; you know it’s there, but you’re indif- ferent, and you cease even, as of old, to have to whistle in the dark. Consid- ering what the danger is,” May Bartram wound up, “I’m bound to say I don’t think your attitude could well be surpassed.”

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John Marcher faintly smiled. “It’s heroic?” “Certainly— call it that.” It was what he would have liked indeed to call it. “I am then a man of

courage?” “That’s what you were to show me.” He still, however, wondered. “But doesn’t the man of courage know what

he’s afraid of—or not afraid of? I don’t know that, you see. I don’t focus it. I can’t name it. I only know I’m exposed.”

“Yes, but exposed— how shall I say?—so directly. So intimately. That’s surely enough.”

“Enough to make you feel then—as what we may call the end and the upshot of our watch— that I’m not afraid?”

“ You’re not afraid. But it isn’t,” she said, “the end of our watch. That is it isn’t the end of yours. You’ve every thing still to see.”

“Then why haven’t you?” he asked. He had had, all along, to- day, the sense of her keeping something back, and he still had it. As this was his "rst impres- sion of that it quite made a date. The case was the more marked as she didn’t at "rst answer; which in turn made him go on. “You know something I don’t.” Then his voice, for that of a man of courage, trembled a little. “You know what’s to happen.” Her silence, with the face she showed, was almost a confession—it made him sure. “You know, and you’re afraid to tell me. It’s so bad that you’re afraid I’ll "nd out.”

All this might be true, for she did look as if, unexpectedly to her, he had crossed some mystic line that she had secretly drawn round her. Yet she might, after all, not have worried; and the real climax was that he himself, at all events, needn’t. “You’ll never "nd out.”

III

It was all to have made, none the less, as I have said, a date; which came out in the fact that again and again, even after long intervals, other things that passed between them wore in relation to this hour but the character of recalls and results. Its immediate effect had been indeed rather to lighten insistence— almost to provoke a reaction; as if their topic had dropped by its own weight and as if moreover, for that matter, Marcher had been vis- ited by one of his occasional warnings against egotism. He had kept up, he felt, and very decently on the whole, his consciousness of the importance of not being sel"sh, and it was true that he had never sinned in that direction without promptly enough trying to press the scales the other way. He often repaired his fault, the season permitting, by inviting his friend to accom- pany him to the opera; and it not infrequently thus happened that, to show he didn’t wish her to have but one sort of food for her mind, he was the cause of her appearing there with him a dozen nights in the month. It even hap- pened that, seeing her home at such times, he occasionally went in with her to "nish, as he called it, the eve ning, and, the better to make his point, sat down to the frugal but always careful little supper that awaited his plea sure. His point was made, he thought, by his not eternally insisting with her on himself; made for instance, at such hours, when it befell that, her piano at hand and each of them familiar with it, they went over passages of the opera together. It chanced to be on one of these occasions, however, that he

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reminded her of her not having answered a certain question he had put to her during the talk that had taken place between them on her last birthday. “What is it that saves you?”— saved her, he meant, from that appearance of variation from the usual human type. If he had practically escaped remark, as she pretended, by doing, in the most impor tant par tic u lar, what most men do— "nd the answer to life in patching up an alliance of a sort with a woman no better than himself— how had she escaped it, and how could the alliance, such as it was, since they must suppose it had been more or less noticed, have failed to make her rather positively talked about?

“I never said,” May Bartram replied, “that it hadn’t made me a good deal talked about.”

“Ah well then you’re not ‘saved.’ ” “It hasn’t been a question for me. If you’ve had your woman I’ve had,” she

said, “my man.” “And you mean that makes you all right?” Oh it was always as if there were so much to say! “I don’t know why it

shouldn’t make me— humanly, which is what we’re speaking of—as right as it makes you.”

“I see,” Marcher returned. “ ‘Humanly,’ no doubt, as showing that you’re living for something. Not, that is, just for me and my secret.”

May Bartram smiled. “I don’t pretend it exactly shows that I’m not living for you. It’s my intimacy with you that’s in question.”

He laughed as he saw what she meant. “Yes, but since, as you say, I’m only, so far as people make out, ordinary, you’re— aren’t you?—no more than ordi- nary either. You help me to pass for a man like another. So if I am, as I understand you, you’re not compromised. Is that it?”

She had another of her waits, but she spoke clearly enough. “That’s it. It’s all that concerns me—to help you to pass for a man like another.”

He was careful to acknowledge the remark handsomely. “How kind, how beautiful, you are to me! How shall I ever repay you?”

She had her last grave pause, as if there might be a choice of ways. But she chose. “By going on as you are.”

It was into this going on as he was that they relapsed, and really for so long a time that the day inevitably came for a further sounding of their depths. These depths, constantly bridged over by a structure "rm enough in spite of its lightness and of its occasional oscillation in the somewhat ver- tiginous air, invited on occasion, in the interest of their nerves, a dropping of the plummet and a mea sure ment of the abyss. A difference had been made moreover, once for all, by the fact that she had all the while not appeared to feel the need of rebutting his charge of an idea within her that she didn’t dare to express— a charge uttered just before one of the fullest of their later discussions ended. It had come up for him then that she “knew” something and that what she knew was bad— too bad to tell him. When he had spoken of it as visibly so bad that she was afraid he might "nd it out, her reply had left the matter too equivocal to be let alone and yet, for Marcher’s special sensibility, almost too formidable again to touch. He circled about it at a distance that alternately narrowed and widened and that still wasn’t much affected by the consciousness in him that there was nothing she could “know,” after all, any better than he did. She had no source of knowledge he hadn’t equally— except of course that she might have "ner nerves. That

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was what women had where they were interested; they made out things, where people were concerned, that the people often couldn’t have made out for themselves. Their nerves, their sensibility, their imagination, were con- ductors and revealers, and the beauty of May Bartram was in par tic u lar that she had given herself so to his case. He felt in these days what, oddly enough, he had never felt before, the growth of a dread of losing her by some catastrophe— some catastrophe that yet wouldn’t at all be the catastrophe: partly because she had almost of a sudden begun to strike him as more use- ful to him than ever yet, and partly by reason of an appearance of uncer- tainty in her health, coincident and equally new. It was characteristic of the inner detachment he had hitherto so successfully cultivated and to which our whole account of him is a reference, it was characteristic that his com- plications, such as they were, had never yet seemed so as at this crisis to thicken about him, even to the point of making him ask himself if he were, by any chance, of a truth, within sight or sound, within touch or reach, within the immediate jurisdiction, of the thing that waited.

When the day came, as come it had to, that his friend confessed to him her fear of a deep disorder in her blood, he felt somehow the shadow of a change and the chill of a shock. He immediately began to imagine aggrava- tions and disasters, and above all to think of her peril as the direct menace for himself of personal privation. This indeed gave him one of those partial recoveries of equanimity that were agreeable to him—it showed him that what was still "rst in his mind was the loss she herself might suffer. “What if she should have to die before knowing, before seeing— ?” It would have been brutal, in the early stages of her trou ble, to put that question to her; but it had immediately sounded for him to his own concern, and the possibility was what most made him sorry for her. If she did “know,” moreover, in the sense of her having had some— what should he think?— mystical irresist- ible light, this would make the matter not better, but worse, inasmuch as her original adoption of his own curiosity had quite become the basis of her life. She had been living to see what would be to be seen, and it would quite lacerate her to have to give up before the accomplishment of the vision. These re`exions, as I say, quickened his generosity; yet, make them as he might, he saw himself, with the lapse of the period, more and more discon- certed. It lapsed for him with a strange steady sweep, and the oddest oddity was that it gave him, in de pen dently of the threat of much incon ve nience, almost the only positive surprise his career, if career it could be called, had yet offered him. She kept the house as she had never done; he had to go to her to see her— she could meet him nowhere now, though there was scarce a corner of their loved old London in which she hadn’t in the past, at one time or another, done so; and he found her always seated by her "re in the deep old- fashioned chair she was less and less able to leave. He had been struck one day, after an absence exceeding his usual mea sure, with her suddenly looking much older to him than he had ever thought of her being; then he recognised that the suddenness was all on his side—he had just simply and suddenly noticed. She looked older because inevitably, after so many years, she was old, or almost; which was of course true in still greater mea sure of her companion. If she was old, or almost, John Marcher as suredly was, and yet it was her showing of the lesson, not his own, that brought the truth home to him. His surprises began here; when once they had begun they

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multiplied; they came rather with a rush: it was as if, in the oddest way in the world, they had all been kept back, sown in a thick cluster, for the late after noon of life, the time at which for people in general the unexpected has died out.

One of them was that he should have caught himself— for he had so done— really wondering if the great accident would take form now as noth- ing more than his being condemned to see this charming woman, this admi- rable friend, pass away from him. He had never so unreservedly quali"ed her as while confronted in thought with such a possibility; in spite of which there was small doubt for him that as an answer to his long riddle the mere effacement of even so "ne a feature of his situation would be an abject anti- climax. It would represent, as connected with his past attitude, a drop of dignity under the shadow of which his existence could only become the most grotesque of failures. He had been far from holding it a failure— long as he had waited for the appearance that was to make it a success. He had waited for quite another thing, not for such a thing as that. The breath of his good faith came short, however, as he recognised how long he had waited, or how long at least his companion had. That she, at all events, might be recorded as having waited in vain— this affected him sharply, and all the more because of his at "rst having done little more than amuse himself with the idea. It grew more grave as the gravity of her condition grew, and the state of mind it produced in him, which he himself ended by watching as if it had been some de"nite dis"gurement of his outer person, may pass for another of his surprises. This conjoined itself still with another, the really stupefying consciousness of a question that he would have allowed to shape itself had he dared. What did every thing mean— what, that is, did she mean, she and her vain waiting and her probable death and the soundless admonition of it all— unless that, at this time of day, it was simply, it was overwhelmingly too late? He had never at any stage of his queer consciousness admitted the whisper of such a correction; he had never till within these last few months been so false to his conviction as not to hold that what was to come to him had time, whether he struck himself as having it or not. That at last, at last, he certainly hadn’t it, to speak of, or had it but in the scantiest measure— such, soon enough, as things went with him, became the inference with which his old obsession had to reckon: and this it was not helped to do by the more and more con"rmed appearance that the great vagueness casting the long shadow in which he had lived had, to attest itself, almost no mar- gin left. Since it was in Time that he was to have met his fate, so it was in Time that his fate was to have acted; and as he waked up to the sense of no longer being young, which was exactly the sense of being stale, just as that, in turn, was the sense of being weak, he waked up to another matter beside. It all hung together; they were subject, he and the great vagueness, to an equal and indivisible law. When the possibilities themselves had accordingly turned stale, when the secret of the gods had grown faint, had perhaps even quite evaporated, that, and that only, was failure. It wouldn’t have been fail- ure to be bankrupt, dishonoured, pilloried, hanged; it was failure not to be anything. And so, in the dark valley into which his path had taken its unlooked- for twist, he wondered not a little as he groped. He didn’t care what awful crash might overtake him, with what ignominy or what monstrosity he might yet be associated— since he wasn’t after all too utterly old to suffer—if

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it would only be decently proportionate to the posture he had kept, all his life, in the threatened presence of it. He had but one desire left— that he shouldn’t have been “sold.”

IV

Then it was that, one after noon, while the spring of the year was young and new she met all in her own way his frankest betrayal of these alarms. He had gone in late to see her, but eve ning hadn’t settled and she was presented to him in that long fresh light of waning April days which affects us often with a sadness sharper than the greyest hours of autumn. The week had been warm, the spring was supposed to have begun early, and May Bartram sat, for the "rst time in the year, without a "re; a fact that, to Marcher’s sense, gave the scene of which she formed part a smooth and ultimate look, an air of knowing, in its immaculate order and cold meaningless cheer, that it would never see a "re again. Her own aspect—he could scarce have said why— intensi"ed this note. Almost as white as wax, with the marks and signs in her face as numerous and as "ne as if they had been etched by a needle, with soft white draperies relieved by a faded green scarf on the delicate tone of which the years had further re"ned, she was the picture of a serene and exquisite but impenetrable sphinx, whose head, or indeed all whose person, might have been powdered with silver. She was a sphinx, yet with her white petals and green fronds she might have been a lily too— only an arti"cial lily, wonderfully imitated and constantly kept, without dust or stain, though not exempt from a slight droop and a complexity of faint creases, under some clear glass bell. The perfection of house hold care, of high polish and "nish, always reigned in her rooms, but they now looked most as if every thing had been wound up, tucked in, put away, so that she might sit with folded hands and with nothing more to do. She was “out of it,” to Marcher’s vision; her work was over; she communicated with him as across some gulf or from some island of rest that she had already reached, and it made him feel strangely abandoned. Was it—or rather wasn’t it— that if for so long she had been watching with him the answer to their question must have swum into her ken and taken on its name, so that her occupation was verily gone? He had as much as charged her with this in saying to her, many months before, that she even then knew something she was keeping from him. It was a point he had never since ventured to press, vaguely fearing as he did that it might become a difference, perhaps a disagreement, between them. He had in this later time turned ner vous, which was what he in all the other years had never been; and the oddity was that his ner vous ness should have waited till he had begun to doubt, should have held off so long as he was sure. There was something, it seemed to him, that the wrong word would bring down on his head, something that would so at least ease off his tension. But he wanted not to speak the wrong word; that would make every thing ugly. He wanted the knowledge he lacked to drop on him, if drop it could, by its own august weight. If she was to forsake him it was surely for her to take leave. This was why he didn’t directly ask her again what she knew; but it was also why, approaching the matter from another side, he said to her in the course of his visit: “What do you regard as the very worst that at this time of day can happen to me?”

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He had asked her that in the past often enough; they had, with the odd irregular rhythm of their intensities and avoidances, exchanged ideas about it and then had seen the ideas washed away by cool intervals, washed like "gures traced in sea- sand. It had ever been the mark of their talk that the oldest allusions in it required but a little dismissal and reaction to come out again, sounding for the hour as new. She could thus at pres ent meet his enquiry quite freshly and patiently. “Oh yes, I’ve repeatedly thought, only it always seemed to me of old that I couldn’t quite make up my mind. I thought of dreadful things, between which it was dif"cult to choose; and so must you have done.”

“Rather! I feel now as if I had scarce done anything else. I appear to myself to have spent my life in thinking of nothing but dreadful things. A great many of them I’ve at dif fer ent times named to you, but there were others I couldn’t name.”

“They were too, too dreadful?” “Too, too dreadful— some of them.” She looked at him a minute, and there came to him as he met it an incon-

sequent sense that her eyes, when one got their full clearness, were still as beautiful as they had been in youth, only beautiful with a strange cold light— a light that somehow was a part of the effect, if it wasn’t rather a part of the cause, of the pale hard sweetness of the season and the hour. “And yet,” she said at last, “ there are horrors we’ve mentioned.”

It deepened the strangeness to see her, as such a "gure in such a picture, talk of “horrors,” but she was to do in a few minutes something stranger yet— though even of this he was to take the full mea sure but afterwards— and the note of it already trembled. It was, for the matter of that, one of the signs that her eyes were having again the high `icker of their prime. He had to admit, however, what she said. “Oh yes, there were times when we did go far.” He caught himself in the act of speaking as if it all were over. Well, he wished it were; and the consummation depended for him clearly more and more on his friend.

But she had now a soft smile. “Oh far— !” It was oddly ironic. “Do you mean you’re prepared to go further?” She was frail and ancient and charming as she continued to look at

him, yet it was rather as if she had lost the thread. “Do you consider that we went far?”

“Why I thought it the point you were just making— that we had looked most things in the face.”

“Including each other?” She still smiled. “But you’re quite right. We’ve had together great imaginations, often great fears; but some of them have been unspoken.”

“Then the worst—we haven’t faced that. I could face it, I believe, if I knew what you think it. I feel,” he explained, “as if I had lost my power to con- ceive such things.” And he wondered if he looked as blank as he sounded. “It’s spent.”

“Then why do you assume,” she asked, “that mine isn’t?” “ Because you’ve given me signs to the contrary. It isn’t a question for you

of conceiving, imagining, comparing. It isn’t a question now of choosing.” At last he came out with it. “You know something I don’t. You’ve shown me that before.”

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These last words had affected her, he made out in a moment, exceedingly, and she spoke with "rmness. “I’ve shown you, my dear, nothing.”

He shook his head. “You can’t hide it.” “Oh, oh!” May Bartram sounded over what she couldn’t hide. It was almost

a smothered groan. “You admitted it months ago, when I spoke of it to you as of something

you were afraid I should "nd out. Your answer was that I couldn’t, that I wouldn’t, and I don’t pretend I have. But you had something therefore in mind, and I now see how it must have been, how it still is, the possibility that, of all possibilities, has settled itself for you as the worst. This,” he went on, “is why I appeal to you. I’m only afraid of ignorance to- day— I’m not afraid of knowledge.” And then as for a while she said nothing: “What makes me sure is that I see in your face and feel here, in this air and amid these appearances, that you’re out of it. You’ve done. You’ve had your experience. You leave me to my fate.”

Well, she listened, motionless and white in her chair, as on a decision to be made, so that her manner was fairly an avowal, though still, with a small "ne inner stiffness, an imperfect surrender. “It would be the worst,” she " nally let herself say. “I mean the thing I’ve never said.”

It hushed him a moment. “More monstrous than all the monstrosities we’ve named?”

“More monstrous. Isn’t that what you suf"ciently express,” she asked, “in calling it the worst?”

Marcher thought. “As suredly—if you mean, as I do, something that includes all the loss and all the shame that are thinkable.”

“It would if it should happen,” said May Bartram. “What we’re speaking of, remember, is only my idea.”

“It’s your belief,” Marcher returned. “That’s enough for me. I feel your beliefs are right. Therefore if, having this one, you give me no more light on it, you abandon me.”

“No, no!” she repeated. “I’m with you— don’t you see?— still.” And as to make it more vivid to him she rose from her chair— a movement she seldom risked in these days— and showed herself, all draped and all soft, in her fair- ness and slimness. “I haven’t forsaken you.”

It was really, in its effort against weakness, a generous assurance, and had the success of the impulse not, happily, been great, it would have touched him to pain more than to plea sure. But the cold charm in her eyes had spread, as she hovered before him, to all the rest of her person, so that it was for the minute almost a recovery of youth. He couldn’t pity her for that; he could only take her as she showed—as capable even yet of helping him. It was as if, at the same time, her light might at any instant go out; wherefore he must make the most of it. There passed before him with intensity the three or four things he wanted most to know; but the question that came of itself to his lips really covered the others. “Then tell me if I shall consciously suffer.”

She promptly shook her head. “Never!” It con"rmed the authority he imputed to her, and it produced on him an

extraordinary effect. “Well, what’s better than that? Do you call that the worst?” “You think nothing is better?” she asked. She seemed to mean something so special that he again sharply wondered,

though still with the dawn of a prospect of relief. “Why not, if one doesn’t

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9. Fine German porcelain.

know?” After which, as their eyes, over his question, met in a silence, the dawn deepened and something to his purpose came prodigiously out of her very face. His own, as he took it in, suddenly `ushed to the forehead, and he gasped with the force of a perception to which, on the instant, every thing "tted. The sound of his gasp "lled the air; then he became articulate. “I see—if I don’t suffer!”

In her own look, however, was doubt. “You see what?” “Why what you mean— what you’ve always meant.” She again shook her head. “What I mean isn’t what I’ve always meant. It’s

dif fer ent.” “It’s something new?” She hung back from it a little. “Something new. It’s not what you think. I

see what you think.” His divination drew breath then; only her correction might be wrong.

“It isn’t that I am a blockhead?” he asked between faintness and grimness. “It isn’t that it’s all a mistake.”

“A mistake?” she pityingly echoed. That possibility, for her, he saw, would be monstrous; and if she guaranteed him the immunity from pain it would accordingly not be what she had in mind. “Oh no,” she declared; “it’s noth- ing of that sort. You’ve been right.”

Yet he couldn’t help asking himself if she weren’t, thus pressed, speaking but to save him. It seemed to him he should be most in a hole if his history should prove all a platitude. “Are you telling me the truth, so that I shan’t have been a bigger idiot than I can bear to know? I haven’t lived with a vain imagination, in the most besotted illusion? I haven’t waited but to see the door shut in my face?”

She shook her head again. “However the case stands that isn’t the truth. What ever the real ity, it is a real ity. The door isn’t shut. The door’s open,” said May Bartram.

“Then something’s to come?” She waited once again, always with her cold sweet eyes on him. “It’s never

too late.” She had, with her gliding step, diminished the distance between them, and she stood nearer to him, close to him, a minute, as if still charged with the unspoken. Her movement might have been for some "ner empha- sis of what she was at once hesitating and deciding to say. He had been stand- ing by the chimney- piece, "reless and sparely adorned, a small perfect old French clock and two morsels of rosy Dresden9 constituting all its furniture; and her hand grasped the shelf while she kept him waiting, grasped it a little as for support and encouragement. She only kept him waiting, however; that is he only waited. It had become suddenly, from her movement and attitude, beautiful and vivid to him that she had something more to give him; her wasted face delicately shone with it—it glittered almost as with the white lustre of silver in her expression. She was right, incontestably, for what he saw in her face was the truth, and strangely, without consequence, while their talk of it as dreadful was still in the air, she appeared to pres ent it as inordinately soft. This, prompting bewilderment, made him but gape the more gratefully for her revelation, so that they continued for some min- utes silent, her face shining at him, her contact imponderably pressing,

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and his stare all kind but all ex pec tant. The end, none the less, was that what he had expected failed to come to him. Something else took place instead, which seemed to consist at "rst in the mere closing of her eyes. She gave way at the same instant to a slow "ne shudder, and though he remained staring— though he stared in fact but the harder— turned off and regained her chair. It was the end of what she had been intending, but it left him thinking only of that.

“Well, you don’t say— ?” She had touched in her passage a bell near the chimney and had sunk

back strangely pale. “I’m afraid I’m too ill.” “Too ill to tell me?” It sprang up sharp to him, and almost to his lips, the

fear she might die without giving him light. He checked himself in time from so expressing his question, but she answered as if she had heard the words.

“ Don’t you know— now?” “ ‘Now’— ?” She had spoken as if some difference had been made within

the moment. But her maid, quickly obedient to her bell, was already with them. “I know nothing.” And he was afterwards to say to himself that he must have spoken with odious impatience, such an impatience as to show that, supremely disconcerted, he washed his hands of the whole question.

“Oh!” said May Bartram. “Are you in pain?” he asked as the woman went to her. “No,” said May Bartram. Her maid, who had put an arm round her as if to take her to her room,

"xed on him eyes that appealingly contradicted her; in spite of which, how- ever, he showed once more his mysti"cation. “What then has happened?”

She was once more, with her companion’s help, on her feet, and, feeling withdrawal imposed on him, he had blankly found his hat and gloves and had reached the door. Yet he waited for her answer. “What was to,” she said.

V

He came back the next day, but she was then unable to see him, and as it was literally the "rst time this had occurred in the long stretch of their acquaintance he turned away, defeated and sore, almost angry—or feeling at least that such a break in their custom was really the beginning of the end— and wandered alone with his thoughts, especially with the one he was least able to keep down. She was dying and he would lose her; she was dying and his life would end. He stopped in the Park, into which he had passed, and stared before him at his recurrent doubt. Away from her the doubt pressed again; in her presence he had believed her, but as he felt his for- lornness he threw himself into the explanation that, nearest at hand, had most of a miserable warmth for him and least of a cold torment. She had deceived him to save him—to put him off with something in which he should be able to rest. What could the thing that was to happen to him be, after all, but just this thing that had begun to happen? Her dying, her death, his consequent solitude— that was what he had "gured as the Beast in the Jungle, that was what had been in the lap of the gods. He had had her word for it as he left her— what else on earth could she have meant? It wasn’t a thing of a monstrous order; not a fate rare and distinguished; not a stroke of fortune that overwhelmed and immortalised; it had only the stamp of the

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common doom. But poor Marcher at this hour judged the common doom suf"cient. It would serve his turn, and even as the consummation of in"- nite waiting he would bend his pride to accept it. He sat down on a bench in the twilight. He hadn’t been a fool. Something had been, as she had said, to come. Before he rose indeed it had quite struck him that the "nal fact really matched with the long ave nue through which he had had to reach it. As sharing his suspense and as giving herself all, giving her life, to bring it to an end, she had come with him every step of the way. He had lived by her aid, and to leave her behind would be cruelly, damnably to miss her. What could be more overwhelming than that?

Well, he was to know within the week, for though she kept him a while at bay, left him restless and wretched during a series of days on each of which he asked about her only again to have to turn away, she ended his trial by receiving him where she had always received him. Yet she had been brought out at some hazard into the presence of so many of the things that were, consciously, vainly, half their past, and there was scant ser vice left in the gentleness of her mere desire, all too vis i ble, to check his obsession and wind up his long trou ble. That was clearly what she wanted, the one thing more for her own peace while she could still put out her hand. He was so affected by her state that, once seated by her chair, he was moved to let every thing go; it was she herself therefore who brought him back, took up again, before she dismissed him, her last word of the other time. She showed how she wished to leave their business in order. “I’m not sure you understood. You’ve nothing to wait for more. It has come.”

Oh how he looked at her! “ Really?” “ Really.” “The thing that, as you said, was to?” “The thing that we began in our youth to watch for.” Face to face with her once more he believed her; it was a claim to which

he had so abjectly little to oppose. “You mean that it has come as a positive de"nite occurrence, with a name and a date?”

“Positive. De"nite. I don’t know about the ‘name,’ but oh with a date!” He found himself again too helplessly at sea. “But come in the night—

come and passed me by?” May Bartram had her strange faint smile. “Oh no, it hasn’t passed you by!” “But if I haven’t been aware of it and it hasn’t touched me— ?” “Ah your not being aware of it”— and she seemed to hesitate an instant to

deal with this— “your not being aware of it is the strangeness in the strange- ness. It’s the won der of the won der.” She spoke as with the softness almost of a sick child, yet now at last, at the end of all, with the perfect straight- ness of a sibyl. She visibly knew that she knew, and the effect on him was of something co- ordinate, in its high character, with the law that had ruled him. It was the true voice of the law; so on her lips would the law itself have sounded. “It has touched you,” she went on. “It has done its of"ce. It has made you all its own.”

“So utterly without my knowing it?” “So utterly without your knowing it.” His hand, as he leaned to her, was

on the arm of her chair, and, dimly smiling always now, she placed her own on it. “It’s enough if I know it.”

“Oh!” he confusedly breathed, as she herself of late so often had done.

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“What I long ago said is true. You’ll never know now, and I think you ought to be content. You’ve had it,” said May Bartram.

“But had what?” “Why what was to have marked you out. The proof of your law. It has

acted. I’m too glad,” she then bravely added, “to have been able to see what it’s not.”

He continued to attach his eyes to her, and with the sense that it was all beyond him, and that she was too, he would still have sharply challenged her hadn’t he so felt it an abuse of her weakness to do more than take devoutly what she gave him, take it hushed as to a revelation. If he did speak, it was out of the foreknowledge of his loneliness to come. “If you’re glad of what it’s ‘not’ it might then have been worse?”

She turned her eyes away, she looked straight before her; with which after a moment: “Well, you know our fears.”

He wondered. “It’s something then we never feared?” On this slowly she turned to him. “Did we ever dream, with all our dreams,

that we should sit and talk of it thus?” He tried for a little to make out that they had; but it was as if their dreams,

numberless enough, were in solution in some thick cold mist through which thought lost itself. “It might have been that we couldn’t talk?”

“Well”— she did her best for him— “not from this side. This, you see,” she said, “is the other side.”

“I think,” poor Marcher returned, “that all sides are the same to me.” Then, however, as she gently shook her head in correction: “We mightn’t, as it were, have got across— ?”

“To where we are—no. We’re here”— she made her weak emphasis. “And much good does it do us!” was her friend’s frank comment. “It does us the good it can. It does us the good that it isn’t here. It’s past.

It’s behind,” said May Bartram. “Before—” but her voice dropped. He had got up, not to tire her, but it was hard to combat his yearning. She

after all told him nothing but that his light had failed— which he knew well enough without her. “Before— ?” he blankly echoed.

“Before, you see, it was always to come. That kept it pres ent.” “Oh I don’t care what comes now! Besides,” Marcher added, “it seems to

me I liked it better pres ent, as you say, than I can like it absent with your absence.”

“Oh mine!”— and her pale hands made light of it. “With the absence of every thing.” He had a dreadful sense of standing

there before her for—so far as anything but this proved, this bottomless drop was concerned— the last time of their life. It rested on him with a weight he felt he could scarce bear, and this weight it apparently was that still pressed out what remained in him of speakable protest. “I believe you; but I can’t begin to pretend I understand. Nothing, for me, is past; nothing will pass till I pass myself, which I pray my stars may be as soon as pos si- ble. Say, however,” he added, “that I’ve eaten my cake, as you contend, to the last crumb— how can the thing I’ve never felt at all be the thing I was marked out to feel?”

She met him perhaps less directly, but she met him un perturbed. “You take your ‘feelings’ for granted. You were to suffer your fate. That was not necessarily to know it.”

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“How in the world— when what is such knowledge but suffering?” She looked up at him a while in silence. “No— you don’t understand.” “I suffer,” said John Marcher. “ Don’t, don’t!” “How can I help at least that?” “ Don’t!” May Bartram repeated. She spoke it in a tone so special, in spite of her weakness, that he stared

an instant— stared as if some light, hitherto hidden, had shimmered across his vision. Darkness again closed over it, but the gleam had already become for him an idea. “ Because I haven’t the right— ?”

“ Don’t know— when you needn’t,” she mercifully urged. “You needn’t— for we shouldn’t.”

“ Shouldn’t?” If he could but know what she meant! “No— it’s too much.” “Too much?” he still asked but, with a mysti"cation that was the next

moment of a sudden to give way. Her words, if they meant something, affected him in this light— the light also of her wasted face—as meaning all, and the sense of what knowledge had been for herself came over him with a rush which broke through into a question. “Is it of that then you’re dying?”

She but watched him, gravely at "rst, as to see, with this, where he was, and she might have seen something or feared something that moved her sym- pathy. “I would live for you still—if I could.” Her eyes closed for a little, as if, withdrawn into herself, she were for a last time trying. “But I can’t!” she said as she raised them again to take leave of him.

She couldn’t indeed, as but too promptly and sharply appeared, and he had no vision of her after this that was anything, but darkness and doom. They had parted for ever in that strange talk; access to her chamber of pain, rigidly guarded, was almost wholly forbidden him; he was feeling now more- over, in the face of doctors, nurses, the two or three relatives attracted doubtless by the presumption of what she had to “leave,” how few were the rights, as they were called in such cases, that he had to put forward, and how odd it might even seem that their intimacy shouldn’t have given him more of them. The stupidest fourth cousin had more, even though she had been nothing in such a person’s life. She had been a feature of features in his, for what else was it to have been so indispensable? Strange beyond say- ing were the ways of existence, baf`ing for him the anomaly of his lack, as he felt it to be, of producible claim. A woman might have been, as it were, every thing to him, and it might yet pres ent him in no connexion that any one seemed held to recognise. If this was the case in these closing weeks it was the case more sharply on the occasion of the last of"ces rendered, in the great grey London cemetery, to what had been mortal, to what had been precious, in his friend. The concourse at her grave was not numerous, but he saw himself treated as scarce more nearly concerned with it than if there had been a thousand others. He was in short from this moment face to face with the fact that he was to pro"t extraordinarily little by the interest May Bartram had taken in him. He couldn’t quite have said what he expected, but he hadn’t surely expected this approach to a double privation. Not only had her interest failed him, but he seemed to feel himself unattended— and for a reason he couldn’t seize—by the distinction, the dignity, the propriety, if nothing else, of the man markedly bereaved. It was as if in the view of

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society he had not been markedly bereaved, as if there still failed some sign or proof of it, and as if none the less his character could never be af"rmed nor the de"ciency ever made up. There were moments as the weeks went by when he would have liked, by some almost aggressive act, to take his stand on the intimacy of his loss, in order that it might be questioned and his retort, to the relief of his spirit, so recorded; but the moments of an irritation more helpless followed fast on these, the moments during which, turning things over with a good conscience but with a bare horizon, he found himself won- dering if he oughtn’t to have begun, so to speak, further back.

He found himself wondering at many things, and this last speculation had others to keep it com pany. What could he have done, after all, in her life- time, without giving them both, as it were, away? He couldn’t have made known she was watching him, for that would have published the supersti- tion of the Beast. This was what closed his mouth now— now that the Jungle had been threshed to vacancy and that the Beast had stolen away. It sounded too foolish and too `at; the difference for him in this par tic u lar, the extinction in his life of the ele ment of suspense, was such as in fact to surprise him. He could scarce have said what the effect resembled; the abrupt cessation, the positive prohibition, of music perhaps, more than any- thing else, in some place all adjusted and all accustomed to sonority and to attention. If he could at any rate have conceived lifting the veil from his image at some moment of the past (what had he done, after all, if not lift it to her?) so to do this today, to talk to people at large of the Jungle cleared and con"de to them that he now felt it as safe, would have been not only to see them listen as to a goodwife’s tale, but really to hear himself tell one. What it presently came to in truth was that poor Marcher waded through his beaten grass, where no life stirred, where no breath sounded, where no evil eye seemed to gleam from a pos si ble lair, very much as if vaguely look- ing for the Beast, and still more as if acutely missing it. He walked about in an existence that had grown strangely more spacious, and, stopping "tfully in places where the undergrowth of life struck him as closer, asked himself yearningly, wondered secretly and sorely, if it would have lurked here or there. It would have at all events sprung; what was at least complete was his belief in the truth of the assurance given him. The change from his old sense to his new was absolute and "nal: what was to happen had so absolutely and " nally happened that he was as little able to know a fear for his future as to know a hope; so absent in short was any question of anything still to come. He was to live entirely with the other question, that of his unidenti"ed past, that of his having to see his fortune impenetrably muf`ed and masked.

The torment of this vision became then his occupation; he couldn’t per- haps have consented to live but for the possibility of guessing. She had told him, his friend, not to guess; she had forbidden him, so far as he might, to know, and she had even in a sort denied the power in him to learn: which were so many things, precisely, to deprive him of rest. It wasn’t that he wanted, he argued for fairness, that anything past and done should repeat itself; it was only that he shouldn’t, as an anticlimax, have been taken sleep- ing so sound as not to be able to win back by an effort of thought the lost stuff of consciousness. He declared to himself at moments that he would either win it back or have done with consciousness for ever; he made this idea his one motive in "ne, made it so much his passion that none other, to

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compare with it, seemed ever to have touched him. The lost stuff of con- sciousness became thus for him as a strayed or stolen child to an unappeas- able father; he hunted it up and down very much as if he were knocking at doors and enquiring of the police. This was the spirit in which, inevitably, he set himself to travel; he started on a journey that was to be as long as he could make it; it danced before him that, as the other side of the globe couldn’t possibly have less to say to him, it might, by a possibility of sugges- tion, have more. Before he quitted London, however, he made a pilgrimage to May Bartram’s grave, took his way to it through the endless ave nues of the grim suburban metropolis, sought it out in the wilderness of tombs, and, though he had come but for the renewal of the act of farewell, found him- self, when he had at last stood by it, beguiled into long intensities. He stood for an hour, powerless to turn away and yet powerless to penetrate the dark- ness of death; "xing with his eyes her inscribed name and date, beating his forehead against the fact of the secret they kept, drawing his breath, while he waited, as if some sense would in pity of him rise from the stones. He kneeled on the stones, however, in vain; they kept what they concealed; and if the face of the tomb did become a face for him it was because her two names became a pair of eyes that didn’t know him. He gave them a last long look, but no palest light broke.

VI

He stayed away, after this, for a year; he visited the depths of Asia, spending himself on scenes of romantic interest, of superlative sanctity; but what was pres ent to him everywhere was that for a man who had known what he had known the world was vulgar and vain. The state of mind in which he had lived for so many years shone out to him, in re`exion, as a light that coloured and re"ned, a light beside which the glow of the East was garish cheap and thin. The terrible truth was that he had lost— with every thing else— a dis- tinction as well; the things he saw couldn’t help being common when he had become common to look at them. He was simply now one of them himself— he was in the dust, without a peg for the sense of difference; and there were hours when, before the temples of gods and the sepulchres of kings, his spirit turned for nobleness of association to the barely discriminated slab in the London suburb. That had become for him, and more intensely with time and distance, his one witness of a past glory. It was all that was left to him for proof or pride, yet the past glories of Pha raohs were nothing to him as he thought of it. Small won der then that he came back to it on the morrow of his return. He was drawn there this time as irresistibly as the other, yet with a con"dence, almost, that was doubtless the effect of the many months that had elapsed. He had lived, in spite of himself, into his change of feeling, and in wandering over the earth had wandered, as might be said, from the circumference to the centre of his desert. He had settled to his safety and accepted perforce his extinction; "guring to himself, with some colour, in the likeness of certain little old men he remembered to have seen, of whom, all meagre and wizened as they might look, it was related that they had in their time fought twenty duels or been loved by ten princesses. They indeed had been wondrous for others while he was but wondrous for himself; which, however, was exactly the cause of his haste to renew the won der by getting

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back, as he might put it, into his own presence. That had quickened his steps and checked his delay. If his visit was prompt it was because he had been separated so long from the part of himself that alone he now valued.

It’s accordingly not false to say that he reached his goal with a certain elation and stood there again with a certain assurance. The creature beneath the sod knew of his rare experience, so that, strangely now, the place had lost for him its mere blankness of expression. It met him in mildness— not, as before, in mockery; it wore for him the air of conscious greeting that we "nd, after absence, in things that have closely belonged to us and which seem to confess of themselves to the connexion. The plot of ground, the graven tablet, the tended `owers affected him so as belonging to him that he resem- bled for the hour a contented landlord reviewing a piece of property. What- ever had happened— well, had happened. He had not come back this time with the vanity of that question, his former worrying “What, what?” now practically so spent. Yet he would none the less never again so cut himself off from the spot; he would come back to it every month, for if he did noth- ing else by its aid he at least held up his head. It thus grew for him, in the oddest way, a positive resource; he carried out his idea of periodical returns, which took their place at last among the most inveterate of his habits. What it all amounted to, oddly enough, was that in his " nally so simpli"ed world this garden of death gave him the few square feet of earth on which he could still most live. It was as if, being nothing anywhere else for any one, nothing even for himself, he were just every thing here, and if not for a crowd of wit- nesses or indeed for any witness but John Marcher, then by clear right of the register that he could scan like an open page. The open page was the tomb of his friend, and there were the facts of the past, there the truth of his life, there the backward reaches in which he could lose himself. He did this from time to time with such effect that he seemed to wander through the old years with his hand in the arm of a companion who was, in the most extraordinary manner, his other, his younger self; and to wander, which was more extraordinary yet, round and round a third presence— not wandering she, but stationary, still, whose eyes, turning with his revolution, never ceased to follow him, and whose seat was his point, so to speak, of orientation. Thus in short he settled to live— feeding all on the sense that he once had lived, and dependent on it not alone for a support but for an identity.

It suf"ced him in its way for months and the year elapsed; it would doubt- less even have carried him further but for an accident, super"cially slight, which moved him, quite in another direction, with a force beyond any of his impressions of Egypt or of India. It was a thing of the merest chance— the turn, as he afterwards felt, of a hair, though he was indeed to live to believe that if light hadn’t come to him in this par tic u lar fashion it would still have come in another. He was to live to believe this, I say, though he was not to live, I may not less de"nitely mention, to do much else. We allow him at any rate the bene"t of the conviction, struggling up for him at the end, that, what ever might have happened or not happened, he would have come round of himself to the light. The incident of an autumn day had put the match to the train laid from of old by his misery. With the light before him he knew that even of late his ache had only been smothered. It was strangely drugged, but it throbbed; at the touch it began to bleed. And the touch, in the event, was the face of a fellow mortal. This face, one grey after noon when the leaves

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were thick in the alleys, looked into Marcher’s own, at the cemetery, with an expression like the cut of a blade. He felt it, that is, so deep down that he winced at the steady thrust. The person who so mutely assaulted him was a "gure he had noticed, on reaching his own goal, absorbed by a grave a short distance away, a grave apparently fresh, so that the emotion of the visitor would prob ably match it for frankness. This face alone forbade further atten- tion, though during the time he stayed he remained vaguely conscious of his neighbour, a middle- aged man apparently, in mourning, whose bowed back, among the clustered monuments and mortuary yews, was constantly presented. Marcher’s theory that these were ele ments in contact with which he himself revived, had suffered, on this occasion, it may be granted, a marked, an excessive check. The autumn day was dire for him as none had recently been, and he rested with a heaviness he had not yet known on the low stone table that bore May Bartram’s name. He rested without power to move, as if some spring in him, some spell vouchsafed, had suddenly been broken for ever. If he could have done that moment as he wanted he would simply have stretched himself on the slab that was ready to take him, treat- ing it as a place prepared to receive his last sleep. What in all the wide world had he now to keep awake for? He stared before him with the question, and it was then that, as one of the cemetery walks passed near him, he caught the shock of the face.

His neighbour at the other grave had withdrawn, as he himself, with force enough in him, would have done by now, and was advancing along the path on his way to one of the gates. This brought him close, and his pace was slow, so that— and all the more as there was a kind of hunger in his look— the two men were for a minute directly confronted. Marcher knew him at once for one of the deeply stricken— a perception so sharp that nothing else in the picture comparatively lived, neither his dress, his age, nor his presumable character and class; nothing lived but the deep ravage of the features he showed. He showed them— that was the point; he was moved, as he passed, by some impulse that was either a signal for sympathy or, more possibly, a challenge to an opposed sorrow. He might already have been aware of our friend, might at some previous hour have noticed in him the smooth habit of the scene, with which the state of his own senses so scantly consorted, and might thereby have been stirred as by an overt dis- cord. What Marcher was at all events conscious of was in the "rst place that the image of scarred passion presented to him was conscious too—of some- thing that profaned the air; and in the second that, roused, startled, shocked, he was yet the next moment looking after it, as it went, with envy. The most extraordinary thing that had happened to him— though he had given that name to other matters as well— took place, after his immediate vague stare, as a consequence of this impression. The stranger passed, but the raw glare of his grief remained, making our friend won der in pity what wrong, what wound it expressed, what injury not to be healed. What had the man had, to make him by the loss of it so bleed and yet live?

Something— and this reached him with a pang— that he, John Marcher, hadn’t; the proof of which was precisely John Marcher’s arid end. No pas- sion had ever touched him, for this was what passion meant; he had sur- vived and maundered and pined, but where had been his deep ravage? The extraordinary thing we speak of was the sudden rush of the result of this

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question. The sight that had just met his eyes named to him, as in letters of quick `ame, something he had utterly, insanely missed, and what he had missed made these things a train of "re, made them mark themselves in an anguish of inward throbs. He had seen outside of his life, not learned it within, the way a woman was mourned when she had been loved for her- self: such was the force of his conviction of the meaning of the stranger’s face, which still `ared for him as a smoky torch. It hadn’t come to him, the knowledge, on the wings of experience; it had brushed him, jostled him, upset him, with the disrespect of chance, the insolence of accident. Now that the illumination had begun, however, it blazed to the zenith, and what he presently stood there gazing at was the sounded void of his life. He gazed, he drew breath, in pain; he turned in his dismay, and, turning, he had before him in sharper incision than ever the open page of his story. The name on the table smote him as the passage of his neighbour had done, and what it said to him, full in the face, was that she was what he had missed. This was the awful thought, the answer to all the past, the vision at the dread clearness of which he grew as cold as the stone beneath him. Every- thing fell together, confessed, explained, overwhelmed; leaving him most of all stupe"ed at the blindness he had cherished. The fate he had been marked for he had met with a vengeance—he had emptied the cup to the lees; he had been the man of his time, the man, to whom nothing on earth was to have happened. That was the rare stroke— that was his visitation. So he saw it, as we say, in pale horror, while the pieces "tted and "tted. So she had seen it while he didn’t, and so she served at this hour to drive the truth home. It was the truth, vivid and monstrous, that all the while he had waited the wait was itself his portion. This the companion of his vigil had at a given moment made out, and she had then offered him the chance to baf`e his doom. One’s doom, however, was never baf`ed, and on the day she told him his own had come down she had seen him but stupidly stare at the escape she offered him.

The escape would have been to love her; then, then he would have lived. She had lived— who could say now with what passion?— since she had loved him for himself; whereas he had never thought of her (ah, how it hugely glared at him!) but in the chill of his egotism and the light of her use. Her spoken words came back to him— the chain stretched and stretched. The Beast had lurked indeed, and the Beast, at its hour, had sprung; it had sprung in that twilight of the cold April when, pale, ill, wasted, but all beautiful, and perhaps even then recoverable, she had risen from her chair to stand before him and let him imaginably guess. It had sprung as he didn’t guess; it had sprung as she hopelessly turned from him, and the mark, by the time he left her, had fallen where it was to fall. He had justi"ed his fear and achieved his fate; he had failed, with the last exactitude, of all he was to fail of; and a moan now rose to his lips as he remembered she had prayed he mightn’t know. This horror of waking— this was knowledge, knowledge under the breath of which the very tears in his eyes seemed to freeze. Through them, none the less, he tried to "x it and hold it; he kept it there before him so that he might feel the pain. That at least, belated and bitter, had some- thing of the taste of life. But the bitterness suddenly sickened him, and it was as if, horribly, he saw, in the truth, in the cruelty of his image, what had been appointed and done. He saw the Jungle of his life and saw the lurking

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Beast; then, while he looked, perceived it, as by a stir of the air, rise, huge and hideous, for the leap that was to settle him. His eyes darkened—it was close; and, instinctively turning, in his hallucination, to avoid it, he `ung himself, face down, on the tomb.

1901 1903, 1909

SARAH WINNEMUCCA c. 1844–1891

Sarah Winnemucca, or Thocmetony (“shell `ower”), was a northern Paiute woman born in about 1844 in western Nevada. Her mother, Tuboitony (“lettuce `ower”), was the daughter of Captain Truckee, a prominent man among his people whose friendly attitude toward white settlers was based on his belief in traditional stories the Paiutes shared with other desert peoples regarding a “lost white brother” who would one day return. Sarah’s father, known as Old Winnemucca, was a Paiute chief. When Captain Truckee crossed into California in the 1850s to work on Spanish- owned ranches, he took Sarah and her mother with him. In California, Sarah learned some Spanish and became `uent enough in En glish to serve later as an interpreter for the American military. Throughout her adult life, Sarah Winnemucca worked on behalf of the northern Paiutes by means of lectures, writ- ing, and direct encounters with government of"cials.

Sarah Winnemucca "rst gained public notice in 1864 when she appeared with her father and other family members on the streets of Virginia City, Nevada, in the- atrical per for mances dramatizing the dire situation of Paiutes who had been dis- placed by the Virginia City gold rush of 1859. Her "rst publication was a letter describing Paiute suffering that appeared in Harper’s Weekly in 1870. She attracted a national audience in 1878, at the end of the Bannock War. The Bannock Indians of the California Sierras, whose territory was adjacent to that of the Paiutes, had taken up arms against the encroaching whites. Many Paiutes joined with the Ban- nocks. At the conclusion of hostilities, many Paiutes who had not fought were impris- oned with the Bannocks and their Paiute allies on the Yakima Reservation in the Washington Territory. Winnemucca lectured on the Paiute cause in San Francisco, and she made the trip to Washington, D.C., to plead with President Rutherford B. Hayes and Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz. Despite her efforts, the conditions for the Paiutes only worsened. In 1883, Winnemucca embarked on a lecture tour to the East, speaking in New York, Baltimore, and Boston, where her audience included the poet John Greenleaf Whittier and the senator from Mas sa chu setts, Henry Dawes.

In Boston, Winnemucca met Mary Mann, widow of the prominent educator Hor- ace Mann, and her sister, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, a reformer who, de cades before, had opposed Cherokee removal. It was while staying in Boston with the sisters that she wrote most of her autobiography, which Mary Mann edited. Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims was privately printed in 1883. In it, Winnemucca recounts the events of her life in the context of Paiute culture and history— giving readers the chance to understand Paiute lifeways, the threats posed by white Ameri- cans, and Paiute re sis tance to those threats. She published the book under the name of Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, a name re`ecting her 1881 marriage to Lewis

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Hopkins, whom she had wed in San Francisco despite a law prohibiting Indian– white unions. Unfortunately, Hopkins, who had been discharged by the Army as a person of “no character,” was addicted to gambling and apparently drank heavi ly. These unsavory qualities, and the fact that Winnemucca had had more than one white husband before him, made it pos si ble for her opponents to attack her morals. At the same time, her work for the army was criticized both by white opponents of army policy and by skeptical natives. Thus her book concludes with an “Appendix” containing testimonials to her character (the "rst, from Major General O. O. How- ard, for whom she had worked during the Bannock War, af"rms that Winnemucca’s “conduct was always good”), as well as testimonials to the justice and accuracy of her accounts of and pleas for the Paiute people.

The book’s authenticity has also been questioned, for it has been suggested that it was mostly written by Mary Mann, though in many places it uses material from Sarah Winnemucca’s own lectures. In her preface to Life Among the Piutes, Mary Mann states that her editing consisted of no more than “copying the original manu- script in correct orthography and punctuation, with occasional emendations by the author”; she called the book “an heroic act on the part of the writer.” Mary Mann’s judgment that Life Among the Piutes was “the "rst outbreak of the American Indian in human lit er a ture . . . to tell the truth” holds up today.

Near the end of her life, Winnemucca, with her brother Natchez, opened a school for Indian children in Nevada called the Peabody Indian School, supported by Eliz- abeth Palmer Peabody, with whom Winnemucca had developed a deep friendship. But not even Peabody could persuade eastern senators to vote an appropriation for Indian education, and the school closed in 1888. Winnemucca then went to live with her sister, Elma, at Henry’s Lake, Idaho, where she died in 1891.

Our se lections from Life Among the Piutes are from chapter I, “First Meeting of Piutes and Whites,” chapter II, “Domestic and Social Moralities,” and chapter VIII, “The Yakima Affair,” which ends the book. In this last chapter, Winnemucca clearly pres ents her own role as a Paiute activist deeply concerned with the future of her people.

From Life Among the Piutes From Chapter I. First Meeting of Piutes and Whites

I was born somewhere near 1844, but am not sure of the precise time. I was a very small child when the "rst white people came into our country. They came like a lion, yes, like a roaring lion, and have continued so ever since, and I have never forgotten their "rst coming. My people were scattered at that time over nearly all the territory now known as Nevada. My grand father was chief of the entire Piute nation, and was camped near Humboldt Lake, with a small portion of his tribe, when a party travelling eastward from Cali- fornia was seen coming. When the news was brought to my grand father, he asked what they looked like? When told that they had hair on their faces, and were white, he jumped up and clasped his hands together, and cried aloud,—

“My white brothers,—my long- looked- for white brothers have come at last!” He immediately gathered some of his leading men, and went to the place

where the party had gone into camp. Arriving near them, he was commanded to halt in a manner that was readily understood without an interpreter. Grandpa at once made signs of friendship by throwing down his robe and throwing up his arms to show them he had no weapons; but in vain,— they kept him at a distance. He knew not what to do. He had expected so much

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plea sure in welcoming his white brothers to the best in the land, that after looking at them sorrowfully for a little while, he came away quite unhappy. But he would not give them up so easily. He took some of his most trustwor- thy men and followed them day after day, camping near them at night, and travelling in sight of them by day, hoping in this way to gain their con"dence. But he was disappointed, poor dear old soul!

I can imagine his feelings, for I have drank deeply from the same cup. When I think of my past life, and the bitter trials I have endured, I can scarcely believe I live, and yet I do; and, with the help of Him who notes the sparrow’s fall, I mean to "ght for my down- trodden race while life lasts.

Seeing they would not trust him, my grand father left them, saying, “Per- haps they will come again next year.” Then he summoned his whole people, and told them this tradition:—

“In the beginning of the world there were only four, two girls and two boys. Our forefather and mother were only two, and we are their children. You all know that a great while ago there was a happy family in this world. One girl and one boy were dark and the others were white. For a time they got along together without quarrelling, but soon they disagreed, and there was trou ble. They were cross to one another and fought, and our parents were very much grieved. They prayed that their children might learn better, but it did not do any good; and afterwards the whole house hold was made so unhappy that the father and mother saw that they must separate their children; and then our father took the dark boy and girl, and the white boy and girl, and asked them, ‘Why are you so cruel to each other?’ They hung down their heads, and would not speak. They were ashamed. He said to them, ‘Have I not been kind to you all, and given you every thing your hearts wished for? You do not have to hunt and kill your own game to live upon. You see, my dear children, I have power to call whatsoever kind of game we want to eat; and I also have the power to separate my dear children, if they are not good to each other.’ So he separated his children by a word. He said, ‘Depart from each other, you cruel children;— go across the mighty ocean and do not seek each other’s lives.’

“So the light girl and boy dis appeared by that one word, and their parents saw them no more, and they were grieved, although they knew their children were happy. And by- and-by the dark children grew into a large nation; and we believe it is the one we belong to, and that the nation that sprung from the white children will some time send some one to meet us and heal all the old trou ble. Now, the white people we saw a few days ago must certainly be our white brothers, and I want to welcome them. I want to love them as I love all of you. But they would not let me; they were afraid. But they will come again, and I want you one and all to promise that, should I not live to welcome them myself, you will not hurt a hair on their heads, but welcome them as I tried to do.”

How good of him to try and heal the wound, and how vain were his efforts! My people had never seen a white man, and yet they existed, and were a strong race. The people promised as he wished, and they all went back to their work.

* * * That same fall, after my grand father came home, he told my father to take charge of his people and hold the tribe, as he was going back to California

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1. The reference is to a group of emigrants to California known as the Donner Party. Cut off by a storm in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in mid- December of 1846, with their rations almost gone, the group sent a party on snowshoes to seek

help. Several of the party died, and the survivors resorted to cannibalism; cannibalism also occurred among those who had stayed behind. Captain Truckee knew of these events. Winnemucca refers to them later in the chapter as well.

with as many of his people as he could get to go with him. So my father took his place as Chief of the Piutes, and had it as long as he lived. Then my grand father started back to California again with about thirty families. That same fall, very late, the emigrants kept coming. It was this time that our white brothers "rst came amongst us. They could not get over the moun- tains, so they had to live with us. It was on Carson River, where the great Carson City stands now. You call my people bloodseeking. My people did not seek to kill them, nor did they steal their horses,—no, no, far from it. During the winter my people helped them. They gave them such as they had to eat. They did not hold out their hands and say:—

“You can’t have anything to eat unless you pay me.” No,—no such word was used by us savages at that time; and the persons I am speaking of are living yet; they could speak for us if they choose to do so.

The following spring, before my grand father returned home, there was a great excitement among my people on account of fearful news coming from dif fer ent tribes, that the people whom they called their white brothers were killing every body that came in their way, and all the Indian tribes had gone into the mountains to save their lives. So my father told all his people to go into the mountains and hunt and lay up food for the coming winter. Then we all went into the mountains. There was a fearful story they told us children. Our mothers told us that the whites were killing every body and eating them.1 So we were all afraid of them. Every dust that we could see blowing in the valleys we would say it was the white people. In the late fall my father told his people to go to the rivers and "sh, and we all went to Hum- boldt River, and the women went to work gathering wild seed, which they grind between the rocks. The stones are round, big enough to hold in the hands. The women did this when they got back, and when they had gathered all they could they put it in one place and covered it with grass, and then over the grass mud. After it is covered it looks like an Indian wigwam.

Oh, what a fright we all got one morning to hear some white people were coming. Every one ran as best they could. My poor mother was left with my little sister and me. Oh, I never can forget it. My poor mother was carry ing my little sister on her back, and trying to make me run; but I was so fright- ened I could not move my feet, and while my poor mother was trying to get me along my aunt overtook us, and she said to my mother: “Let us bury our girls, or we shall all be killed and eaten up.” So they went to work and bur- ied us, and told us if we heard any noise not to cry out, for if we did they would surely kill us and eat us. So our mothers buried me and my cousin, planted sage bushes over our faces to keep the sun from burning them, and there we were left all day.

Oh, can any one imagine my feelings buried alive, thinking every minute that I was to be unburied and eaten up by the people that my grand father loved so much? With my heart throbbing, and not daring to breathe, we lay there all day. It seemed that the night would never come. Thanks be to God! the night came at last. Oh, how I cried and said: “Oh, father, have you

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2. Five is the pattern number for Winnemucca’s people, although a few paragraphs below an impor tant dream of her father’s takes place not on "ve but on three nights.

forgotten me? Are you never coming for me?” I cried so I thought my very heartstrings would break.

At last we heard some whispering. We did not dare to whisper to each other, so we lay still. I could hear their footsteps coming nearer and nearer. I thought my heart was coming right out of my mouth. Then I heard my mother say, “ ’T is right here!” Oh, can any one in this world ever imagine what were my feelings when I was dug up by my poor mother and father? My cousin and I were once more happy in our mothers’ and fathers’ care, and we were taken to where all the rest were.

I was once buried alive; but my second burial shall be for ever, where no father or mother will come and dig me up. It shall not be with throbbing heart that I shall listen for coming footsteps. I shall be in the sweet rest of peace,— I, the chieftain’s weary daughter.

Well, while we were in the mountains hiding, the people that my grand- father called our white brothers came along to where our winter supplies were. They set every thing we had left on "re. It was a fearful sight. It was all we had for the winter, and it was all burnt during that night. My father took some of his men during the night to try and save some of it, but they could not; it had burnt down before they got there.

These were the last white men that came along that fall. My people talked fearfully that winter about those they called our white brothers. My people said they had something like awful thunder and lightning, and with that they killed every thing that came in their way.

This whole band of white people perished in the mountains, for it was too late to cross them. We could have saved them, only my people were afraid of them. We never knew who they were, or where they came from. So, poor things, they must have suffered fearfully, for they all starved there. The snow was too deep.

Early in the following spring, my father told all his people to go to the mountains, for there would be a great emigration that summer. He told them he had had a wonderful dream, and wanted to tell them all about it.

He said, “Within ten days come together at the sink of Carson, and I will tell you my dream.”

The sub- chiefs went everywhere to tell their people what my father had told them to say; and when the time came we all went to the sink of Carson.

Just about noon, while we were on the way, a great many of our men came to meet us, all on their horses. Oh, what a beautiful song they sang for my father as they came near us! We passed them, and they followed us, and as we came near to the encampment, every man, woman, and child were out looking for us. They had a place all ready for us. Oh, how happy every body was! One could hear laughter everywhere, and songs were sung by happy women and children.

My father stood up and told his people to be merry and happy for "ve days. It is a rule among our people always to have "ve days to settle anything.2 My father told them to dance at night, and that the men should hunt rabbits and "sh, and some were to have games of football, or any kind of sport or playthings they wished, and the women could do the same, as they had

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3. The reference might be to covered wagons but is more likely to railway cars.

nothing else to do. My people were so happy during the "ve days,— the women ran races, and the men ran races on foot and on horses.

My father got up very early one morning, and told his people the time had come,— that we could no longer be happy as of old, as the white people we called our brothers had brought a great trou ble and sorrow among us already. He went on and said,—

“ These white people must be a great nation, as they have houses that move.3 It is wonderful to see them move along. I fear we will suffer greatly by their coming to our country; they come for no good to us, although my father said they were our brothers, but they do not seem to think we are like them. What do you all think about it? Maybe I am wrong. My dear children, there is something telling me that I am not wrong, because I am sure they have minds like us, and think as we do; and I know that they were doing wrong when they set "re to our winter supplies. They surely knew it was our food.”

And this was the "rst wrong done to us by our white brothers. Now comes the end of our merrymaking. Then my father told his people his fearful dream, as he called it. He said,— “I dreamt this same thing three nights,— the very same. I saw the greatest

emigration that has yet been through our country. I looked North and South and East and West, and saw nothing but dust, and I heard a great weeping. I saw women crying, and I also saw my men shot down by the white people. They were killing my people with something that made a great noise like thunder and lightning, and I saw the blood streaming from the mouths of my men that lay all around me. I saw it as if it was real. Oh, my dear children! You may all think it is only a dream,— nevertheless, I feel that it will come to pass. And to avoid bloodshed, we must all go to the mountains during the summer, or till my father comes back from California. He will then tell us what to do. Let us keep away from the emigrant roads and stay in the moun- tains all summer. There are to be a great many pine- nuts this summer, and we can lay up great supplies for the coming winter, and if the emigrants don’t come too early, we can take a run down and "sh for a month, and lay up dried "sh. I know we can dry a great many in a month, and young men can go into the valleys on hunting excursions, and kill as many rabbits as they can. In that way we can live in the mountains all summer and all winter too.”

So ended my father’s dream. During that day one could see old women getting together talking over what they had heard my father say. They said,—

“It is true what our great chief has said, for it was shown to him by a higher power. It is not a dream. Oh, it surely will come to pass. We shall no longer be a happy people, as we now are; we shall no longer go here and there as of old; we shall no longer build our big "res as a signal to our friends, for we shall always be afraid of being seen by those bad people.”

“Surely they don’t eat people?” “Yes, they do eat people, because they ate each other up in the mountains

last winter.” This was the talk among the old women during the day. “Oh, how grieved we are! Oh, where will it end?”

* * *

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From Chapter II. Domestic and Social Moralities

Our children are very carefully taught to be good. Their parents tell them stories, traditions of old times, even of the "rst mother of the human race; and love stories, stories of giants, and fables; and when they ask if these last stories are true, they answer, “Oh, it is only coyote,” which means that they are make- believe stories. Coyote is the name of a mean, crafty little animal, half wolf, half dog, and stands for every thing low. It is the greatest term of reproach one Indian has for another. Indians do not swear,— they have no words for swearing till they learn them of white men. The worst they call each is bad or coyote; but they are very sincere with one another, and if they think each other in the wrong they say so.

We are taught to love every body. We don’t need to be taught to love our fathers and mothers. We love them without being told to. Our tenth cousin is as near to us as our "rst cousin; and we don’t marry into our relations. Our young women are not allowed to talk to any young man that is not their cousin, except at the festive dances, when both are dressed in their best clothes, adorned with beads, feathers or shells, and stand alternately in the ring and take hold of hands. These are very pleasant occasions to all the young people.

Many years ago, when my people were happier than they are now, they used to celebrate the Festival of Flowers in the spring. I have been to three of them only in the course of my life.

Oh, with what eagerness we girls used to watch every spring for the time when we could meet with our hearts’ delight, the young men, whom in civi- lized life you call beaux. We would all go in com pany to see if the `owers we were named for were yet in bloom, for almost all the girls are named for `owers. We talked about them in our wigwams, as if we were the `ow- ers, saying, “Oh, I saw myself today in full bloom!” We would talk all the eve ning in this way in our families with such delight, and such beautiful thoughts of the happy day when we should meet with those who admired us and would help us to sing our `ower- songs which we made up as we sang. But we were always sorry for those that were not named after some `ower, because we knew they could not join in the `ower- songs like ourselves, who were named for `owers of all kinds.

At last one eve ning came a beautiful voice, which made every girl’s heart throb with happiness. It was the chief, and every one hushed to hear what he said to- day.

“My dear daughters, we are told that you have seen yourselves in the hills and in the valleys, in full bloom. Five days from to- day your festival day will come. I know every young man’s heart stops beating while I am talking. I know how it was with me many years ago. I used to wish the Flower Festival would come every day. Dear young men and young women, you are saying, ‘Why put it off "ve days?’ But you all know that is our rule. It gives you time to think, and to show your sweetheart your `ower.”

All the girls who have `ower- names dance along together, and those who have not go together also. Our fathers and mothers and grand fathers and grand mothers make a place for us where we can dance. Each one gath- ers the `ower she is named for, and then all weave them into wreaths and crowns and scarfs, and dress up in them.

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Some girls are named for rocks and are called rock- girls, and they "nd some pretty rocks which they carry; each one such a rock as she is named for, or what ever she is named for. If she cannot, she can take a branch of sage- brush, or a bunch of rye- grass, which have no `ower.

They all go marching along, each girl in turn singing of herself; but she is not a girl any more,— she is a `ower singing. She sings of herself, and her sweetheart, dancing along by her side, helps her sing the song she makes.

I will repeat what we say of ourselves. “I, Sarah Winnemucca, am a shell- `ower, such as I wear on my dress. My name is Thocmetony. I am so beau- tiful! Who will come and dance with me while I am so beautiful? Oh, come and be happy with me! I shall be beautiful while the earth lasts. Somebody will always admire me; and who will come and be happy with me in the Spirit- land? I shall be beautiful forever there. Yes, I shall be more beautiful than my shell- ̀ ower, my Thocmetony! Then, come, oh come, and dance and be happy with me!” The young men sing with us as they dance beside us.

Our parents are waiting for us somewhere to welcome us home. And then we praise the sage- brush and the rye- grass that have no `ower, and the pretty rocks that some are named for; and then we pres ent our beautiful `owers to these companions who could carry none. And so all are happy; and that closes the beautiful day.

My people have been so unhappy for a long time they wish now to disin- crease, instead of multiply. The mothers are afraid to have more children, for fear they shall have daughters, who are not safe even in their mother’s presence.

* * * Our boys are introduced to manhood by their hunting of deer and mountain- sheep. Before they are "fteen or sixteen, they hunt only small game, like rabbits, hares, fowls, etc. They never eat what they kill themselves, but only what their father or elder brothers kill. When a boy becomes strong enough to use larger bows made of sinew, and arrows that are ornamented with eagle- feathers, for the "rst time, he kills game that is large, a deer or an ante- lope, or a mountain- sheep. Then he brings home the hide, and his father cuts it into a long coil which is wound into a loop, and the boy takes his quiver and throws it on his back as if he was going on a hunt, and takes his bow and arrows in his hand. Then his father throws the loop over him, and he jumps through it. This he does "ve times. Now for the "rst time he eats the `esh of the animal he has killed, and from that time he eats what ever he kills but he has always been faithful to his parents’ command not to eat what he has killed before. He can now do what ever he likes, for now he is a man, and no longer considered a boy. If there is a war he can go to it; but the Piutes, and other tribes west of the Rocky Mountains, are not fond of going to war. I never saw a war- dance but once. It is always the whites that begin the wars, for their own sel"sh purposes. The government does not take care to send the good men; there are a plenty who would take pains to see and understand the chiefs and learn their characters, and their good will to the whites. But the whites have not waited to "nd out how good the Indians were, and what ideas they had of God, just like those of Jesus, who called him Father, just as my people do, and told men to do to others as they would be done by, just as my people teach their children to do. My people teach their children never

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to make fun of any one, no matter how they look. If you see your brother or sister doing something wrong, look away, or go away from them. If you make fun of bad persons, you make yourself beneath them. Be kind to all, both poor and rich, and feed all that come to your wigwam, and your name can be spoken of by every one far and near. In this way you will make many friends for yourself. Be kind both to bad and good, for you don’t know your own heart. This is the way my people teach their children. It was handed down from father to son for many generations. I never in my life saw our children rude as I have seen white children and grown people in the streets.

The chief’s tent is the largest tent, and it is the council- tent, where every one goes who wants advice. In the eve nings the head men go there to dis- cuss every thing, for the chiefs do not rule like tyrants; they discuss every- thing with their people, as a father would in his family. Often they sit up all night. They discuss the doings of all, if they need to be advised. If a boy is not doing well they talk that over, and if the women are interested they can share in the talks. If there is not room enough inside, they all go out of doors, and make a great circle. The men are in the inner circle, for there would be too much smoke for the women inside. The men never talk without smok- ing "rst. The women sit behind them in another circle, and if the children wish to hear, they can be there too. The women know as much as the men do, and their advice is often asked. We have a republic as well as you. The council- tent is our Congress, and anybody can speak who has anything to say, women and all. They are always interested in what their husbands are doing and thinking about. And they take some part even in the wars. They are always near at hand when "ghting is going on, ready to snatch their hus- bands up and carry them off if wounded or killed. One splendid woman that my brother Lee married after his "rst wife died, went out into the battle- "eld after her uncle was killed, and went into the front ranks and cheered the men on. Her uncle’s horse was dressed in a splendid robe made of ea gles’ feathers and she snatched it off and swung it in the face of the enemy, who always carry off every thing they "nd, as much as to say, “You can’t have that— I have it safe”; and she staid and took her uncle’s place, as brave as any of the men. It means something when the women promise their fathers to make their husbands themselves. They faithfully keep with them in all the dangers they can share. They not only take care of their children together, but they do every thing together; and when they grow blind, which I am sorry to say is very common, for the smoke they live in destroys their eyes at last, they take sweet care of one another. Marriage is a sweet thing when people love each other. If women could go into your Congress I think justice would soon be done to the Indians.

* * *

From Chapter VIII. The Yakima Affair

* * * We then went down, and Major Cochran met us at the door and said, “Sarah, are you sick? You look so badly.”

I said, “No.”

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4. This is Captain (not Major)  M.  A. Cochran (Winnemucca spells it “Cochrane” just below), who is the post commander at Fort Harney, Ore- gon. Sarah is with her close friend, Mattie, whom she will refer to as her “ sister” a few paragraphs below. A number of Paiute people had been taken to Fort Harney after the conclusion of the Ban- nock War in 1878. They were expecting to be

returned to the Malheur Reservation in Oregon, where many had been for some time. Here, Winnemucca learns that her people are to be sent far away, to the Yakima Reservation in Washing- ton State. 5. Leggins was the leader of Winnemucca’s father’s band. These Paiutes did not join the Ban- nocks. They were nonetheless sent to Washington.

He then replied, “Sarah, I am heartily sorry for you, but we cannot help it. We are ordered to take your people to Yakima Reservation.”4

It was just a little before Christmas. My people were only given one week to get ready in.

I said, “What! In this cold winter and in all this snow, and my people have so many little children? Why, they will all die. Oh, what can the President be thinking about? Oh, tell me, what is he? Is he man or beast? Yes, he must be a beast; if he has no feeling for my people, surely he ought to have some for the soldiers.”

“I have never seen a president in my life and I want to know whether he is made of wood or rock, for I cannot for once think that he can be a human being. No human being would do such a thing as that,— send people across a fearful mountain in midwinter.”

I was told not to say anything till three days before starting. Every night I imagined I could see the thing called President. He had long ears, he had big eyes and long legs, and a head like a bull- frog or something like that. I could not think of anything that could be so inhuman as to do such a thing,— send people across mountains with snow so deep.

Mattie and I got all the furs we could; we had fur caps, fur gloves, and fur overshoes.

At last the time arrived. The commanding- of"cer told me to tell Leggins to come to him.5 I did so. He came, and Major Cochrane told me to tell him that he wanted him to tell which of the Bannock men were the worst, or which was the leader in the war. Leggins told him, and counted out twelve men to him. After this talk, Major Cochrane asked me to go and tell these men to come up to the of"ce. They were Oytes, Bannock Joe, Captain Bear- skin, Paddy Cap, Boss, Big John, Ea gle Eye, Charley, D. E. Johnson, Beads, and Oytes’ son- in- law, called Surger. An of"cer was sent with me. I called out the men by their names. They all came out to me. I said to Oytes,—

“Your soldier- father wants you all to go up to see him.” We went up, and Oytes asked me many things. We had to go right by the guard- house. Just as we got near it, the soldier

on guard came out and headed us off and took the men and put them into the guard- house. After they were put in there the soldiers told me to tell them they must not try to get away, or they would be shot.

“We put you in here for safe- keeping,” they said. “The citizens are coming over here from Canyon City to arrest you all, and we don’t want them to take you; that is why we put you in here.”

Ten soldiers were sent down to guard the whole encampment,— not Leg- gins’ band, only Oytes’ and the Bannocks. I was then ordered to tell them to get ready to go to Yakima Reservation.

Oh, how sad they were! Women cried and blamed their husbands for  going with the Bannocks; but Leggins and his band were told they

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6. Winnemucca’s half- brother. 7. Charles Parrish had been the government Indian agent at the Malheur Reservation. As is

apparent, Winnemucca thought extremely well of Parrish and his wife.

were not going with the prisoners of war, and that he was not going at all.

Then Leggins moved down the creek about two miles. At night some would get out and go off. Brother Lee6 and Leggins were sent out to bring them back again. One after noon Mattie and I were sent out to get "ve women who got away during the night, and an of"cer was sent with us. We were riding very fast, and my sister Mattie’s horse jumped on one side and threw her off and hurt her. The blood ran out of her mouth, and I thought she would die right off; but, poor dear, she went on, for an ambulance was at our com- mand. She had great suffering during our journey.

Oh, for shame! You who are educated by a Christian government in the art of war; the practice of whose profession makes you natu ral enemies of the savages, so called by you. Yes, you, who call yourselves the great civili- zation; you who have knelt upon Plymouth Rock, covenanting with God to make this land the home of the free and the brave. Ah, then you rise from your bended knees and seizing the welcoming hands of those who are the owners of this land, which you are not, your carbines rise upon the bleak shore, and your so- called civilization sweeps inland from the ocean wave; but, oh, my God! leaving its pathway marked by crimson lines of blood, and strewed by the bones of two races, the inheritor and the invader; and I am crying out to you for justice,— yes, pleading for the far- off plains of the West, for the dusky mourner, whose tears of love are pleading for her hus- band, or for their children, who are sent far away from them. Your Chris- tian minister will hold my people against their will; not because he loves them,—no, far from it,— but because it puts money in his pockets.

Now we are ready to start for Yakima. Fifty wagons were brought, and citi- zens were to take us there. Some of the wagons cost the government from ten dollars to "fteen dollars per day. We got to Canyon City, and while we camped there Captain Winters got a tele gram from Washington, telling him he must take Leggins’ band too. So we had to wait for them to overtake us. While we were waiting, our dear good father and mother, Mr. Charles W. Parrish,7 came with his wife and children to see us. My people threw their arms round him and his wife, crying, “Oh, our father and mother, if you had staid with us we would not suffer this.”

Poor Mrs. Parrish could not stop her tears at seeing the people who once loved her, the children whom she had taught,— yes, the savage children who once called her their white- lily mother, the children who used to bring her wild `owers, with happy faces, now ragged, no clothes what ever. They all cried out to him and his wife, saying, “Oh, good father and mother, talk for us! Don’t let them take us away; take us back to our home!” He told them he could do nothing for them. They asked him where his brother, Sam Parrish, was. He told them he was a long way off; and then they bade us good-by, and that was the last they saw of him.

* * *

1883

5 0 8

JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS 1848?–1908

Joel Chandler Harris was born in Eatonville, Georgia, in the 1840s; biographers differ as to whether he was born in 1845, 1846, or 1848. His mother, Mary Har- ris, came from a middle- class family in a neighboring county; his father was a day laborer who abandoned mother and child shortly after Harris was born. One of Eatonville’s leading citizens, Andrew Reid, provided a small cottage for Mary Har- ris and her infant son, and soon Mary’s mother and grand mother joined them.

In 1862, at age fourteen, Harris went to work as a printer’s apprentice on Joseph Addison Turner’s newly established newspaper, the Countryman. Turner owned Turnwold, a thousand- acre plantation nine miles from Eatonville, and was intensely loyal to plantation life and the recently established Confederacy. But Turner’s deep- est ambitions were literary rather than po liti cal; he wanted to become a force in establishing Georgia and the South as impor tant literary centers. Turner encour- aged Harris to make use of his large library, which included classic En glish writers as well as southern authors such as Edgar Allan Poe and Henry Timrod. He also served as a kind of tutor as Harris began to gradu ate from setting type to making contributions to the Countryman with short punning pieces and reviews.

On April  20, 1873, Harris married Esther La Rose, with whom he would have nine children, losing three to childhood illnesses. To avoid a yellow fever epidemic, he brought his family from Savannah to Atlanta in 1876 in what turned out to be a permanent move. He went to work for the Atlanta Constitution as an associate editor and started a column called “Round About in Georgia.” He wrote his "rst Uncle Remus story for the issue of October 26, 1876; others followed, and his "rst Uncle Remus book, Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings, was published in 1881. Five more collections of Remus stories and poems were published over the next twenty- "ve years. For these hugely popu lar stories, Harris drew on his Turn- wold experience as a fascinated listener to black folklore and storytelling, a tradi- tion that drew on a mixture of mostly African and some Eu ro pean sources. These stories worked with "gures who appear in multiple folk traditions from across the world: the wise storyteller, the wily predator, and the trickster— a supposedly weak victim who outwits the predator every time.

Harris became a charter member of the American Folklore Society, established in 1888, and was an active collector of oral tales. Increasingly, he depended on “in for- mants” for stories he would then adapt to his purposes. In the years following the publication of his "rst book, Harris published twenty more volumes of tales, sketches, novels, and children’s stories featuring a wide range of characters both fanciful and real. Even though Harris was a working journalist for forty years and wrote editori- als and essays on the issues of his day— especially on the need for the North and South to come together after the Civil War— little of this work matches the artistry or impact of the tales of Uncle Remus. The reception of Harris’s tales became con- tested in the century after his death, with some writers (such as Ralph Ellison) prais- ing him for conveying the comedy and subversiveness of African American storytellers and others (such as Alice Walker) arguing that he engaged in cultural appropriation or indulged in plantation nostalgia. Regardless, no one disputes the deep popularity of Harris’s Uncle Remus at the turn of the twentieth century, or Harris’s in`uence on the repre sen ta tion of oral storytelling in American lit er a ture.

1. First published in Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings (New York:  D. Appleton, 1881) and reprinted in a modern edition edited by Robert Hemenway (Penguin, 1982), the source of the pres ent texts.

The Wonderful Tar- Baby Story1

“ Didn’t the fox never catch the rabbit, Uncle Remus?” asked the little boy the next eve ning.

“He come mighty nigh it, honey, sho’s you bawn— Brer Fox did. One day atter Brer Rabbit fool ’im wid dat calamus root, Brer Fox went ter wuk en got ’im some tar, en mix it wid some turkentime, en "x up a contrapshun wat he call a Tar- Baby, en he tuck dish yer Tar- Baby en he sot ’er in de big road, en den he lay off in de bushes fer ter see wat de news wuz gwineter be. En he didn’t hatter wait long, nudder, kaze bimeby here come Brer Rabbit pacin’ down de road— lippity- clippity, clippity- lippity— dez ez sassy ez a jay- bird. Brer Fox, he lay low. Brer Rabbit come prancin’ ’long twel he spy de Tar- Baby, en den he fotch up on his behime legs like he wuz ’stonished. De Tar- Baby, she sot dar, she did, en Brer Fox, he lay low.

“ ‘Mawnin’!’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee— ‘nice wedder dis mawnin’,’ sezee. “Tar- Baby ain’t sayin’ nothin’, en Brer Fox, he lay low. “ ‘How duz yo’ sym’tums seem ter segashuate?’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. “Brer Fox, he wink his eye slow, en lay low, en de Tar- Baby, she ain’t sayin’

nothin’. “ ‘How you come on, den? Is you deaf?’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. ‘Kaze if

you is, I kin holler louder,’ sezee. “Tar- Baby stay still, en Brer Fox, he lay low. “ ‘Youer stuck up, dat’s w’at you is,’ says Brer Rabbit, sezee, ‘ ’en I’m gwine ter

kyore you, dat’s w’at I’m a gwineter do,’ sezee. “Brer Fox, he sorter chuckle in his stummuck, he did, but Tar- Baby ain’t

sayin’ nothin’. “ ‘I’m gwineter larn you howter talk ter ’specttubble fokes ef hit’s de las’

ack’, sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. ‘ ’Ef you don’t take off dat hat en tell me howdy, I’m gwineter bus’ you wide open,’ sezee.

“Tar- Baby stay still, en Brer Fox, he lay low. “Brer Rabbit keep on axin’ ’im, en de Tar- Baby, she keep on sayin’ nothin’,

twel pres ent’y Brer Rabbit draw back wid his "s’, he did, en blip he tuck ’er side er de head. Right dar’s whar he broke his merlasses jug. His "s’ stuck, en he can’t pull loose. De tar hilt ’im. But Tar- Baby, she stay still, en Brer Fox, he lay low.

“ ‘Ef you don’t lemme loose, I’ll knock you agin,’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, en wid dat he fotch ’er a wipe wid de udder han’, en dat stuck. Tar- Baby, she ain’t sayin’ nothin’, en Brer Fox, he lay low.

“ ‘Tu’n me loose, fo’ I kick de natal stuf"n’ outen you,’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, but de Tar- Baby, she ain’t sayin’ nothin. She des hilt on, en den Brer Rabbit lose de use er his feet in de same way. Brer Fox, he lay low. Den Brer Rabbit squall out dat ef de Tar- Baby don’t tu’n ’im loose he butt ’er crank- sided. En den he butted, en his head got stuck. Den Brer Fox, he sa’ntered fort’, lookin’ des ez innercent ez wunner yo’ mammy’s mockin’- birds.

“ ‘Howdy, Brer Rabbit,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee. ‘You look sorter stuck up dis mawnin’,’ sezee, en den he rolled on de groun’, en laughed en laughed twel

5 0 9

5 1 0 | J O E L C H A N D L E R H A R R I S

1. This tale takes up where “The Wonderful Tar- Baby Story” left off; in the earlier story Brer Fox coaxes Brer Rabbit into being trapped in the sticky surface of a doll that Brer Fox has molded

from tar and set in the road. 2. Folk image of sleep. 3. Dialect for quick or fast, speedy.

he couldn’t laugh no mo’. ‘I speck you’ll take dinner wid me dis time, Brer Rabbit. I done laid in some calamus root, en I ain’t gwineter take no skuse,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee.”

Here Uncle Remus paused, and drew a two- pound yam out of the ashes. “Did the fox eat the rabbit?” asked the little boy to whom the story had

been told. “Dat’s all de fur de tale goes,” replied the old man. “He mout, en den agin

he moutent. Some say Jedge B’ar come ’long en loosed ’im— some say he didn’t. I hear Miss Sally callin’. You better run ’long.”

1881

How Mr. Rabbit Was Too Sharp for Mr. Fox1

“ Uncle Remus,” said the little boy one eve ning, when he had found the old man with little or nothing to do, “did the fox kill and eat the rabbit when he caught him with the Tar- Baby?”

“Law, honey, ain’t I tell you ’bout dat?” replied the old darkey, chuckling slyly. “I ’clar ter grashus I ought er tole you dat, but ole man Nod2 wuz ridin’ on my eyeleds ’twel a leetle mo’n I’d a dis’member’d my own name, en den on to dat here come yo’ mammy hollerin’ atter you.

“W’at I tell you w’en I fus’ begin? I tole you Brer Rabbit wuz a monstus soon3 beas’; leas’ways dat’s w’at I laid out fer ter tell you. Well, den, honey, don’t you go en make no udder kalkalashuns, kaze in dem days Brer Rabbit en his fambly wuz at de head er de gang w’en enny racket wuz on han’, en dar dey stayed. ’Fo’ you begins fer ter wipe yo’ eyes ’bout Brer Rabbit, you wait en see whar’bouts Brer Rabbit gwineter fetch up at. But dat’s needer yer ner dar.

“W’en Brer Fox "ne Brer Rabbit mixt up wid de Tar- Baby, he feel mighty good, en he roll on de groun’ en laff. Bimeby he up’n say, sezee:

“ ‘Well, I speck I got you dis time, Brer Rabbit,’ sezee; ‘maybe I ain’t, but I speck I is. You been runnin’ roun’ here sassin’ atter me a mighty long time, but I speck you done come ter de een’ er de row. You bin cuttin’ up yo’ capers en bouncin’ ’roun’ in dis naberhood ontwel you come ter b’leeve yo’se’f de boss er de whole gang. En den youer allers some’rs whar you got no bizness,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee. ‘Who ax you fer ter come en strike up a ’quaintence wid dish yer Tar- Baby? En who stuck you up dar whar you iz? Nobody in de roun’ worril. You des tuck en jam yo’se’f on dat Tar- Baby widout waitin’ fer enny invite,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee, ‘en dar you is, en dar you’ll stay twel I "xes up a bresh- pile and "res her up, kaze I’m gwineter bobbycue you dis day, sho,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee.

“Den Brer Rabbit talk mighty ’umble. “ ‘I don’t keer w’at you do wid me, Brer Fox,’ sezee, ‘so you don’t `ing me

in dat brier- patch. Roas’ me, Brer Fox,’ sezee, ‘but don’t `ing me in dat brier- patch,’ sezee.

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4. Log of a dwarf chestnut tree. 5. Obliged.

“ ‘Hit’s so much trou ble fer ter kindle a "re,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee, ‘dat I speck I’ll hatter hang you,’ sezee.

“ ‘Hang me des ez high ez you please, Brer Fox,’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, ‘but do fer de Lord’s sake don’t `ing me in that brier- patch,’ sezee.

“ ‘I ain’t got no string,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee, ‘en now I speck I’ll hatter drown you,’ sezee.

“ ‘Drown me des ez deep ez you please, Brer Fox,’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, ‘but do don’t `ing me in dat brier- patch,’ sezee.

“ ‘Dey ain’t no water nigh,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee, ‘en now I speck I’ll hatter skin you,’ sezee.

“ ‘Skin me, Brer Fox,’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, ‘snatch out my eyeballs, t’ar out my years by de roots, en cut off my legs,’ sezee, ‘but do please, Brer Fox, don’t `ing me in dat brier- patch,’ sezee.

“Co’se Brer Fox wanter hurt Brer Rabbit bad ez he kin, so he cotch ’im by de behime legs en slung ’im right in de middle er de brier- patch. Dar was a considerbul `utter whar Brer Rabbit struck de bushes, en Brer Fox sorter hang ’roun’ fer ter see w’at wuz gwineter happen. Bimeby he hear somebody call ’im, en way up de hill he see Brer Rabbit settin’ cross- legged on a chinkapin log4 koamin’ de pitch outen his har wid a chip. Den Brer Fox know dat he bin swop off mighty bad. Brer Rabbit wuz bleedzed5 fer ter `ing back some er his sass, en he holler out:

“ ‘Bred en bawn in a brier- patch, Brer Fox— bred en bawn in a brier- patch!’ en wid dat he skip out des ez lively ez a cricket in de embers.”

1881

EMMA LAZARUS 1849–1887

S ince 1903, Emma Lazarus’s sonnet “The New Colossus” has been on public view inside the base of the Statue of Liberty; its last several lines, especially “hud- dled masses yearning to breathe free,” have become part of the national vocabu- lary through which Americans describe the ideals of their nation.

Lazarus was born in New York City on July 22, 1849, to Moses Lazarus, a wealthy sugar re"ner, and Esther Nathan Lazarus, both from families long resident in New York. Her father’s family were Sephardic Jews from Portugual who had settled in New York while it was New Amsterdam. She grew up in luxury in Manhattan and summered in fash ion able Newport, Rhode Island. Educated by tutors in three mod- ern languages and lit er a tures besides En glish, Lazarus was precocious, and when her father paid for the publication of Poems and Translations . . . Written between the Ages of Fourteen and Sixteen in 1866, she sent copies to several well- known poets, among them Ralph Waldo Emerson, who politely offered to be her “professor” in stylistic matters. In addition to Emerson, Lazarus came to know many American

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1. The text is from Admetus and Other Poems (1871), where it is dated “July 1867.” It is a com- panion piece to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s similarly meditative “The Jewish Cemetery at Newport,” about the cemetery attached to the Touro Synagogue, the oldest in the United States,

dating from 1763. The synagogue was closed dur- ing the years that Lazarus summered in Newport at her family’s country house. 2. “Dead” because at that time Hebrew was not used in everyday life.

writers of the time, and her enthusiasm for Whitman, Thoreau, and other Ameri- can writers culminated in her short manifesto “American Lit er a ture” (1881).

Early in her literary life, Lazarus identi"ed with the German- Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, who had felt both at home in and estranged from a Christian society and non- Hebraic lit er a ture. Though Lazarus had written such poems as “In the Jewish Syna- gogue at Newport,” her intellectual efforts into the early 1880s focused on the continuities and distinctions between American and En glish lit er a ture. But in 1882, horri"ed that newspapers were minimizing Rus sian atrocities against Jews, Lazarus fashioned herself into a Jewish spokeswoman on international themes as they affected American national policy on immigration. Her essay “Rus sian Chris tian ity versus Modern Judaism,” published in the Century in 1882, describes the reign of “murder, rape, arson” during which tens of thousands of Jewish families in Eastern Eu rope had been reduced “to homeless beggary.” That November, playing on Paul’s New Testa- ment letter, she began serial publication in the American Hebrew of “An Epistle to the Hebrew.” There she urged American Jews to become more, not less, “tribal,” and to recognize that their freedom depended upon the freedom of Jews in Rus sia and else- where. The following year, in “The Jewish Prob lem,” Lazarus spoke out as an early Zionist, echoing the fervent determination of George Eliot’s title character in Daniel Deronda to make the Jews “a nation again.” And she began visiting the “undesirable” new immigrants detained on Ward’s Island in the East River, those deemed too desti- tute or too in"rm to be allowed into American society. In 1883 she founded the Soci- ety for the Improvement and Colonization of Eastern Eu ro pean Jews.

Lazarus’s poetry combines free- ̀ owing, often power ful imagery with a careful attention to poetic form. Those qualities are on display in “The New Colossus,” which Lazarus composed in 1883 as part of a fundraising effort to support the building of the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty. The statue, a gift from France to the United States, had been conceived as a memorial to France’s aid of the colo- nies during the American Revolution. In hailing the female "gure as the “ Mother of Exiles,” Lazarus rede"ned the “mighty woman with a torch” into the national welcomer of “huddled masses” seeking refuge. Building on her own knowledge of immigrants arriving in New York Harbor, she rede"ned the signi"cance of the statue away from the past and toward the future.

Lazarus traveled to Eu rope in 1883 and  1885, meeting several famous poets, including Robert Browning. Her death, from cancer, in 1887 cut short a remarkable career, and her reputation was solidi"ed the following year, when her sisters post- humously published The Poems of Emma Lazarus.

In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport1

Here, where the noises of the busy town, The ocean’s plunge and roar can enter not, We stand and gaze around with tearful awe, And muse upon the consecrated spot.

No signs of life are here: the very prayers 5 Inscribed around are in a language dead;2

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3. In a synagogue, the light above the ark which holds the Torah (the "rst "ve books of the Hebrew scriptures— Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy). 4. The United States. 5. Abraham (Genesis 24.35), his son Isaac, or Isaac’s sons. Lazarus is not striving for speci"c- ity but evoking images of Jewish history. 6. The enslavement of Jews in Egypt is described in Exodus 1. After the Hebrews crossed the Red Sea, a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of "re

by night led them through the desert (Exodus 13.21–22). 7. Mount Sinai, where God gave Moses the Ten Commandments (Exodus 34). 8. Solomon’s magni"cence is described in 1 Kings 4; the building of the First Temple (in Jerusalem) is described in 1 Kings 5–8. 9. The First Temple was destroyed around 588– 586 b.c.e. and the Jews exiled to Babylon, the site of the modern Hilla, in Iraq, south of Baghdad.

The light of the “perpetual lamp”3 is spent That an undying radiance was to shed.

What prayers were in this temple offered up, Wrung from sad hearts that knew no joy on earth, 10 By these lone exiles of a thousand years, From the fair sunrise land that gave them birth!

Now as we gaze, in this new world of light,4 Upon this relic of the days of old, The pres ent vanishes, and tropic bloom 15 And Eastern towns and temples we behold.

Again we see the patriarch5 with his `ocks, The purple seas, the hot blue sky o’erhead, The slaves of Egypt,— omens, mysteries,— Dark `eeing hosts by `aming angels led,6 20

A wondrous light upon a sky- kissed mount,7 A man who reads Jehovah’s written law, ’Midst blinding glory and effulgence rare, Unto a people prone with reverent awe.

The pride of luxury’s barbaric pomp, 25 In the rich court of royal Solomon— 8 Alas! we wake: one scene alone remains— The exiles by the streams of Babylon.9

Our softened voices send us back again But mournful echoes through the empty hall; 30 Our footsteps have a strange unnatural sound, And with unwonted gentleness they fall.

The weary ones, the sad, the suffering, All found their comfort in the holy place, And children’s gladness and men’s gratitude 35 Took voice and mingled in the chant of praise.

The funeral and the marriage, now, alas! We know not which is sadder to recall; For youth and happiness have followed age, And green grass lieth gently over all. 40

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1. Nevertheless (poetic archaism). 1. This poem, reprinted from Poems (1888), acknowledges two events in Spain in 1492. Early in the year King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella drove from Spain all Jews who would not convert to Catholicism. A few months later they invested in Christopher Columbus’s voyage into the Atlantic in the hope of establishing a new trade route to the East Indies. 2. Northern Eu rope, as opposed to the eastern Mediterranean. 3. The Jews expelled from Spain spread out over the Mediterranean region, many being robbed, many dying of the plague, some being enslaved,

some murdered. 1. The footnote to the 1888 Poems of Emma Laza- rus, the source of the pres ent text, reads “Written in aid of Bartholdi Pedestal Fund, 1883.” The sculpture was by Frédéric- Auguste Bartholdi (1834–1904). 2. The gigantic statue of the sun god, Helios, created by the sculptor Chares of Lindos, loomed over the harbor of the Greek island of Rhodes for several de cades before being destroyed in an earthquake in 225 b.c.e. Later reports exagger- ated the size, saying that the legs of the statue straddled the harbor. 3. New York City and Jersey City, New Jersey.

Nathless1 the sacred shrine is holy yet, With its lone `oors where reverent feet once trod. Take off your shoes as by the burning bush, Before the mystery of death and God.

1867 1871

14921

Thou two- faced year, Mother of Change and Fate, Didst weep when Spain cast forth with `aming sword, The children of the prophets of the Lord, Prince, priest, and people, spurned by zealot hate. Hounded from sea to sea, from state to state, 5 The West2 refused them, and the East abhorred. No anchorage the known world could afford, Close- locked was every port, barred every gate.3 Then smiling, thou unveil’dst, O two- faced year, A virgin world where doors of sunset part, 10 Saying, “Ho, all who weary, enter here! There falls each ancient barrier that the art Of race or creed or rank devised, to rear Grim bulwarked hatred between heart and heart!”

1883 1888

The New Colossus1

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,2 With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea- washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose `ame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name 5 Mother of Exiles. From her beacon- hand Glows world- wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air- bridged harbor that twin cities3 frame. “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, 10

S A R A H O R N E J E W E T T | 5 1 5

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest- tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

1883 1888

SARAH ORNE JEWETT 1849–1909

When Sarah Orne Jewett was born in South Berwick, Maine, in 1849, the town and region she would memorialize in her "ction were already chang- ing rapidly. Her grand father had been a sea captain, shipowner, and merchant, and as a child she was exposed to the bustle of this small inland port. By the end of the Civil War, however, textile mills and a cannery had largely replaced agriculture, ship- building, and logging as the economic base of the community, and the arrival of French Canadian and Irish immigrants brought greater ethnic diversity to the area. The stable, secure, and remote small town Jewett knew and loved as a child was expe- riencing the economic, technological, and demographic pressures that transformed much of Amer i ca in her lifetime.

Jewett and her two sisters led happy and generally carefree childhoods. Their father was a kindly, hardworking obstetrician who encouraged Jewett’s reading. As a small child she accompanied him on his horse- and- buggy rounds, meeting the rural people who would later populate her "ction. Jewett loved her father deeply, and some of her strong feelings for him are invested in A Country Doctor (1884), a novel that also celebrates the in de pen dence of its female protagonist. Jewett’s relationship with her mother was less intense; it was not until her mother became an invalid in the 1880s that mother and daughter became close. As Jewett confessed in a letter to editor and friend Thomas Bailey Aldrich: “I never felt so near to my mother . . . as I have since she died.”

In part inspired by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel about Maine seacoast life, The Pearl of Orr’s Island (1862), Jewett began to write and publish verse and stories in her teens. One of her "rst efforts was accepted for publication in 1869 by William Dean Howells— then assistant editor for the prestigious Atlantic Monthly. In her early twenties, encouraged by Howells, she wrote a group of stories and sketches about a "ctional coastal town in Maine to which she gave the name Deephaven; she published her "rst collection of short pieces in 1877 under that title. With the pub- lication of this book, she entered the com pany of the many post– Civil War regional writers who were depicting the topographies, people, speech patterns, and modes of life of the nation’s distinctive regions as they came under pressure from moderniz- ing forces.

From the late 1870s on, Jewett was part of a circle of prominent writers, artists, and editors who lived in or near Boston. The relationship between Jewett and Annie Adams Fields, the wife of the highly in`uential editor and publisher James T. Fields, was the most impor tant of her many friendships with men and women. Though they had known each other since the late 1870s, it was not until Annie Fields’s husband died in 1881 that they established a bond that was to sustain both women until

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1. First published in book form in A White Heron and Other Stories (1886), the source of the text printed here.

Jewett’s death in 1909. During the winter months, Jewett lived at Fields’s house in Boston and in the spring and summer was often to be found at Fields’s ocean side home a few miles north of Boston in Manchester- by- the- Sea. Jewett maintained her residence in South Berwick, and she and Fields would spend time together there as well. Their relationship, common at the turn of the century among single women who lived and traveled together, was often called a “Boston marriage.” Scholars inter- ested in the nineteenth- century history of same- sex desire have frequently turned both to Jewett’s biography and to her "ction, where deep, emotionally complicated attachments between women "gure prominently.

Jewett reached artistic maturity with the publication of A White Heron and Other Stories in 1886; later collections of sketches and stories include The King of Folly Island (1888), A Native of Winby (1893), and The Life of Nancy (1895). In these works the local landscape, people, and dialect are recorded with understanding and sym- pathy. In “A White Heron,” reprinted here, a young girl’s con`icted loyalties to her conception of herself in nature and to the world of men she will soon encounter are memorably and sensitively drawn. Long- time residents of these small Maine com- munities make up the bulk of Jewett’s "ction, including her most enduring work, The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896). This book is comprised of a series of linked sketches "ltered through the consciousness of a summer visitor, much like the per- son Jewett had become. In this work, bits and pieces of the lives of a small group of men and women are quilted into a uni"ed impression of life in a once- prosperous shipping village. The strong older women who survive in the region form a female community that, for many critics, is a hallmark of New Eng land regionalism. The chapters of the book reproduced here introduce the summer visitor and the com- munity of Dunnet Landing—as well as its history of maritime activity through the "gure of Captain Littlepage. The book was well received, and Jewett would go on to publish four additional stories set in Dunnet Landing. Before her death in 1909, Jewett met the admiring Willa Cather, who would celebrate and edit Jewett’s work in the de cades to come. For Cather, The Country of the Pointed Firs ranked with The Scarlet Letter and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as a landmark of American lit er a ture.

A White Heron1

I

The woods were already "lled with shadows one June eve ning, just before eight o’clock, though a bright sunset still glimmered faintly among the trunks of the trees. A little girl was driving home her cow, a plodding, dilatory, provoking creature in her be hav ior, but a valued companion for all that. They were going away from what ever light there was, and striking deep into the woods, but their feet were familiar with the path, and it was no matter whether their eyes could see it or not.

There was hardly a night the summer through when the old cow could be found waiting at the pasture bars; on the contrary, it was her greatest plea- sure to hide herself away among the high huckleberry bushes, and though she wore a loud bell she had made the discovery that if one stood perfectly still it would not ring. So Sylvia had to hunt for her until she found her, and

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call Co’! Co’! with never an answering Moo, until her childish patience was quite spent. If the creature had not given good milk and plenty of it, the case would have seemed very dif fer ent to her owners. Besides, Sylvia had all the time there was, and very little use to make of it. Sometimes in pleas- ant weather it was a consolation to look upon the cow’s pranks as an intel- ligent attempt to play hide and seek, and as the child had no playmates she lent herself to this amusement with a good deal of zest. Though this chase had been so long that the wary animal herself had given an unusual signal of her whereabouts, Sylvia had only laughed when she came upon Mistress Moolly at the swamp- side, and urged her affectionately homeward with a twig of birch leaves. The old cow was not inclined to wander farther, she even turned in the right direction for once as they left the pasture, and stepped along the road at a good pace. She was quite ready to be milked now, and seldom stopped to browse. Sylvia wondered what her grand mother would say because they were so late. It was a great while since she had left home at half past "ve o’clock, but every body knew the dif"culty of making this errand a short one. Mrs. Tilley had chased the hornéd torment too many summer eve nings herself to blame any one else for lingering, and was only thankful as she waited that she had Sylvia, nowadays, to give such valuable assistance. The good woman suspected that Sylvia loitered occasionally on her own account; there never was such a child for straying about out- of- doors since the world was made! Every body said that it was a good change for a little maid who had tried to grow for eight years in a crowded manufactur- ing town, but, as for Sylvia herself, it seemed as if she never had been alive at all before she came to live at the farm. She thought often with wistful compassion of a wretched geranium that belonged to a town neighbor.

“ ‘Afraid of folks,’ ” old Mrs. Tilley said to herself, with a smile, after she had made the unlikely choice of Sylvia from her daughter’s house ful of children, and was returning to the farm. “ ‘Afraid of folks,’ they said! I guess she won’t be troubled no great with ’em up to the old place!” When they reached the door of the lonely house and stopped to unlock it, and the cat came to purr loudly, and rub against them, a deserted pussy, indeed, but fat with young robins, Sylvia whispered that this was a beautiful place to live in, and she never should wish to go home.

The companions followed the shady woodroad, the cow taking slow steps, and the child very fast ones. The cow stopped long at the brook to drink, as if the pasture were not half a swamp, and Sylvia stood still and waited, let- ting her bare feet cool themselves in the shoal water, while the great twi- light moths struck softly against her. She waded on through the brook as the cow moved away, and listened to the thrushes with a heart that beat fast with plea sure. There was a stirring in the great boughs overhead. They were full of little birds and beasts that seemed to be wide awake, and going about their world, or else saying good- night to each other in sleepy twitters. Sylvia herself felt sleepy as she walked along. However, it was not much farther to the house, and the air was soft and sweet. She was not often in the woods so late as this, and it made her feel as if she were a part of the gray shadows and the moving leaves. She was just thinking how long it seemed since she "rst came to the farm a year ago, and wondering if every thing went on in the noisy town just the same as when she was there; the thought of the great

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red- faced boy who used to chase and frighten her made her hurry along the path to escape from the shadow of the trees.

Suddenly this little woods- girl is horror- stricken to hear a clear whistle not very far away. Not a bird’s whistle, which would have a sort of friendli- ness, but a boy’s whistle, determined, and somewhat aggressive. Sylvia left the cow to what ever sad fate might await her, and stepped discreetly aside into the bushes, but she was just too late. The enemy had discovered her, and called out in a very cheerful and persuasive tone, “Halloa, little girl, how far is it to the road?” and trembling Sylvia answered almost inaudibly, “A good ways.”

She did not dare to look boldly at the tall young man, who carried a gun over his shoulder, but she came out of her bush and again followed the cow, while he walked alongside.

“I have been hunting for some birds,” the stranger said kindly, “and I have lost my way, and need a friend very much. Don’t be afraid,” he added gal- lantly. “Speak up and tell me what your name is, and whether you think I can spend the night at your house, and go out gunning early in the morning.”

Sylvia was more alarmed than before. Would not her grand mother con- sider her much to blame? But who could have foreseen such an accident as this? It did not seem to be her fault, and she hung her head as if the stem of it were broken, but managed to answer “Sylvy,” with much effort when her companion again asked her name.

Mrs. Tilley was standing in the doorway when the trio came into view. The cow gave a loud moo by way of explanation.

“Yes, you’d better speak up for yourself, you old trial! Where’d she tucked herself away this time, Sylvy?” But Sylvia kept an awed silence; she knew by instinct that her grand mother did not comprehend the gravity of the situa- tion. She must be mistaking the stranger for one of the farmer- lads of the region.

The young man stood his gun beside the door, and dropped a lumpy game- bag beside it; then he bade Mrs.  Tilley good- evening, and repeated his wayfarer’s story, and asked if he could have a night’s lodging.

“Put me anywhere you like,” he said. “I must be off early in the morning, before day; but I am very hungry, indeed. You can give me some milk at any rate, that’s plain.”

“Dear sakes, yes,” responded the hostess, whose long slumbering hospi- tality seemed to be easily awakened. “You might fare better if you went out to the main road a mile or so, but you’re welcome to what we’ve got. I’ll milk right off, and you make yourself at home. You can sleep on husks or feath- ers,” she proffered graciously. “I raised them all myself. There’s good pas- turing for geese just below here towards the ma’sh. Now step round and set a plate for the gentleman, Sylvy!” And Sylvia promptly stepped. She was glad to have something to do, and she was hungry herself.

It was a surprise to "nd so clean and comfortable a little dwelling in this New Eng land wilderness. The young man had known the horrors of its most primitive house keeping, and the dreary squalor of that level of society which does not rebel at the companionship of hens. This was the best thrift of an old- fashioned farmstead, though on such a small scale that it seemed like a hermitage. He listened eagerly to the old woman’s quaint talk, he watched Sylvia’s pale face and shining gray eyes with ever growing enthusiasm, and

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2. Hanging around. 3. Several species of herons were endangered

during Jewett’s time because hat- makers sought their dramatic wing feathers.

insisted that this was the best supper he had eaten for a month, and after- ward the new- made friends sat down in the door- way together while the moon came up.

Soon it would be berry- time, and Sylvia was a great help at picking. The cow was a good milker, though a plaguy thing to keep track of, the hostess gossiped frankly, adding presently that she had buried four children, so Sylvia’s mother, and a son (who might be dead) in California were all the children she had left. “Dan, my boy, was a great hand to go gunning,” she explained sadly. “I never wanted for pa’tridges or gray squer’ls while he was to home. He’s been a great wand’rer, I expect, and he’s no hand to write let- ters. There, I don’t blame him, I’d ha’ seen the world myself if it had been so I could.

“Sylvia takes after him,” the grand mother continued affectionately, after a minute’s pause. “ There ain’t a foot o’ ground she don’t know her way over, and the wild creaturs counts her one o’ themselves. Squer’ls she’ll tame to come an’ feed right out o’ her hands, and all sorts o’ birds. Last winter she got the jay- birds to bangeing2 here, and I believe she’d ’a’ scanted herself of her own meals to have plenty to throw out amongst ’em, if I hadn’t kep’ watch. Anything but crows, I tell her, I’m willin’ to help support— though Dan he had a tamed one o’ them that did seem to have reason same as folks. It was round here a good spell after he went away. Dan an’ his father they didn’t hitch,— but he never held up his head ag’in after Dan had dared him an’ gone off.”

The guest did not notice this hint of family sorrows in his eager interest in something else.

“So Sylvy knows all about birds, does she?” he exclaimed, as he looked round at the little girl who sat, very demure but increasingly sleepy, in the moonlight. “I am making a collection of birds myself. I have been at it ever since I was a boy.” (Mrs. Tilley smiled.) “ There are two or three very rare ones I have been hunting for these "ve years. I mean to get them on my own ground if they can be found.”

“Do you cage ’em up?” asked Mrs. Tilley doubtfully, in response to this enthusiastic announcement.

“Oh, no, they’re stuffed and preserved, dozens and dozens of them,” said the ornithologist, “and I have shot or snared every one myself. I caught a glimpse of a white heron three miles from here on Saturday, and I have fol- lowed it in this direction. They have never been found in this district at all.3 The little white heron, it is,” and he turned again to look at Sylvia with the hope of discovering that the rare bird was one of her acquaintances.

But Sylvia was watching a hop- toad in the narrow footpath. “You would know the heron if you saw it,” the stranger continued eagerly.

“A queer tall white bird with soft feathers and long thin legs. And it would have a nest perhaps in the top of a high tree, made of sticks, something like a hawk’s nest.”

Sylvia’s heart gave a wild beat; she knew that strange white bird, and had once stolen softly near where it stood in some bright green swamp grass, away over at the other side of the woods. There was an open place where

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the sunshine always seemed strangely yellow and hot, where tall, nodding rushes grew, and her grand mother had warned her that she might sink in the soft black mud under neath and never be heard of more. Not far beyond were the salt marshes just this side the sea itself, which Sylvia wondered and dreamed about, but never had seen, whose great voice could sometimes be heard above the noise of the woods on stormy nights.

“I can’t think of anything I should like so much as to "nd that heron’s nest,” the handsome stranger was saying. “I would give ten dollars to any- body who could show it to me,” he added desperately, “and I mean to spend my whole vacation hunting for it if need be. Perhaps it was only migrating, or had been chased out of its own region by some bird of prey.”

Mrs. Tilley gave amazed attention to all this, but Sylvia still watched the toad, not divining, as she might have done at some calmer time, that the creature wished to get to its hole under the door- step, and was much hin- dered by the unusual spectators at that hour of the eve ning. No amount of thought, that night, could decide how many wished- for trea sures the ten dollars, so lightly spoken of, would buy.

The next day the young sportsman hovered about the woods, and Sylvia kept him com pany, having lost her "rst fear of the friendly lad, who proved to be most kind and sympathetic. He told her many things about the birds and what they knew and where they lived and what they did with themselves. And he gave her a jack- knife, which she thought as great a trea sure as if she were a desert- islander. All day long he did not once make her troubled or afraid except when he brought down some unsuspecting singing creature from its bough. Sylvia would have liked him vastly better without his gun; she could not understand why he killed the very birds he seemed to like so much. But as the day waned, Sylvia still watched the young man with loving admiration. She had never seen anybody so charming and delightful; the woman’s heart, asleep in the child, was vaguely thrilled by a dream of love. Some premonition of that great power stirred and swayed these young crea- tures who traversed the solemn woodlands with soft- footed silent care. They stopped to listed to a bird’s song; they pressed forward again eagerly, part- ing the branches,— speaking to each other rarely and in whispers; the young man going "rst and Sylvia following, fascinated, a few steps behind, with her gray eyes dark with excitement.

She grieved because the longed- for white heron was elusive, but she did not lead the guest, she only followed, and there was no such thing as speak- ing "rst. The sound of her own unquestioned voice would have terri"ed her,—it was hard enough to answer yes or no when there was need of that. At last eve ning began to fall, and they drove the cow home together, and Sylvia smiled with plea sure when they came to the place where she heard the whistle and was afraid only the night before.

II

Half a mile from home, at the farther edge of the woods, where the land was highest, a great pine- tree stood, the last of its generation. Whether it was left for a boundary mark, or for what reason, no one could say; the wood- choppers who had felled its mates were dead and gone long ago, and a

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whole forest of sturdy trees, pines and oaks and maples, had grown again. But the stately head of this old pine towered above them all and made a land- mark for sea and shore miles and miles away. Sylvia knew it well. She had always believed that whoever climbed to the top of it could see the ocean; and the little girl had often laid her hand on the great rough trunk and looked up wistfully at those dark boughs that the wind always stirred, no matter how hot and still the air might be below. Now she thought of the tree with a new excitement, for why, if one climbed it at break of day, could not one see all the world, and easily discover from whence the white heron `ew, and mark the place, and "nd the hidden nest?

What a spirit of adventure, what wild ambition! What fancied triumph and delight and glory for the later morning when she could make known the secret! It was almost too real and too great for the childish heart to bear.

All night the door of the little house stood open and the whippoorwills came and sang upon the very step. The young sportsman and his old host- ess were sound asleep, but Sylvia’s great design kept her broad awake and watching. She forgot to think of sleep. The short summer night seemed as long as the winter darkness, and at last when the whippoorwills ceased, and she was afraid the morning would after all come too soon, she stole out of the house and followed the pasture path through the woods, hastening toward the open ground beyond, listening with a sense of comfort and com- panionship to the drowsy twitter of a half- awakened bird, whose perch she had jarred in passing. Alas, if the great wave of human interest which `ooded for the "rst time this dull little life should sweep away the satisfactions of an existence heart to heart with nature and the dumb life of the forest!

There was the huge tree asleep yet in the paling moonlight, and small and silly Sylvia began with utmost bravery to mount to the top of it, with tin- gling, eager blood coursing the channels of her whole frame, with her bare feet and "n gers, that pinched and held like bird’s claws to the monstrous ladder reaching up, up, almost to the sky itself. First she must mount the white oak tree that grew alongside, where she was almost lost among the dark branches and the green leaves heavy and wet with dew; a bird `uttered off its nest, and a red squirrel ran to and fro and scolded pettishly at the harmless house breaker. Sylvia felt her way easily. She had often climbed there, and knew that higher still one of the oak’s upper branches chafed against the pine trunk, just where its lower boughs were set close together. There, when she made the dangerous pass from one tree to the other, the great enterprise would really begin.

She crept out along the swaying oak limb at last, and took the daring step across into the old pine- tree. The way was harder than she thought; she must reach far and hold fast, the sharp dry twigs caught and held her and scratched her like angry talons, the pitch made her thin little "n gers clumsy and stiff as she went round and round the tree’s great stem, higher and higher upward. The sparrows and robins in the woods below were beginning to wake and twitter to the dawn, yet it seemed much lighter there aloft in the pine- tree, and the child knew that she must hurry if her proj ect were to be of any use.

The tree seemed to lengthen itself out as she went up, and to reach far- ther and farther upward. It was like a great main- mast to the voyaging earth; it must truly have been amazed that morning through all its ponderous frame as it felt this determined spark of human spirit winding its way from higher

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branch to branch. Who knows how steadily the least twigs held themselves to advantage this light, weak creature on her way! The old pine must have loved his new dependent. More than all the hawks, and bats, and moths, and even the sweet voiced thrushes, was the brave, beating heart of the solitary gray- eyed child. And the tree stood still and frowned away the winds that June morning while the dawn grew bright in the east.

Sylvia’s face was like a pale star, if one had seen it from the ground, when the last thorny bough was past, and she stood trembling and tired but wholly triumphant, high in the tree- top. Yes, there was the sea with the dawning sun making a golden dazzle over it, and toward that glorious east `ew two hawks with slow- moving pinions. How low they looked in the air from that height when one had only seen them before far up, and dark against the blue sky. Their gray feathers were as soft as moths; they seemed only a little way from the tree, and Sylvia felt as if she too could go `ying away among the clouds. Westward, the woodlands and farms reached miles and miles into the distance; here and there were church steeples, and white villages; truly it was a vast and awesome world!

The birds sang louder and louder. At last the sun came up bewilderingly bright. Sylvia could see the white sails of ships out at sea, and the clouds that were purple and rose- colored and yellow at "rst began to fade away. Where was the white heron’s nest in the sea of green branches, and was this wonderful sight and pageant of the world the only reward for having climbed to such a giddy height? Now look down again, Sylvia, where the green marsh is set among the shining birches and dark hemlocks; there where you saw the white heron once you will see him again; look, look! a white spot of him like a single `oating feather comes up from the dead hemlock and grows larger, and rises, and comes close at last, and goes by the landmark pine with steady sweep of wing and outstretched slender neck and crested head. And wait! wait! do not move a foot or a "n ger, little girl, do not send an arrow of light and consciousness from your two eager eyes, for the heron has perched on a pine bough not far beyond yours, and cries back to his mate on the nest, and plumes his feathers for the new day!

The child gives a long sigh a minute later when a com pany of shouting cat- birds comes also to the tree, and vexed by their `uttering and lawless- ness the solemn heron goes away. She knows his secret now, the wild, light, slender bird that `oats and wavers, and goes back like an arrow presently to his home in the green world beneath. Then Sylvia, well satis"ed, makes her perilous way down again, not daring to look far below the branch she stands on, ready to cry sometimes because her "n gers ache and her lamed feet slip. Wondering over and over again what the stranger would say to her, and what he would think when she told him how to "nd his way straight to the her- on’s nest.

“Sylvy, Sylvy!” called the busy old grand mother again and again, but nobody answered, and the small husk bed was empty and Sylvia had dis appeared.

The guest waked from a dream, and remembering his day’s plea sure hur- ried to dress himself that might it sooner begin. He was sure from the way the shy little girl looked once or twice yesterday that she had at least seen the white heron, and now she must really be made to tell. Here she comes now, paler than ever, and her worn old frock is torn and tattered, and smeared

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1. The Country of the Pointed Firs was published "rst in serial form in the Atlantic Monthly in 1896, and then later that year in book form by Houghton Mif`in, the source of this text.

2. Exposed bedrock, common throughout north- ern New Eng land. “Tree- nailed”: joined with wooden pegs.

with pine pitch. The grand mother and the sportsman stand in the door together and question her, and the splendid moment has come to speak of the dead hemlock- tree by the green marsh.

But Sylvia does not speak after all, though the old grand mother fretfully rebukes her, and the young man’s kind, appealing eyes are looking straight in her own. He can make them rich with money; he has promised it, and they are poor now. He is so well worth making happy, and he waits to hear the story she can tell.

No, she must keep silence! What is it that suddenly forbids her and makes her dumb? Has she been nine years growing and now, when the great world for the "rst time puts out a hand to her, must she thrust it aside for a bird’s sake? The murmur of the pine’s green branches is in her ears, she remem- bers how the white heron came `ying through the golden air and how they watched the sea and the morning together, and Sylvia cannot speak; she can- not tell the heron’s secret and give its life away.

Dear loyalty, that suffered a sharp pang as the guest went away disap- pointed later in the day, that could have served and followed him and loved him as a dog loves! Many a night Sylvia heard the echo of his whistle haunt- ing the pasture path as she came home with the loitering cow. She forgot even her sorrow at the sharp report of his gun and the sight of thrushes and sparrows dropping silent to the ground, their songs hushed and their pretty feathers stained and wet with blood. Were the birds better friends than their hunter might have been,— who can tell? What ever trea sures were lost to her, woodlands and summer- time, remember! Bring your gifts and graces and tell your secrets to this lonely country child!

1886

From The Country of the Pointed Firs1

I

the return

There was something about the coast town of Dunnet which made it seem more attractive than other maritime villages of eastern Maine. Perhaps it was the simple fact of acquaintance with that neighborhood which made it so attaching, and gave such interest to the rocky shore and dark woods, and the few houses which seemed to be securely wedged and tree- nailed in among the ledges2 by the Landing. These houses made the most of their seaward view, and there was a gayety and determined `oweriness in their bits of gar- den ground; the small- paned high win dows in the peaks of their steep gables were like knowing eyes that watched the harbor and the far sea- line beyond, or looked northward all along the shore and its background of

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3. Flowering garden plants. 4. Sweet- brier, sweet- mary, balm, sage, borage, mint, wormword, and southernwood are all plants with medicinal properties. The names of

plants and herbs recur frequently throughout the narrative. 5. A stock of drugs.

spruces and balsam "rs. When one really knows a village like this and its surroundings, it is like becoming acquainted with a single person. The pro- cess of falling in love at "rst sight is as "nal as it is swift in such a case, but the growth of true friendship may be a lifelong affair.

After a "rst brief visit made two or three summers before in the course of a yachting cruise, a lover of Dunnet Landing returned to "nd the unchanged shores of the pointed "rs, the same quaintness of the village with its elabo- rate conventionalities; all that mixture of remoteness, and childish certainty of being the centre of civilization of which her affectionate dreams had told. One eve ning in June, a single passenger landed upon the steamboat wharf. The tide was high, there was a "ne crowd of spectators, and the younger portion of the com pany followed her with subdued excitement up the nar- row street of the salt- aired, white- clapboarded little town.

II

mrs. todd

Later, there was only one fault to "nd with this choice of a summer lodging- place, and that was its complete lack of seclusion. At "rst the tiny house of Mrs. Almira Todd, which stood with its end to the street, appeared to be retired and sheltered enough from the busy world, behind its bushy bit of a green garden, in which all the blooming things, two or three gay hollyhocks and some London- pride,3 were pushed back against the gray- shingled wall. It was a queer little garden and puzzling to a stranger, the few `owers being put at a disadvantage by so much greenery; but the discovery was soon made that Mrs. Todd was an ardent lover of herbs, both wild and tame, and the sea- breezes blew into the low end- win dow of the house laden with not only sweet- brier and sweet- mary, but balm and sage and borage and mint, worm- wood and southernwood.4 If Mrs. Todd had occasion to step into the far cor- ner of her herb plot, she trod heavi ly upon thyme, and made its fragrant presence known with all the rest. Being a very large person, her full skirts brushed and bent almost every slender stalk that her feet missed. You could always tell when she was stepping about there, even when you were half awake in the morning, and learned to know, in the course of a few weeks’ experience, in exactly which corner of the garden she might be.

At one side of this herb plot were other growths of a rustic pharmacopœia,5 great trea sures and rarities among the commoner herbs. There were some strange and pungent odors that roused a dim sense and remembrance of something in the forgotten past. Some of these might once have belonged to sacred and mystic rites, and have had some occult knowledge handed with them down the centuries; but now they pertained only to humble compounds brewed at intervals with molasses or vinegar or spirits in a small caldron on Mrs. Todd’s kitchen stove. They were dispensed to suffering neighbors, who usually came at night as if by stealth, bringing their own ancient- looking vials to be "lled. One nostrum was called the Indian remedy, and its price

6. Tackle for catching wrasse, a small "sh common along the shore of Maine.

was but "fteen cents; the whispered directions could be heard as customers passed the win dows. With most remedies the purchaser was allowed to depart unadmonished from the kitchen, Mrs. Todd being a wise saver of steps; but with certain vials she gave cautions, standing in the doorway, and there were other doses which had to be accompanied on their healing way as far as the gate, while she muttered long chapters of directions, and kept up an air of secrecy and importance to the last. It may not have been only the common ails of humanity with which she tried to cope; it seemed sometimes as if love and hate and jealousy and adverse winds at sea might also "nd their proper reme- dies among the curious wild- looking plants in Mrs. Todd’s garden.

The village doctor and this learned herbalist were upon the best of terms. The good man may have counted upon the unfavorable effect of certain potions which he should "nd his opportunity in counteracting; at any rate, he now and then stopped and exchanged greetings with Mrs. Todd over the picket fence. The conversation became at once professional after the brief- est preliminaries, and he would stand twirling a sweet- scented sprig in his "n gers, and make suggestive jokes, perhaps about her faith in a too per sis- tent course of thoroughwort elixir, in which my landlady professed such "rm belief as sometimes to endanger the life and usefulness of worthy neighbors.

To arrive at this quiet est of seaside villages late in June, when the busy herb- gathering season was just beginning, was also to arrive in the early prime of Mrs. Todd’s activity in the brewing of old- fashioned spruce beer. This cool- ing and refreshing drink had been brought to wonderful perfection through a long series of experiments; it had won im mense local fame, and the supplies for its manufacture were always giving out and having to be replenished. For vari ous reasons, the seclusion and uninterrupted days which had been looked forward to proved to be very rare in this other wise delightful corner of the world. My hostess and I had made our shrewd business agreement on the basis of a simple cold luncheon at noon, and liberal restitution in the matter of hot suppers, to provide for which the lodger might sometimes be seen hurry- ing down the road, late in the day, with cunner line6 in hand. It was soon found that this arrangement made large allowance for Mrs. Todd’s slow herb- gathering progresses through woods and pastures. The spruce- beer customers were pretty steady in hot weather, and there were many demands for dif fer ent soothing syrups and elixirs with which the unwise curiosity of my early resi- dence had made me acquainted. Knowing Mrs. Todd to be a widow, who had little beside this slender business and the income from one hungry lodger to maintain her, one’s energies and even interest were quickly bestowed, until it became a matter of course that she should go a"eld every pleasant day, and that the lodger should answer all peremptory knocks at the side door.

In taking an occasional wisdom- giving stroll in Mrs. Todd’s com pany, and in acting as business partner during her frequent absences, I found the July days `y fast, and it was not until I felt myself confronted with too great pride and plea sure in the display, one night, of two dollars and twenty- seven cents which I had taken in during the day, that I remembered a long piece of writ- ing, sadly belated now, which I was bound to do. To have been patted kindly on the shoulder and called “darlin’,” to have been offered a surprise of early mushrooms for supper, to have had all the glory of making two dollars and

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7. A prophetess.

twenty- seven cents in a single day, and then to renounce it all and withdraw from these pleasant successes, needed much resolution. Literary employ- ments are so vexed with uncertainties at best, and it was not until the voice of conscience sounded louder in my ears than the sea on the nearest peb- ble beach that I said unkind words of withdrawal to Mrs. Todd. She only became more wistfully affectionate than ever in her expressions, and looked as disappointed as I expected when I frankly told her that I could no longer enjoy the plea sure of what we called “seein’ folks.” I felt that I was cruel to a whole neighborhood in curtailing her liberty in this most impor tant season for harvesting the dif fer ent wild herbs that were so much counted upon to ease their winter ails.

“Well, dear,” she said sorrowfully, “I’ve took great advantage o’ your bein’ here. I ain’t had such a season for years, but I have never had nobody I could so trust. All you lack is a few qualities, but with time you’d gain judgment an’ expe- rience, an’ be very able in the business. I’d stand right here an’ say it to anybody.”

Mrs.  Todd and I were not separated or estranged by the change in our business relations; on the contrary, a deeper intimacy seemed to begin. I do not know what herb of the night it was that used sometimes to send out a penetrating odor late in the eve ning, after the dew had fallen, and the moon was high, and the cool air came up from the sea. Then Mrs. Todd would feel that she must talk to somebody, and I was only too glad to listen. We both fell under the spell, and she either stood outside the win dow, or made an errand to my sitting- room, and told, it might be very commonplace news of the day, or, as happened one misty summer night, all that lay deepest in her heart. It was in this way that I came to know that she had loved one who was far above her.

“No, dear, him I speak of could never think of me,” she said. “When we was young together his mother didn’t favor the match, an’ done every thing she could to part us; and folks thought we both married well, but ’t wa’n’t what either one of us wanted most; an’ now we’re left alone again, an’ might have had each other all the time. He was above bein’ a seafarin’ man, an’ prospered more than most; he come of a high family, an’ my lot was plain an’ hardworkin’. I ain’t seen him for some years; he’s forgot our youthful fee- lin’s, I expect, but a woman’s heart is dif fer ent; them feelin’s comes back when you think you’ve done with ’em, as sure as spring comes with the year. An’ I’ve always had ways of hearin’ about him.”

She stood in the centre of a braided rug, and its rings of black and gray seemed to circle about her feet in the dim light. Her height and massiveness in the low room gave her the look of a huge sibyl,7 while the strange fra- grance of the mysterious herb blew in from the little garden.

III

the school house

For some days after this, Mrs. Todd’s customers came and went past my win- dows, and, haying- time being nearly over, strangers began to arrive from

8. Any wasting illness, usually tuberculosis. 9. Hyssop, a medicinal herb taken particularly

for colds or coughs. 1. A book of thick paper used for blotting ink.

the inland country, such was her widespread reputation. Sometimes I saw a pale young creature like a white wind`ower left over into midsummer, upon whose face consumption8 had set its bright and wistful mark; but oftener two stout, hard- worked women from the farms came together, and detailed their symptoms to Mrs. Todd in loud and cheerful voices, combining the sat- isfactions of a friendly gossip with the medical opportunity. They seemed to give much from their own store of therapeutic learning. I became aware of the school in which my landlady had strengthened her natu ral gift; but hers was always the governing mind, and the "nal command, “Take of hy’sop9 one handful” (or what ever herb it was), was received in respectful silence. One after noon, when I had listened,—it was impossible not to listen, with cottonless ears,— and then laughed and listened again, with an idle pen in my hand, during a particularly spirited and personal conversation, I reached for my hat, and, taking blotting- book1 and all under my arm, I resolutely `ed further temptation, and walked out past the fragrant green garden and up the dusty road. The way went straight uphill, and presently I stopped and turned to look back.

The tide was in, the wide harbor was surrounded by its dark woods, and the small wooden houses stood as near as they could get to the landing. Mrs. Todd’s was the last house on the way inland. The gray ledges of the rocky shore were well covered with sod in most places, and the pasture bay- berry and wild roses grew thick among them. I could see the higher inland country and the scattered farms. On the brink of the hill stood a little white school house, much wind- blown and weather- beaten, which was a landmark to seagoing folk; from its door there was a most beautiful view of sea and shore. The summer vacation now prevailed, and after "nding the door unfas- tened, and taking a long look through one of the seaward win dows, and re`ecting afterward for some time in a shady place near by among the bay- berry bushes, I returned to the chief place of business in the village, and, to the amusement of two of the selectmen, brothers and autocrats of Dunnet Landing, I hired the school house for the rest of the vacation for "fty cents a week.

Sel"sh as it may appear, the retired situation seemed to possess great advantages, and I spent many days there quite undisturbed, with the sea- breeze blowing through the small, high win dows and swaying the heavy out- side shutters to and fro. I hung my hat and luncheon- basket on an entry nail as if I were a small scholar, but I sat at the teacher’s desk as if I were that great authority, with all the timid empty benches in rows before me. Now and then an idle sheep came and stood for a long time looking in at the door. At sundown I went back, feeling most businesslike, down toward the village again, and usually met the `avor, not of the herb garden, but of Mrs. Todd’s hot supper, halfway up the hill. On the nights when there were eve ning meetings or other public exercises that demanded her presence we had tea very early, and I was welcomed back as if from a long absence.

Once or twice I feigned excuses for staying at home, while Mrs. Todd made distant excursions, and came home late, with both hands full and a heavi ly laden apron. This was in pennyroyal time, and when the rare lobelia was in

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2. Pennyroyal, lobelia, and elecampane are all medicinal herbs. 3. Another medicinal herb; the name comes from the ancient Greek word for “immortality.” 4 Nautical term for the side sheltered from the wind.

5. Another term for a plant that can be used for medicinal purposes. A simple remedy is effective by itself, as distinct from a compound, which requires several ingredients. 6. Flowering plant with medicinal properties.

its prime and the elecampane was coming on.2 One day she appeared at the school house itself, partly out of amused curiosity about my industries; but she explained that there was no tansy3 in the neighborhood with such snap to it as some that grew about the school house lot. Being scuffed down all the spring made it grow so much the better, like some folks that had it hard in their youth, and were bound to make the most of themselves before they died.

IV

at the school house win dow

One day I reached the school house very late, owing to attendance upon the funeral of an acquaintance and neighbor, with whose sad decline in health I had been familiar, and whose last days both the doctor and Mrs. Todd had tried in vain to ease. The ser vices had taken place at one o’clock, and now, at quarter past two, I stood at the school house win dow, looking down at the pro cession as it went along the lower road close to the shore. It was a walking funeral, and even at that distance I could recognize most of the mourners as they went their solemn way. Mrs. Begg had been very much respected, and there was a large com pany of friends following to her grave. She had been brought up on one of the neighboring farms, and each of the few times that I had seen her she pro- fessed great dissatisfaction with town life. The people lived too close together for her liking, at the Landing, and she could not get used to the constant sound of the sea. She had lived to lament three seafaring husbands, and her house was decorated with West Indian curiosities, specimens of conch shells and "ne coral which they had brought home from their voyages in lumber- laden ships. Mrs. Todd had told me all our neighbor’s history. They had been girls together, and, to use her own phrase, had “both seen trou ble till they knew the best and worst on ’t.” I could see the sorrowful, large "gure of Mrs. Todd as I stood at the win dow. She made a break in the pro cession by walking slowly and keeping the after- part of it back. She held a handkerchief to her eyes, and I knew, with a pang of sympathy, that hers was not affected grief.

Beside her, after much dif"culty, I recognized the one strange and unre- lated person in all the com pany, an old man who had always been mysteri- ous to me. I could see his thin, bending "gure. He wore a narrow, long- tailed coat and walked with a stick, and had the same “cant to leeward4” as the wind- bent trees on the height above.

This was Captain Littlepage, whom I had seen only once or twice before, sitting pale and old behind a closed win dow; never out of doors until now. Mrs. Todd always shook her head gravely when I asked a question, and said that he wasn’t what he had been once, and seemed to class him with her other secrets. He might have belonged with a simple5 which grew in a cer- tain slug- haunted corner of the garden, whose use she could never be betrayed into telling me, though I saw her cutting the tops by moonlight once, as if it were a charm, and not a medicine, like the great fading bloodroot6 leaves.

7. Aromatic, medicinal herb also known as bee balm.

I could see that she was trying to keep pace with the old captain’s lighter steps. He looked like an aged grasshopper of some strange human variety. Behind this pair was a short, impatient, little person, who kept the captain’s house, and gave it what Mrs. Todd and others believed to be no proper sort of care. She was usually called “that Mari’ Harris” in subdued conversation between intimates, but they treated her with anxious civility when they met her face to face.

The bay- sheltered islands and the great sea beyond stretched away to the far horizon southward and eastward; the little pro cession in the foreground looked futile and helpless on the edge of the rocky shore. It was a glorious day early in July, with a clear, high sky; there were no clouds, there was no noise of the sea. The song sparrows sang and sang, as if with joyous knowl- edge of immortality, and contempt for those who could so pettily concern themselves with death. I stood watching until the funeral pro cession had crept round a shoulder of the slope below and dis appeared from the great landscape as if it had gone into a cave.

An hour later I was busy at my work. Now and then a bee blundered in and took me for an enemy; but there was a useful stick upon the teacher’s desk, and I rapped to call the bees to order as if they were unruly scholars, or waved them away from their riots over the ink, which I had bought at the Landing store, and discovered too late to be scented with bergamot,7 as if to refresh the labors of anxious scribes. One anxious scribe felt very dull that day; a sheep- bell tinkled near by, and called her wandering wits after it. The sentences failed to catch these lovely summer cadences. For the "rst time I began to wish for a companion and for news from the outer world, which had been, half unconsciously, forgotten. Watching the funeral gave one a sort of pain. I began to won der if I ought not to have walked with the rest, instead of hurrying away at the end of the ser vices. Perhaps the Sunday gown I had put on for the occa- sion was making this disastrous change of feeling, but I had now made myself and my friends remember that I did not really belong to Dunnet Landing.

I sighed, and turned to the half- written page again.

V

captain littlepage

It was a long time after this; an hour was very long in that coast town where nothing stole away the shortest minute. I had lost myself completely in work, when I heard footsteps outside. There was a steep footpath between the upper and the lower road, which I climbed to shorten the way, as the children had taught me, but I believed that Mrs. Todd would "nd it inaccessible, unless she had occasion to seek me in great haste. I wrote on, feeling like a besieged miser of time, while the footsteps came nearer, and the sheep- bell tinkled away in haste as if some one had shaken a stick in its wearer’s face. Then I looked, and saw Captain Littlepage passing the nearest win dow; the next moment he tapped politely at the door.

“Come in, sir,” I said, rising to meet him; and he entered, bowing with much courtesy. I stepped down from the desk and offered him a chair by

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8. As Captain Littlepage explains, the quotation is from book 4 of John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667); the line occurs in the description of Eden. 9. Frances, Countess of Carberry, died in 1650; the Anglican bishop Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667) delivered a sermon reporting that, because Fran- ces believed she had achieved salvation, she wel- comed death, and so died “without the vio lence

of sickness . . . as if she had done it voluntarily and by design.” 1. Jewett misquotes from a letter reprinted in The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, pub- lished by Darwin’s son, Francis, in 1887. The original sentence states that “captains of men- of- war are the greatest men going, far greater than kings or schoolmasters.”

the win dow, where he seated himself at once, being sadly spent by his climb. I returned to my "xed seat behind the teacher’s desk, which gave him the lower place of a scholar.

“You ought to have the place of honor, Captain Littlepage,” I said.

“A happy, rural seat of vari ous views,”8

he quoted, as he gazed out into the sunshine and up the long wooded shore. Then he glanced at me, and looked all about him as pleased as a child.

“My quotation was from Paradise Lost: the greatest of poems, I suppose you know?” and I nodded. “ There’s nothing that ranks, to my mind, with Paradise Lost; it’s all lofty, all lofty,” he continued. “Shakespeare was a great poet; he copied life, but you have to put up with a great deal of low talk.”

I now remembered that Mrs. Todd had told me one day that Captain Lit- tlepage had overset his mind with too much reading; she had also made dark reference to his having “spells” of some unexplainable nature. I could not help wondering what errand had brought him out in search of me. There was something quite charming in his appearance: it was a face thin and deli- cate with re"nement, but worn into appealing lines, as if he had suffered from loneliness and misapprehension. He looked, with his careful precision of dress, as if he were the object of cherishing care on the part of el derly unmarried sisters, but I knew Mari’ Harris to be a very commonplace, inel- egant person, who would have no such standards; it was plain that the cap- tain was his own attentive valet. He sat looking at me expectantly. I could not help thinking that, with his queer head and length of thinness, he was made to hop along the road of life rather than to walk. The captain was very grave indeed, and I bade my inward spirit keep close to discretion.

“Poor Mrs. Begg has gone,” I ventured to say. I still wore my Sunday gown by way of showing re spect.

“She has gone,” said the captain,— “very easy at the last, I was informed; she slipped away as if she were glad of the opportunity.”

I thought of the Countess of Carberry,9 and felt that history repeated itself. “She was one of the old stock,” continued Captain Littlepage, with touching

sincerity. “She was very much looked up to in this town, and will be missed.” I wondered, as I looked at him, if he had sprung from a line of ministers;

he had the re"nement of look and air of command which are the heritage of the old ecclesiastical families of New Eng land. But as Darwin says in his autobiography, “ there is no such king as a sea- captain; he is greater even than a king or a schoolmaster!”1

Captain Littlepage moved his chair out of the wake of the sunshine, and still sat looking at me. I began to be very eager to know upon what errand he had come.

2. Commander of a ship. 3. On the west shore of Hudson Bay, in Mani- toba, Canada. 4. Lagging behind, late; the phrase refers to the

“lighter,” a slow- moving ship used for moving cargo. 5. Moving quickly.

“It may be found out some o’ these days,” he said earnestly. “We may know it all, the next step; where Mrs.  Begg is now, for instance. Certainty, not conjecture, is what we all desire.”

“I suppose we shall know it all some day,” said I. “We shall know it while yet below,” insisted the captain, with a `ush of

impatience on his thin cheeks. “We have not looked for truth in the right direction. I know what I speak of; those who have laughed at me little know how much reason my ideas are based upon.” He waved his hand toward the village below. “In that handful of houses they fancy that they comprehend the universe.”

I smiled, and waited for him to go on. “I am an old man, as you can see,” he continued, “and I have been a ship-

master2 the greater part of my life,— forty- three years in all. You may not think it, but I am above eighty years of age.”

He did not look so old, and I hastened to say so. “You must have left the sea a good many years ago, then, Captain Little-

page?” I said. “I should have been ser viceable at least "ve or six years more,” he answered.

“My acquaintance with certain—my experience upon a certain occasion, I might say, gave rise to prejudice. I do not mind telling you that I chanced to learn of one of the greatest discoveries that man has ever made.”

Now we were approaching dangerous ground, but a sudden sense of his sufferings at the hands of the ignorant came to my help, and I asked to hear more with all the deference I really felt. A swallow `ew into the school house at this moment as if a kingbird were after it, and beat itself against the walls for a minute, and escaped again to the open air; but Captain Littlepage took no notice what ever of the `urry.

“I had a valuable cargo of general merchandise from the London docks to Fort Churchill,3 a station of the old com pany on Hudson’s Bay,” said the cap- tain earnestly. “We were delayed in lading, and baf`ed by head winds and a heavy tumbling sea all the way north- about and across. Then the fog kept us off the coast; and when I made port at last, it was too late to delay in those northern waters with such a vessel and such a crew as I had. They cared for nothing, and idled me into a "t of sickness; but my "rst mate was a good, excellent man, with no more idea of being frozen in there until spring than I had, so we made what speed we could to get clear of Hudson’s Bay and off the coast. I owned an eighth of the vessel, and he owned a sixteenth of her. She was a full- rigged ship, called the Minerva, but she was getting old and leaky. I meant it should be my last v’y’ge in her, and so it proved. She had been an excellent vessel in her day. Of the cowards aboard her I can’t say so much.”

“Then you were wrecked?” I asked, as he made a long pause. “I wa’n’t caught astern o’ the lighter4 by any fault of mine,” said the cap-

tain gloomily. “We left Fort Churchill and run out into the Bay with a light pair o’ heels5; but I had been vexed to death with their red- tape rigging at the com pany’s of"ce, and chilled with stayin’ on deck an’ tryin’ to hurry up

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6. The local, coastal manner of speaking. 7. Always remain common sailors, living in the forecastle (the forward part of the ship), and

never become ship of"cers (whose quarters were in the stern).

things, and when we were well out o’ sight o’ land, headin’ for Hudson’s Straits, I had a bad turn o’ some sort o’ fever, and had to stay below. The days were getting short, and we made good runs, all well on board but me, and the crew done their work by dint of hard driving.”

I began to "nd this unexpected narrative a little dull. Captain Littlepage spoke with a kind of slow correctness that lacked the longshore high `avor6 to which I had grown used; but I listened respectfully while he explained the winds having become contrary, and talked on in a dreary sort of way about his voyage, the bad weather, and the disadvantages he was under in the lightness of his ship, which bounced about like a chip in a bucket, and would not answer the rudder or properly respond to the most careful setting of sails.

“So there we were blowin’ along anyways,” he complained; but looking at me at this moment, and seeing that my thoughts were unkindly wandering, he ceased to speak.

“It was a hard life at sea in those days, I am sure,” said I, with redoubled interest.

“It was a dog’s life,” said the poor old gentleman, quite reassured, “but it made men of those who followed it. I see a change for the worse even in our own town here; full of loafers now, small and poor as ’t is, who once would have followed the sea, every lazy soul of ’em. There is no occupation so "t for just that class o’ men who never get beyond the fo’cas’le.7 I view it, in addition, that a community narrows down and grows dreadful ignorant when it is shut up to its own affairs, and gets no knowledge of the outside world except from a cheap, unprincipled newspaper. In the old days, a good part o’ the best men here knew a hundred ports and something of the way folks lived in them. They saw the world for themselves, and like’s not their wives and children saw it with them. They may not have had the best of knowl- edge to carry with ’em sight- seein’, but they were some acquainted with for- eign lands an’ their laws, an’ could see outside the battle for town clerk here in Dunnet; they got some sense o’ proportion. Yes, they lived more digni- "ed, and their houses were better within an’ without. Shipping’s a terrible loss to this part o’ New Eng land from a social point o’ view, ma’am.”

“I have thought of that myself,” I returned, with my interest quite awak- ened. “It accounts for the change in a great many things,— the sad disap- pearance of sea- captains,— doesn’t it?”

“A shipmaster was apt to get the habit of reading,” said my companion, brightening still more, and taking on a most touching air of unreserve. “A captain is not expected to be familiar with his crew, and for com pany’s sake in dull days and nights he turns to his book. Most of us old shipmasters came to know ’most every thing about something; one would take to readin’ on farming topics, and some were great on medicine,— but Lord help their poor crews!—or some were all for history, and now and then there’d be one like me that gave his time to the poets. I was well acquainted with a shipmaster that was all for bees an’ bee- keepin’; and if you met him in port and went aboard, he’d sit and talk a terrible while about their havin’ so much infor- mation, and the money that could be made out of keepin’ ’em. He was one

8. The "rst holy temple in ancient Jerusalem, destroyed in 586 b.c.e. 9. A reference to Arctic explorer William Edward Parry (1790–1855).

1. Protestant denomination that established mis- sions in Inuit (or Eskimo) lands beginning in the eigh teenth century.

of the smartest captains that ever sailed the seas, but they used to call the Newcastle, a great bark he commanded for many years, Tuttle’s beehive. There was old Cap’n Jameson: he had notions of Solomon’s Temple,8 and made a very handsome little model of the same, right from the Scripture mea sure ments, same’s other sailors make little ships and design new tricks of rigging and all that. No, there’s nothing to take the place of shipping in a place like ours. These bicycles offend me dreadfully; they don’t afford no real opportunities of experience such as a man gained on a voyage. No: when folks left home in the old days they left it to some purpose, and when they got home they stayed there and had some pride in it. There’s no large- minded way of thinking now: the worst have got to be best and rule every thing; we’re all turned upside down and going back year by year.”

“Oh no, Captain Littlepage, I hope not,” said I, trying to soothe his feelings.

There was a silence in the school house, but we could hear the noise of the water on a beach below. It sounded like the strange warning wave that gives notice of the turn of the tide. A late golden robin, with the most joyful and eager of voices, was singing close by in a thicket of wild roses.

VI

the waiting place

“How did you manage with the rest of that rough voyage on the Minerva?” I asked.

“I shall be glad to explain to you,” said Captain Littlepage, forgetting his grievances for the moment. “If I had a map at hand I could explain better. We were driven to and fro ’way up toward what we used to call Parry’s Dis- coveries,9 and lost our bearings. It was thick and foggy, and at last I lost my ship; she drove on a rock, and we managed to get ashore on what I took to be a barren island, the few of us that were left alive. When she "rst struck, the sea was somewhat calmer than it had been, and most of the crew, against orders, manned the long- boat and put off in a hurry, and were never heard of more. Our own boat upset, but the carpenter kept himself and me above water, and we drifted in. I had no strength to call upon after my recent fever, and laid down to die; but he found the tracks of a man and dog the second day, and got along the shore to one of those far missionary stations that the Moravians1 support. They were very poor themselves, and in distress; ’t was a useless place. There were but few Esquimaux left in that region. There we remained for some time, and I became acquainted with strange events.”

The captain lifted his head and gave me a questioning glance. I could not help noticing that the dulled look in his eyes had gone, and there was instead a clear intentness that made them seem dark and piercing.

“ There was a supply ship expected, and the pastor, an excellent Christian man, made no doubt that we should get passage in her. He was hoping that orders would come to break up the station; but every thing was uncertain,

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2. The Bible states in three places (Deuteronomy 8:3, Matthew 4:4, and Luke 4:4) that “Man shall not live by bread alone.”

and we got on the best we could for a while. We "shed, and helped the people in other ways; there was no other way of paying our debts. I was taken to the pastor’s house until I got better; but they were crowded, and I felt myself in the way, and made excuse to join with an old seaman, a Scotchman, who had built him a warm cabin, and had room in it for another. He was looked upon with regard, and had stood by the pastor in some trou bles with the people. He had been on one of those En glish exploring parties that found one end of the road to the north pole, but never could "nd the other. We lived like dogs in a kennel, on so you’d thought if you had seen the hut from the outside; but the main thing was to keep warm; there were piles of bird- skins to lie on, and he’d made him a good bunk, and there was another for me. ’T was dreadful dreary waitin’ there; we begun to think the supply steamer was lost, and my poor ship broke up and strewed herself all along the shore. We got to watching on the headlands; my men and me knew the people were short of supplies and had to pinch themselves. It ought to read in the Bible, ‘Man cannot live by "sh alone,’ if they’d told the truth of things; ’t ain’t bread that wears the worst on you!2 First part of the time, old Gaf- fett, that I lived with, seemed speechless, and I didn’t know what to make of him, nor he of me, I dare say; but as we got acquainted, I found he’d been through more disasters than I had, and bad trou bles that wa’n’t going to let him live a great while. It used to ease his mind to talk to an understanding person, so we used to sit and talk together all day, if it rained or blew so that we couldn’t get out. I’d got a bad blow on the back of my head at the time we came ashore, and it pained me at times, and my strength was broken, anyway; I’ve never been so able since.”

Captain Littlepage fell into a reverie. “Then I had the good of my reading,” he explained presently. “I had no

books; the pastor spoke but little En glish, and all his books were foreign; but I used to say over all I could remember. The old poets little knew what comfort they could be to a man. I was well acquainted with the works of Milton, but up there it did seem to me as if Shakespeare was the king; he has his sea terms very accurate, and some beautiful passages were calming to the mind. I could say them over until I shed tears; there was nothing beau- tiful to me in that place but the stars above and those passages of verse.

“Gaffett was always brooding and brooding, and talking to himself; he was afraid he should never get away, and it preyed upon his mind. He thought when I got home I could interest the scienti"c men in his discovery: but they’re all taken up with their own notions; some didn’t even take pains to answer the letters I wrote. You observe that I said this crippled man Gaffett had been shipped on a voyage of discovery. I now tell you that the ship was lost on its return, and only Gaffett and two of"cers were saved off the Green- land coast, and he had knowledge later that those men never got back to Eng land; the brig they shipped on was run down in the night. So no other living soul had the facts, and he gave them to me. There is a strange sort of a country ’way up north beyond the ice, and strange folks living in it. Gaf- fett believed it was the next world to this.”

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3. I.e., Foxe Channel, which runs north from Hudson Bay and connects to Foxe Basin.

“What do you mean, Captain Littlepage?” I exclaimed. The old man was bending forward and whispering; he looked over this shoulder before he spoke the last sentence.

“To hear old Gaffett tell about it was something awful,” he said, going on with his story quite steadily after the moment of excitement had passed. “ ’T was "rst a tale of dogs and sledges, and cold and wind and snow. Then they begun to "nd the ice grow rotten; they had been frozen in, and got into a current `owing north, far up beyond Fox Channel,3 and they took to their boats when the ship got crushed, and this warm current took them out of sight of the ice, and into a great open sea; and they still followed it due north, just the very way they had planned to go. Then they struck a coast that wasn’t laid down or charted, but the cliffs were such that no boat could land until they found a bay and struck across under sail to the other side where the shore looked lower; they were scant of provisions and out of water, but they got sight of something that looked like a great town. ‘For God’s sake, Gaffett!’ said I, the "rst time he told me. ‘You don’t mean a town two degrees farther north than ships had ever been?’ for he’d got their course marked on an old chart that he’d pieced out at the top; but he insisted upon it, and told it over and over again, to be sure I had it straight to carry to those who would be interested. There was no snow and ice, he said, after they had sailed some days with that warm current, which seemed to come right from under the ice that they’d been pinched up in and had been crossing on foot for weeks.”