by MARK TWAIN

CHAPTER I“You told a LIE?”

“You confess it–you actually confess it–you told a lie!”

CHAPTER II

The family consisted of four persons: Margaret Lester, widow, aged thirty six; Helen Lester, her daughter, aged sixteen; Mrs. Lester’s maiden aunts, Hannah and Hester Gray, twins, aged sixty-seven. Waking and sleeping, the three women spent their days and night in adoring the young girl; in watching the movements of her sweet spirit in the mirror of her face; in refreshing their souls with the vision of her bloom and beauty; in listening to the music of her voice; in gratefully recognizing how rich and fair for them was the world with this presence in it; in shuddering to think how desolate it would be with this light gone out of it.

By nature–and inside–the aged aunts were utterly dear and lovable and good, but in the matter of morals and conduct their training had been so uncompromisingly strict that it had made them exteriorly austere, not to say stern. Their influence was effective in the house; so effective that the mother and the daughter conformed to its moral and religious requirements cheerfully, contentedly, happily, unquestionably. To do this was become second nature to them. And so in this peaceful heaven there were no clashings, no irritations, no fault-finding, no heart-burnings.

In it a lie had no place. In it a lie was unthinkable. In it speech was restricted to absolute truth, iron-bound truth, implacable and uncompromising truth, let the resulting consequences be what they might. At last, one day, under stress of circumstances, the darling of the house sullied her lips with a lie–and confessed it, with tears and self-upbraidings. There are not any words that can paint the consternation of the aunts. It was as if the sky had crumpled up and collapsed and the earth had tumbled to ruin with a crash. They sat side by side, white and stern, gazing speechless upon the culprit, who was on her knees before them with her face buried first in one lap and then the other, moaning and sobbing, and appealing for sympathy and forgiveness and getting no response, humbly kissing the hand of the one, then of the other, only to see it withdrawn as suffering defilement by those soiled lips.

Twice, at intervals, Aunt Hester said, in frozen amazement: “You told a LIE?”

Twice, at intervals, Aunt Hannah followed with the muttered and amazed ejaculation:

“You confess it–you actually confess it–you told a lie!”

It was all they could say. The situation was new, unheard of, incredible; they could not understand it, they did not know how to take hold of it, it approximately paralyzed speech.

At length it was decided that the erring child must be taken to her mother, who was ill, and who ought to know what had happened. Helen begged, besought, implored that she might be spared this further disgrace, and that her mother might be spared the grief and pain of it; but this could not be: duty required this sacrifice, duty takes precedence of all things, nothing can absolve one from a duty, with a duty no compromise is possible.

Helen still begged, and said the sin was her own, her mother had had no hand in it–why must she be made to suffer for it?

But the aunts were obdurate in their righteousness, and said the law that visited the sins of the parent upon the child was by all right and reason reversible; and therefore it was but just that the innocent mother of a sinning child should suffer her rightful share of the grief and pain and shame which were the allotted wages of the sin.

The three moved toward the sick-room.

At this time the doctor was approaching the house. He was still a good distance away, however. He was a good doctor and a good man, and he had a good heart, but one had to know him a year to get over hating him, two years to learn to endure him, three to learn to like him, and four and five to learn to live him. It was a slow and trying education, but it paid. He was of great stature; he had a leonine head, a leonine face, a rough voice, and an eye which was sometimes a pirate’s and sometimes a woman’s, according to the mood. He knew nothing about etiquette, and cared nothing about it; in speech, manner, carriage, and conduct he was the reverse of conventional. He was frank, to the limit; he had opinions on all subjects; they were always on tap and ready for delivery, and he cared not a farthing whether his listener liked them or didn’t. Whom he loved he loved, and manifested it; whom he didn’t live he hated, and published it from the housetops. In his young days he had! been a sailor, and the salt-airs of all the seas blew from him yet. He was a sturdy and loyal Christian, and believed he was the best one in the land, and the only one whose Christianity was perfectly sound, healthy, full-charged with common sense, and had no decayed places in it. People who had an ax to grind, or people who for any reason wanted wanted to get on the soft side of him, called him The Christian–a phrase whose delicate flattery was music to his ears, and whose capital T was such an enchanting and vivid object to him that he could SEE it when it fell out of a person’s mouth even in the dark. Many who were fond of him stood on their consciences with both feet and brazenly called him by that large title habitually, because it was a pleasure to them to do anything that would please him; and with eager and cordial malice his extensive and diligently cultivated crop of enemies gilded it, beflowered it, expanded it to “The ONLY Christian.” Of these two titles, the! latter had the wider currency; the enemy, being greatly in the majority, attended to that. Whatever the doctor believed, he believed with all his heart, and would fight for it whenever he got the chance; and if the intervals between chances grew to be irksomely wide, he would invent ways of shortening them himself. He was severely conscientious, according to his rather independent lights, and whatever he took to be a duty he performed, no matter whether the judgment of the professional moralists agreed with his own or not. At sea, in his young days, he had used profanity freely, but as soon as he was converted he made a rule, which he rigidly stuck to ever afterward, never to use it except on the rarest occasions, and then only when duty commanded. He had been a hard drinker at sea, but after his conversion he became a firm and outspoken teetotaler, in order to be an example to the young, and from that time forth he seldom drank; never, indeed, except when it seemed to hi! m to be a duty–a condition which sometimes occurred a couple of times a year, but never as many as five times.

Necessarily, such a man is impressionable, impulsive, emotional. This one was, and had no gift at hiding his feelings; or if he had it he took no trouble to exercise it. He carried his soul’s prevailing weather in his face, and when he entered a room the parasols or the umbrellas went up–figuratively speaking–according to the indications. When the soft light was in his eye it meant approval, and delivered a benediction; when he came with a frown he lowered the temperature ten degrees. He was a well-beloved man in the house of his friends, but sometimes a dreaded one.

He had a deep affection for the Lester household and its several members returned this feeling with interest. They mourned over his kind of Christianity, and he frankly scoffed at theirs; but both parties went on loving each other just the same.

He was approaching the house–out of the distance; the aunts and the culprit were moving toward the sick-chamber.CHAPTER III

The three last named stood by the bed; the aunts austere, the transgressor softly sobbing. The mother turned her head on the pillow; her tired eyes flamed up instantly with sympathy and passionate mother-love when they fell upon her child, and she opened the refuge and shelter of her arms.

“Wait!” said Aunt Hannah, and put out her hand and stayed the girl from leaping into them.

“Helen,” said the other aunt, impressively, “tell your mother all. Purge your soul; leave nothing unconfessed.”

Standing stricken and forlorn before her judges, the young girl mourned her sorrowful tale through the end, then in a passion of appeal cried out:

“Oh, mother, can’t you forgive me? won’t you forgive me?–I am so desolate!”

“Forgive you, my darling? Oh, come to my arms!–there, lay your head upon my breast, and be at peace. If you had told a thousand lies–”

There was a sound–a warning–the clearing of a throat. The aunts glanced up, and withered in their clothes–there stood the doctor, his face a thunder-cloud. Mother and child knew nothing of his presence; they lay locked together, heart to heart, steeped in immeasurable content, dead to all things else. The physician stood many moments glaring and glooming upon the scene before him; studying it, analyzing it, searching out its genesis; then he put up his hand and beckoned to the aunts. They came trembling to him, and stood humbly before him and waited. He bent down and whispered:

“Didn’t I tell you this patient must be protected from all excitement? What the hell have you been doing? Clear out of the place?”

They obeyed. Half an hour later he appeared in the parlor, serene, cheery, clothed in sunshine, conducting Helen, with his arm about her waist, petting her, and saying gentle and playful things to her; and she also was her sunny and happy self again.

“Now, then;” he said, “good-by, dear. Go to your room, and keep away from your mother, and behave yourself. But wait–put out your tongue. There, that will do–you’re as sound as a nut!” He patted her cheek and added, “Run along now; I want to talk to these aunts.”

She went from the presence. His face clouded over again at once; and as he sat down he said:

“You too have been doing a lot of damage–and maybe some good. Some good, yes–such as it is. That woman’s disease is typhoid! You’ve brought it to a show-up, I think, with your insanities, and that’s a service–such as it is. I hadn’t been able to determine what it was before.”

With one impulse the old ladies sprang to their feet, quaking with terror.

“Sit down! What are you proposing to do?”

“Do? We must fly to her. We–”

“You’ll do nothing of the kind; you’ve done enough harm for one day. Do you want to squander all your capital of crimes and follies on a single deal? Sit down, I tell you. I have arranged for her to sleep; she needs it; if you disturb her without my orders, I’ll brain you–if you’ve got the materials for it.

They sat down, distressed and indignant, but obedient, under compulsion. He proceeded:

“Now, then, I want this case explained. THEY wanted to explain it to me–as if there hadn’t been emotion or excitement enough already. You knew my orders; how did you dare to go in there and get up that riot?”

Hester looked appealing at Hannah; Hannah returned a beseeching look at Hester–neither wanted to dance to this unsympathetic orchestra. The doctor came to their help. He said:

“Begin, Hester.”

Fingering at the fringes of her shawl, and with lowered eyes, Hester said, timidly:

“We should not have disobeyed for any ordinary cause, but this was vital. This was a duty. With a duty one has no choice; one must put all lighter considerations aside and perform it. We were obliged to arraign her before her mother. She had told a lie.”

The doctor glowered upon the woman a moment, and seemed to be trying to work up in his mind an understand of a wholly incomprehensible proposition; then he stormed out:

“She told a lie! DID she? God bless my soul! I tell a million a day! And so does every doctor. And so does everybody–including you– for that matter. And THAT was the important thing that authorized you to venture to disobey my orders and imperil that woman’s life! Look here, Hester Gray, this is pure lunacy; that girl COULDN’T tell a lie that was intended to injure a person. The thing is impossible–absolutely impossible. You know it yourselves–both of you; you know it perfectly well.”

Hannah came to her sister’s rescue:

“Hester didn’t mean that it was that kind of a lie, and it wasn’t. But it was a lie.”

“Well, upon my word, I never heard such nonsense! Haven’t you got sense enough to discriminate between lies! Don’t you know the difference between a lie that helps and a lie that hurts?”

“ALL lies are sinful,” said Hannah, setting her lips together like a vise; “all lies are forbidden.”

The Only Christian fidgeted impatiently in his chair. He wentto attack this proposition, but he did not quite know how or where to begin. Finally he made a venture:

“Hester, wouldn’t you tell a lie to shield a person from an undeserved injury or shame?”

“No.”

“Not even a friend?”

“No.”

“Not even your dearest friend?”

“No. I would not.”

The doctor struggled in silence awhile with this situation; then he asked:

“Not even to save him from bitter pain and misery and grief?”

“No. Not even to save his life.”

Another pause. Then:

“Nor his soul?”

There was a hush–a silence which endured a measurable interval–then Hester answered, in a low voice, but with decision:

“Nor his soul?”

No one spoke for a while; then the doctor said:

“Is it with you the same, Hannah?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“I ask you both–why?”

“Because to tell such a lie, or any lie, is a sin, and could cost us the loss of our own souls–WOULD, indeed, if we died without time to repent.”

“Strange . . . strange . . . it is past belief.” Then he asked, roughly: “Is such a soul as that WORTH saving?” He rose up, mumbling and grumbling, and started for the door, stumping vigorously along. At the threshold he turned and rasped out an admonition: “Reform! Drop this mean and sordid and selfish devotion to the saving of your shabby little souls, and hunt up something to do that’s got some dignity to it! RISK your souls! risk them in good causes; then if you lose them, why should you care? Reform!”

The good old gentlewomen sat paralyzed, pulverized, outraged, insulted, and brooded in bitterness and indignation over these blasphemies. They were hurt to the heart, poor old ladies, and said they could never forgive these injuries.

“Reform!”

They kept repeating that word resentfully. “Reform–and learn to tell lies!”

Time slipped along, and in due course a change came over their spirits. They had completed the human being’s first duty–which is to think about himself until he has exhausted the subject, then he is in a condition to take up minor interests and think of other people. This changes the complexion of his spirits–generally wholesomely. The minds of the two old ladies reverted to their beloved niece and the fearful disease which had smitten her; instantly they forgot the hurts their self-love had received, and a passionate desire rose in their hearts to go to the help of the sufferer and comfort her with their love, and minister to her, and labor for her the best they could with their weak hands, and joyfully and affectionately wear out their poor old bodies in her dear service if only they might have the privilege.

“And we shall have it!” said Hester, with the tears running down her face. “There are no nurses comparable to us, for there are no others that will stand their watch by that bed till they drop and die, and God knows we would do that.”

“Amen,” said Hannah, smiling approval and endorsement through the mist of moisture that blurred her glasses. “The doctor knows us, and knows we will not disobey again; and he will call no others. He will not dare!”

“Dare?” said Hester, with temper, and dashing the water from her eyes; “he will dare anything–that Christian devil! But it will do no good for him to try it this time–but, laws! Hannah! after all’s said and done, he is gifted and wise and good, and he would not think of such a thing. . . . It is surely time for one of us to go to that room. What is keeping him? Why doesn’t he come and say so?”

They caught the sound of his approaching step. He entered, sat down, and began to talk.

Margaret is a sick woman,” he said. “She is still sleeping, but she will wake presently; then one of you must go to her. She will be worse before she is better. Pretty soon a night-and-day watch must be set. How much of it can you two undertake?”

“All of it!” burst from both ladies at once.

The doctor’s eyes flashed, and he said, with energy:

“You DO ring true, you brave old relics! And you SHALL do all of the nursing you can, for there’s none to match you in that divine office in this town; but you can’t do all of it, and it would be a crime to let you.” It was grand praise, golden praise, coming from such a source, and it took nearly all the resentment out of the aged twin’s hearts. “Your Tilly and my old Nancy shall do the rest–good nurses both, white souls with black skins, watchful, loving, tender–just perfect nurses!–and competent liars from the cradle. . . . Look you! keep a little watch on Helen; she is sick, and is going to be sicker.”

The ladies looked a little surprised, and not credulous; and Hester said:

“How is that? It isn’t an hour since you said she was as sound as a nut.”

The doctor answered, tranquilly:

“It was a lie.”

The ladies turned upon him indignantly, and Hannah said:

“How can you make an odious confession like that, in so indifferent a tone, when you know how we feel about all forms of–”

“Hush! You are as ignorant as cats, both of you, and you don’t know what you are talking about. You are like all the rest of the moral moles; you lie from morning till night, but because you don’t do it with your mouths, but only with your lying eyes, your lying inflections, your deceptively misplaced emphasis, and your misleading gestures, you turn up your complacent noses and parade before God and the world as saintly and unsmirched Truth-Speakers, in whose cold-storage souls a lie would freeze to death if it got there! Why will you humbug yourselves with that foolish notion that no lie is a lie except a spoken one? What is the difference between lying with your eyes and lying with your mouth? There is none; and if you would reflect a moment you would see that it is so. There isn’t a human being that doesn’t tell a gross of lies every day of his life; and you–why, between you, you tell thirty thousand; yet you flare up here in a lurid hypocritical horror because I tel! l that child a benevolent and sinless lie to protect her from her imagination, which would get to work and warm up her blood to a fever in an hour, if I were disloyal enough to my duty to let it. Which I should probably do if I were interested in saving my soul by such disreputable means.

“Come, let us reason together. Let us examine details. When you two were in the sick-room raising that riot, what would you have done if you had known I was coming?”

“Well, what?”

“You would have slipped out and carried Helen with you–wouldn’t you?”

The ladies were silent.

“What would be your object and intention?”

“Well, what?”

“To keep me from finding out your guilt; to beguile me to infer that Margaret’s excitement proceeded from some cause not known to you. In a word, to tell me a lie–a silent lie. Moreover, a possibly harmful one.”

The twins colored, but did not speak.

“You not only tell myriads of silent lies, but you tell lies with your mouths–you two.”

“THAT is not so!”

“It is so. But only harmless ones. You never dream of uttering a harmful one. Do you know that that is a concession–and a confession?”

“How do you mean?”

“It is an unconscious concession that harmless lies are not criminal; it is a confession that you constantly MAKE that discrimination. For instance, you declined old Mrs. Foster’s invitation last week to meet those odious Higbies at supper–in a polite note in which you expressed regret and said you were very sorry you could not go. It was a lie. It was as unmitigated a lie as was ever uttered. Deny it, Hester–with another lie.”

Hester replied with a toss of her head.

“That will not do. Answer. Was it a lie, or wasn’t it?”

The color stole into the cheeks of both women, and with a struggle and an effort they got out their confession:

“It was a lie.”

“Good–the reform is beginning; there is hope for you yet; you will not tell a lie to save your dearest friend’s soul, but you will spew out one without a scruple to save yourself the discomfort of telling an unpleasant truth.”

He rose. Hester, speaking for both, said; coldly:

“We have lied; we perceive it; it will occur no more. To lie is a sin. We shall never tell another one of any kind whatsoever, even lies of courtesy or benevolence, to save any one a pang or a sorrow decreed for him by God.”

“Ah, how soon you will fall! In fact, you have fallen already; for what you have just uttered is a lie. Good-by. Reform! One of you go to the sick-room now.”CHAPTER IV

Twelve days later.

Mother and child were lingering in the grip of the hideous disease. Of hope for either there was little. The aged sisters looked white and worn, but they would not give up their posts. Their hearts were breaking, poor old things, but their grit was steadfast and indestructible. All the twelve days the mother had pined for the child, and the child for the mother, but both knew that the prayer of these longings could not be granted. When the mother was told–on the first day–that her disease was typhoid, she was frightened, and asked if there was danger that Helen could have contracted it the day before, when she was in the sick-chamber on that confession visit. Hester told her the doctor had poo-pooed the idea. It troubled Hester to say it, although it was true, for she had not believed the doctor; but when she saw the mother’s joy in the news, the pain in her conscience lost something of its force–a result which made her ashamed of the constructive deception which she! had practiced, though not ashamed enough to make her distinctly and definitely wish she had refrained from it. From that moment the sick woman understood that her daughter must remain away, and she said she would reconcile herself to the separation the best she could, for she would rather suffer death than have her child’s health imperiled. That afternoon Helen had to take to her bed, ill. She grew worse during the night. In the morning her mother asked after her:

“Is she well?”

Hester turned cold; she opened her lips, but the words refused to come. The mother lay languidly looking, musing, waiting; suddenly she turned white and gasped out:

“Oh, my God! what is it? is she sick?”

Then the poor aunt’s tortured heart rose in rebellion, and words came:

“No–be comforted; she is well.”

The sick woman put all her happy heart in her gratitude:

“Thank God for those dear words! Kiss me. How I worship you for saying them!”

Hester told this incident to Hannah, who received it with a rebuking look, and said, coldly:

“Sister, it was a lie.”

Hester’s lips trembled piteously; she choked down a sob, and said:

“Oh, Hannah, it was a sin, but I could not help it. I could not endure the fright and the misery that were in her face.”

“No matter. It was a lie. God will hold you to account for it.”

“Oh, I know it, I know it,” cried Hester, wringing her hands, “but even if it were now, I could not help it. I know I should do it again.”

“Then take my place with Helen in the morning. I will make the report myself.”

Hester clung to her sister, begging and imploring.

“Don’t, Hannah, oh, don’t–you will kill her.”

“I will at least speak the truth.”

In the morning she had a cruel report to bear to the mother, and she braced herself for the trial. When she returned from her mission, Hester was waiting, pale and trembling, in the hall. She whispered:

“Oh, how did she take it–that poor, desolate mother?”

Hannah’s eyes were swimming in tears. She said:

“God forgive me, I told her the child was well!”

Hester gathered her to her heart, with a grateful “God bless you, Hannah!” and poured out her thankfulness in an inundation of worshiping praises.

After that, the two knew the limit of their strength, and accepted their fate. They surrendered humbly, and abandoned themselves to the hard requirements of the situation. Daily they told the morning lie, and confessed their sin in prayer; not asking forgiveness, as not being worthy of it, but only wishing to make record that they realized their wickedness and were not desiring to hide it or excuse it.

Daily, as the fair young idol of the house sank lower and lower, the sorrowful old aunts painted her glowing bloom and her fresh young beauty to the wan mother, and winced under the stabs her ecstasies of joy and gratitude gave them.

In the first days, while the child had strength to hold a pencil, she wrote fond little love-notes to her mother, in which she concealed her illness; and these the mother read and reread through happy eyes wet with thankful tears, and kissed them over and over again, and treasured them as precious things under her pillow.

Then came a day when the strength was gone from the hand, and the mind wandered, and the tongue babbled pathetic incoherences. This was a sore dilemma for the poor aunts. There were no love-notes for the mother. They did not know what to do. Hester began a carefully studied and plausible explanation, but lost the track of it and grew confused; suspicion began to show in the mother’s face, then alarm. Hester saw it, recognized the imminence of the danger, and descended to the emergency, pulling herself resolutely together and plucking victor from the open jaws of defeat. In a placid and convincing voice she said:

“I thought it might distress you to know it, but Helen spent the night at the Sloanes’. There was a little party there, and, although she did not want to go, and you so sick, we persuaded her, she being young and needing the innocent pastimes of youth, and we believing you would approve. Be sure she will write the moment she comes.”

“How good you are, and how dear and thoughtful for us both! Approve? Why, I thank you with all my heart. My poor little exile! Tell her I want her to have every pleasure she can–I would not rob her of one. Only let her keep her health, that is all I ask. Don’t let that suffer; I could not bear it. How thankful I am that she escaped this infection–and what a narrow risk she ran, Aunt Hester! Think of that lovely face all dulled and burned with fever. I can’t bear the thought of it. Keep her health. Keep her bloom! I can see her now, the dainty creature–with the big, blue, earnest eyes; and sweet, oh, so sweet and gentle and winning! Is she as beautiful as ever, dear Aunt Hester?”

“Oh, more beautiful and bright and charming than ever she was before, if such a thing can be”–and Hester turned away and fumbled with the medicine-bottles, to hide her shame and grief.CHAPTER V

After a little, both aunts were laboring upon a difficult and baffling work in Helen’s chamber. Patiently and earnestly, with their stiff old fingers, they were trying to forge the required note. They made failure after failure, but they improved little by little all the time. The pity of it all, the pathetic humor of it, there was none to see; they themselves were unconscious of it. Often their tears fell upon the notes and spoiled them; sometimes a single misformed word made a note risky which could have been ventured but for that; but at last Hannah produced one whose script was a good enough imitation of Helen’s to pass any but a suspicious eye, and bountifully enriched it with the petting phrases and loving nicknames that had been familiar on the child’s lips from her nursery days. She carried it to the mother, who took it with avidity, and kissed it, and fondled it, reading its precious words over and over again, and dwelling with deep contentment upon its closing paragraph:

“Mousie darling, if I could only see you, and kiss your eyes, and feel your arms about me! I am so glad my practicing does not disturb you. Get well soon. Everybody is good to me, but I am so lonesome without you, dear mamma.”

“The poor child, I know just how she feels. She cannot be quite happy without me; and I–oh, I live in the light of her eyes! Tell her she must practice all she pleases; and, Aunt Hannah– tell her I can’t hear the piano this far, nor hear dear voice when she sings: God knows I wish I could. No one knows how sweet that voice is to me; and to think–some day it will be silent! What are you crying for?

“Only because–because–it was just a memory. When I came away she was singing, ‘Loch Lomond.’ The pathos of it! It always moves me so when she sings that.”

“And me, too. How heartbreakingly beautiful it is when some youthful sorrow is brooding in her breast and she sings it for the mystic healing it brings. . . . Aunt Hannah?”

“Dear Margaret?”

“I am very ill. Sometimes it comes over me that I shall never hear that dear voice again.”

“Oh, don’t–don’t, Margaret! I can’t bear it!”

Margaret was moved and distressed, and said, gently:

“There–there–let me put my arms around you. Don’t cry. There–put your cheek to mine. Be comforted. I wish to live. I will live if I can. Ah, what could she do without me! . . . Does she often speak of me?–but I know she does.”

“Oh, all the time–all the time!”

“My sweet child! She wrote the note the moment she came home?”

“Yes–the first moment. She would not wait to take off her things.”

“I knew it. It is her dear, impulsive, affectionate way. I knew it without asking, but I wanted to hear you say it. The petted wife knows she is loved, but she makes her husband tell her so every day, just for the joy of hearing it. . . . She used the pen this time. That is better; the pencil-marks could rub out, and I should grieve for that. Did you suggest that she use the pen?”

“Y–no–she–it was her own idea.

The mother looked her pleasure, and said:

“I was hoping you would say that. There was never such a dear and thoughtful child! . . . Aunt Hannah?”

“Dear Margaret?”

“Go and tell her I think of her all the time, and worship her. Why–you are crying again. Don’t be so worried about me, dear; I think there is nothing to fear, yet.”

The grieving messenger carried her message, and piously delivered it to unheeding ears. The girl babbled on unaware; looking up at her with wondering and startled eyes flaming with fever, eyes in which was no light of recognition:

“Are you–no, you are not my mother. I want her–oh, I want her! She was here a minute ago–I did not see her go. Will she come? will she come quickly? will she come now? . . . There are so many houses . . . and they oppress me so . . . and everything whirls and turns and whirls . . . oh, my head, my head!”–and so she wandered on and on, in her pain, flitting from one torturing fancy to another,and tossing her arms about in a weary and ceaseless persecution of unrest.

Poor old Hannah wetted the parched lips and softly stroked the hot brow, murmuring endearing and pitying words, and thanking the Father of all that the mother was happy and did not know.CHAPTER VI

Daily the child sank lower and steadily lower towards the grave, and daily the sorrowing old watchers carried gilded tidings of her radiant health and loveliness to the happy mother, whose pilgrimage was also now nearing its end. And daily they forged loving and cheery notes in the child’s hand, and stood by with remorseful consciences and bleeding hearts, and wept to see the grateful mother devour them and adore them and treasure them away as things beyond price, because of their sweet source, and sacred because her child’s hand had touched them.

At last came that kindly friend who brings healing and peace to all. The lights were burning low. In the solemn hush which precedes the dawn vague figures flitted soundless along the dim hall and gathered silent and awed in Helen’s chamber, and grouped themselves about her bed, for a warning had gone forth, and they knew. The dying girl lay with closed lids, and unconscious, the drapery upon her breast faintly rising and falling as her wasting life ebbed away. At intervals a sigh or a muffled sob broke upon the stillness. The same haunting thought was in all minds there: the pity of this death, the going out into the great darkness, and the mother not here to help and hearten and bless.

Helen stirred; her hands began to grope wistfully about as if they sought something–she had been blind some hours. The end was come; all knew it. With a great sob Hester gathered her to her breast, crying, “Oh, my child, my darling!” A rapturous light broke in the dying girl’s face, for it was mercifully vouchsafed her to mistake those sheltering arms for another’s; and she went to her rest murmuring, “Oh, mamma, I am so happy–I longed for you–now I can die.”

Two hours later Hester made her report. The mother asked:

“How is it with the child?”

“She is well.”CHAPTER VII

A sheaf of white crape and black was hung upon the door of the house, and there it swayed and rustled in the wind and whispered its tidings. At noon the preparation of the dead was finished, and in the coffin lay the fair young form, beautiful, and in the sweet face a great peace. Two mourners sat by it, grieving and worshipping–Hannah and the black woman Tilly. Hester came, and she was trembling, for a great trouble was upon her spirit. She said:

“She asks for a note.”

Hannah’s face blanched. She had not thought of this; it had seemed that that pathetic service was ended. But she realized now that that could not be. For a little while the two women stood looking into each other’s face, with vacant eyes; then Hannah said:

“There is no way out of it–she must have it; she will suspect, else.”

“And she would find out.”

“Yes. It would break her heart.” She looked at the dead face, and her eyes filled. “I will write it,” she said.

Hester carried it. The closing line said:

“Darling Mousie, dear sweet mother, we shall soon be together again. Is not that good news? And it is true; they all say it is true.”

The mother mourned, saying:

“Poor child, how will she bear it when she knows? I shall never see her again in life. It is hard, so hard. She does not suspect? You guard her from that?”

“She thinks you will soon be well.”

“How good you are, and careful, dear Aunt Hester! None goes near her who could carry the infection?”

“It would be a crime.”

“But you SEE her?”

“With a distance between–yes.”

“That is so good. Others one could not trust; but you two guardian angels–steel is not so true as you. Others would be unfaithful; and many would deceive, and lie.”

Hester’s eyes fell, and her poor old lips trembled.

“Let me kiss you for her, Aunt Hester; and when I am gone, and the danger is past, place the kiss upon her dear lips some day, and say her mother sent it, and all her mother’s broken heart is in it.”

Within the hour, Hester, raining tears upon the dead face, performed her pathetic mission.CHAPTER VIII

Another day dawned, and grew, and spread its sunshine in the earth. Aunt Hannah brought comforting news to the failing mother, and a happy note, which said again, “We have but a little time to wait, darling mother, then se shall be together.”

The deep note of a bell came moaning down the wind.

“Aunt Hannah, it is tolling. Some poor soul is at rest. As I shall be soon. You will not let her forget me?”

“Oh, God knows she never will!”

“Do not you hear strange noises, Aunt Hannah? It sounds like the shuffling of many feet.”

“We hoped you would not hear it, dear. It is a little company gathering, for–for Helen’s sake, poor little prisoner. There will be music–and she loves it so. We thought you would not mind.”

“Mind? Oh no, no–oh, give her everything her dear heart can desire. How good you two are to her, and how good to me! God bless you both always!”

After a listening pause:

“How lovely! It is her organ. Is she playing it herself, do you think?” Faint and rich and inspiring the chords floating to her ears on the still air. “Yes, it is her touch, dear heart, I recognize it. They are singing. Why–it is a hymn! and the sacredest of all, the most touching, the most consoling. . . . It seems to open the gates of paradise to me. . . . If I could die now. . . .”

Faint and far the words rose out of the stillness:

Nearer, my God, to Thee,

Nearer to Thee,

E’en though it be a cross

That raiseth me.

With the closing of the hymn another soul passed to its rest, and they that had been one in life were not sundered in death. The sisters, mourning and rejoicing, said:

“How blessed it was that she never knew!”CHAPTER IX

At midnight they sat together, grieving, and the angel of the Lord appeared in the midst transfigured with a radiance not of earth; and speaking, said:

“For liars a place is appointed. There they burn in the fires of hell from everlasting unto everlasting. Repent!”

The bereaved fell upon their knees before him and clasped their hands and bowed their gray heads, adoring. But their tongues clove to the roof of their mouths, and they were dumb.

“Speak! that I may bear the message to the chancery of heaven and bring again the decree from which there is no appeal.”

Then they bowed their heads yet lower, and one said:

“Our sin is great, and we suffer shame; but only perfect and final repentance can make us whole; and we are poor creatures who have learned our human weakness, and we know that if we were in those hard straits again our hearts would fail again, and we should sin as before. The strong could prevail, and so be saved, but we are lost.”

They lifted their heads in supplication. The angel was gone. While they marveled and wept he came again; and bending low, he whispered the decree.CHAPTER X

Was it Heaven? Or Hell?

by Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Word Count: 2623

I found that a person of large intelligence could read this beautiful language with considerable facility without a dictionary, but I presently found that to such a parson a grammar could be of use at times. It is because, if he does not know the were’s and the was’s and the maybe’s and the has-beens’s apart, confusions and uncertainties can arise. He can get the idea that a thing is going to happen next week when the truth is that it has already happened week before last. Even more previously, sometimes. Examination and inquiry showed me that the adjectives and such things were frank and fair-minded and straightforward, and did not shuffle; it was the Verb that mixed the hands, it was the Verb that lacked stability, it was the Verb that had no permanent opinion about anything, it was the Verb that was always dodging the issue and putting out the light and making all the trouble.

Further examination, further inquiry, further reflection, confirmed this judgment, and established beyond peradventure the fact that the Verb was the storm-center. This discovery made plain the right and wise course to pursue in order to acquire certainty and exactness in understanding the statements which the newspaper was daily endeavoring to convey to me: I must catch a Verb and tame it. I must find out its ways, I must spot its eccentricities, I must penetrate its disguises, I must intelligently foresee and forecast at least the commoner of the dodges it was likely to try upon a stranger in given circumstances, I must get in on its main shifts and head them off, I must learn its game and play the limit.

I had noticed, in other foreign languages, that verbs are bred in families, and that the members of each family have certain features or resemblances that are common to that family and distinguish it from the other families–the other kin, the cousins and what not. I had noticed that this family-mark is not usually the nose or the hair, so to speak, but the tail–the Termination–and that these tails are quite definitely differentiated; insomuch that an expert can tell a Pluperfect from a Subjunctive by its tail as easily and as certainly as a cowboy can tell a cow from a horse by the like process, the result of observation and culture. I should explain that I am speaking of legitimate verbs, those verbs which in the slang of the grammar are called Regular. There are other–I am not meaning to conceal this; others called Irregulars, born out of wedlock, of unknown and uninteresting parentage, and naturally destitute of family resemblances, as regards to all features, tails included. But of these pathetic outcasts I have nothing to say. I do not approve of them, I do not encourage them; I am prudishly delicate and sensitive, and I do not allow them to be used in my presence.

But, as I have said, I decided to catch one of the others and break it into harness. One is enough. Once familiar with its assortment of tails, you are immune; after that, no regular verb can conceal its specialty from you and make you think it is working the past or the future or the conditional or the unconditional when it is engaged in some other line of business–its tail will give it away. I found out all these things by myself, without a teacher.

I selected the verb amare, to love. Not for any personal reason, for I am indifferent about verbs; I care no more for one verb than for another, and have little or no respect for any of them; but in foreign languages you always begin with that one. Why, I don’t know. It is merely habit, I suppose; the first teacher chose it, Adam was satisfied, and there hasn’t been a successor since with originality enough to start a fresh one. For they are a pretty limited lot, you will admit that? Originality is not in their line; they can’t think up anything new, anything to freshen up the old moss-grown dullness of the language lesson and put life and “go” into it, and charm and grace and picturesqueness.

I knew I must look after those details myself; therefore I thought them out and wrote them down, and set for the facchino and explained them to him, and said he must arrange a proper plant, and get together a good stock company among the contadini, and design the costumes, and distribute the parts; and drill the troupe, and be ready in three days to begin on this Verb in a shipshape and workman-like manner. I told him to put each grand division of it under a foreman, and each subdivision under a subordinate of the rank of sergeant or corporal or something like that, and to have a different uniform for each squad, so that I could tell a Pluperfect from a Compound Future without looking at the book; the whole battery to be under his own special and particular command, with the rank of Brigadier, and I to pay the freight.

I then inquired into the character and possibilities of the selected verb, and was much disturbed to find that it was over my size, it being chambered for fifty-seven rounds–fifty-seven ways of saying I love without reloading; and yet none of them likely to convince a girl that was laying for a title, or a title that was laying for rocks.

It seemed to me that with my inexperience it would be foolish to go into action with this mitrailleuse, so I ordered it to the rear and told the facchino to provide something a little more primitive to start with, something less elaborate, some gentle old-fashioned flint-lock, smooth-bore, double-barreled thing, calculated to cripple at two hundred yards and kill at forty–an arrangement suitable for a beginner who could be satisfied with moderate results on the offstart and did not wish to take the whole territory in the first campaign.

But in vain. He was not able to mend the matter, all the verbs being of the same build, all Gatlings, all of the same caliber and delivery, fifty-seven to the volley, and fatal at a mile and a half. But he said the auxiliary verb avere, to have, was a tidy thing, and easy to handle in a seaway, and less likely to miss stays in going about than some of the others; so, upon his recommendation I chose that one, and told him to take it along and scrape its bottom and break out its spinnaker and get it ready for business.

I will explain that a facchino is a general-utility domestic. Mine was a horse-doctor in his better days, and a very good one.

At the end of three days the facchino-doctor-brigadier was ready. I was also ready, with a stenographer. We were in a room called the Rope-Walk. This is a formidably long room, as is indicated by its facetious name, and is a good place for reviews. At 9:30 the F.-D.-B. took his place near me and gave the word of command; the drums began to rumble and thunder, the head of the forces appeared at an upper door, and the “march-past” was on. Down they filed, a blaze of variegated color, each squad gaudy in a uniform of its own and bearing a banner inscribed with its verbal rank and quality: first the Present Tense in Mediterranean blue and old gold, then the Past Definite in scarlet and black, then the Imperfect in green and yellow, then the Indicative Future in the stars and stripes, then the Old Red Sandstone Subjunctive in purple and silver– and so on and so on, fifty-seven privates and twenty commissioned and non-commissioned officers; certainly one of the most fiery and dazzling and eloquent sights I have ever beheld. I could not keep back the tears. Presently:

“Halt!” commanded the Brigadier.

“Front–face!”

“Right dress!”

“Stand at ease!”

“One–two–three. In unison–recite!”

It was fine. In one noble volume of sound of all the fifty-seven Haves in the Italian language burst forth in an exalting and splendid confusion. Then came commands:

“About–face! Eyes–front! Helm alee–hard aport! Forward–march!” and the drums let go again.

When the last Termination had disappeared, the commander said the instruction drill would now begin, and asked for suggestions. I said:

“They say I have, thou hast, he has, and so on, but they don’t say what. It will be better, and more definite, if they have something to have; just an object, you know, a something–anything will do; anything that will give the listener a sort of personal as well as grammatical interest in their joys and complaints, you see.”

He said:

“It is a good point. Would a dog do?”

I said I did not know, but we could try a dog and see. So he sent out an aide-de-camp to give the order to add the dog.

The six privates of the Present Tense now filed in, in charge of Sergeant Avere (to have), and displaying their banner. They formed in line of battle, and recited, one at a time, thus:

“Io ho un cane, I have a dog.”

“Tu hai un cane, thou hast a dog.”

“Egli ha un cane, he has a dog.”

“Noi abbiamo un cane, we have a dog.”

“Voi avete un cane, you have a dog.”

“Eglino hanno un cane, they have a dog.”

No comment followed. They returned to camp, and I reflected a while. The commander said:

“I fear you are disappointed.”

“Yes,” I said; “they are too monotonous, too singsong, to dead-and-alive; they have no expression, no elocution. It isn’t natural; it could never happen in real life. A person who had just acquired a dog is either blame’ glad or blame’ sorry. He is not on the fence. I never saw a case. What the nation do you suppose is the matter with these people?”

He thought maybe the trouble was with the dog. He said:

“These are contadini, you know, and they have a prejudice against dogs– that is, against marimane. Marimana dogs stand guard over people’s vines and olives, you know, and are very savage, and thereby a grief and an inconvenience to persons who want other people’s things at night. In my judgment they have taken this dog for a marimana, and have soured on him.”

I saw that the dog was a mistake, and not functionable: we must try something else; something, if possible, that could evoke sentiment, interest, feeling.

“What is cat, in Italian?” I asked.

“Gatto.”

“Is it a gentleman cat, or a lady?”

“Gentleman cat.”

“How are these people as regards that animal?”

“We-ll, they–they–”

“You hesitate: that is enough. How are they about chickens?”

He tilted his eyes toward heaven in mute ecstasy. I understood.

“What is chicken, in Italian?” I asked.

“Pollo, Podere.” (Podere is Italian for master. It is a title of courtesy, and conveys reverence and admiration.) “Pollo is one chicken by itself; when there are enough present to constitute a plural, it is polli.”

“Very well, polli will do. Which squad is detailed for duty next?”

“The Past Definite.”

“Send out and order it to the front–with chickens. And let them understand that we don’t want any more of this cold indifference.”

He gave the order to an aide, adding, with a haunting tenderness in his tone and a watering mouth in his aspect:

“Convey to them the conception that these are unprotected chickens.” He turned to me, saluting with his hand to his temple, and explained, “It will inflame their interest in the poultry, sire.”

A few minutes elapsed. Then the squad marched in and formed up, their faces glowing with enthusiasm, and the file-leader shouted:

“Ebbi polli, I had chickens!”

“Good!” I said. “Go on, the next.”

“Avest polli, thou hadst chickens!”

“Fine! Next!”

“Ebbe polli, he had chickens!”

“Moltimoltissimo! Go on, the next!”

“Avemmo polli, we had chickens!”

“Basta-basta aspettatto avanti–last man–charge!”

“Ebbero polli, they had chickens!”

Then they formed in echelon, by columns of fours, refused the left, and retired in great style on the double-quick. I was enchanted, and said:

“Now, doctor, that is something like! Chickens are the ticket, there is no doubt about it. What is the next squad?”

“The Imperfect.”

“How does it go?”

“Io avena, I had, tu avevi, thou hadst, egli avena, he had, noi av–”

Wait–we’ve just had the hads. what are you giving me?”

“But this is another breed.”

“What do we want of another breed? Isn’t one breed enough? Had is had, and your tricking it out in a fresh way of spelling isn’t going to make it any hadder than it was before; now you know that yourself.”

“But there is a distinction–they are not just the same Hads.”

“How do you make it out?”

“Well, you use that first Had when you are referring to something that happened at a named and sharp and perfectly definite moment; you use the other when the thing happened at a vaguely defined time and in a more prolonged and indefinitely continuous way.”

‘Why, doctor, it is pure nonsense; you know it yourself. Look here: If I have had a had, or have wanted to have had a had, or was in a position right then and there to have had a had that hadn’t had any chance to go out hadding on account of this foolish discrimination which lets one Had go hadding in any kind of indefinite grammatical weather but restricts the other one to definite and datable meteoric convulsions, and keeps it pining around and watching the barometer all the time, and liable to get sick through confinement and lack of exercise, and all that sort of thing, why–why, the inhumanity of it is enough, let alone the wanton superfluity and uselessness of any such a loafing consumptive hospital-bird of a Had taking up room and cumbering the place for nothing. These finical refinements revolt me; it is not right, it is not honorable; it is constructive nepotism to keep in office a Had that is so delicate it can’t come out when the wind’s in the nor’west–I won’t have this dude on the payroll. Cancel his exequator; and look here–”

“But you miss the point. It is like this. You see–”

“Never mind explaining, I don’t care anything about it. Six Hads is enough for me; anybody that needs twelve, let him subscribe; I don’t want any stock in a Had Trust. Knock out the Prolonged and Indefinitely Continuous; four-fifths of it is water, anyway.”

“But I beg you, podere! It is often quite indispensable in cases where–”

“Pipe the next squad to the assault!”

But it was not to be; for at that moment the dull boom of the noon gun floated up out of far-off Florence, followed by the usual softened jangle of church-bells, Florentine and suburban, that bursts out in murmurous response; by labor-union law the Colazione [1] must stop; stop promptly, stop instantly, stop definitely, like the chosen and best of the breed of Hads.

- – -

1. Colazione is Italian for a collection, a meeting, a seance, a sitting.–M.T.

by MARK TWAINIn 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 hereunto 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 nearly to death with some infernal reminiscence of him as long and tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was the design, it certainly suceeded.I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the barroom stove of the old, dilapidated tavern in the ancient 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 me down and reeled off the monotonous narrative which follows this paragraph. He never smiled, he never frowned, he never changed his voice from the gentle-flowing key to which he tuned the initial sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of enthusiasm; but all through the interminable narrative there ran a vein of impressive earnestness and sincerity, which showed me plainly that, so far from his imagining that there was anything ridiculous or funny about his story, he regarded it as a really important matter, and admired its two heroes as men of transcendent genius in finesse. To me, the spectacle of a man drifting serenely along through such a queer yarn without ever smiling, was exquisitely absurd. As I said before, I asked him to tell me what he knew of Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, and he replied as follows. I let him go on in his own way, and never interrupted him once:

There was a feller here once by the name of Jim Smiley, in the winter of   ‘49—or maybe 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 flume wasn’t finished when he first came to the camp; but anyway, he was the curiousest man about always betting on anything that turned up you ever see, if he could get anybody 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 satisfied. 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 any side you please, as I was just telling you. If there was a horse race, you’d find him flush, or you’d find him busted at the end of it; if there was a dogfight, h! ! e’d bet on it; if there was a cat-fight, he’d bet on it; if there was a chicken-fight, he’d bet on it; why, if there was two birds setting on a fence, he would bet you which one would fly first; 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 seen a straddlebug start to go anywheres, he would bet you how long it would take him to get wherever he was going to, and if you took him up, he would foller that straddlebug to Mexico but what he would find 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 would bet on anything—the dangdest 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 asked ho! ! w she was, and he said she was considerable better—thank the Lord for his inf’nit 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 risk two-and-a-half that she don’t, anyway.”

Thish-yer Smiley had a mare—the boys called her the fifteen-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 amongst the fences, and kicking up m-o-r-e dust, and raising m-o-r-e racket with her coughing 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 wan’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 different dog; his underjaw’d begin to stick out like the fo-castle of a steamboat, and his teeth would uncover, and shine savage like the furnaces. And a dog might tackle him, and bullyrag 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 Jackson would never let on but what he was satisfied, and hadn’t expected nothing 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 jest grip and hang on till they throwed up the sponge, if it was a year. Smiley always come out winner on t! ! hat pup, till he harnessed a dog once that didn’t have no hind legs, because they’d been sawed off by 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 saw in a minute how he’d 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 fight, 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 fight, 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 had no opportunities to speak of, and it don’t stand to reason that a dog c! ! ould make such a fight as he could under them circumstances, if he hadn’t no talent. It always makes me feel sorry when I think of that last fight 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’klated to edercate 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 flatfooted and all right, like a cat. He got him up so in the matter of catching flies, and kept him in practice so constant, that he’d nail a fly every time as far 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 Webster down here on this floor—Dan’! ! l Webster was the name of the frog—and sing out, “Flies, Dan’l, flies!” and quicker’n you could wink, he’d spring straight up, and snake a fly off’n the counter there, and flop down on the floor again 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 came 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 that had traveled and been everywheres, all said he laid over any frog that ever they see.

Well, Smiley kept the beast in a little lattice box, and he used to fetch him downtown sometimes and lay for a bet. One day a feller—a stranger in the camp, he was—come across 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 an’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 ary frog in Calaveras county.”

The feller took the box again, and took another long, particular look, and give it back to Smiley, and says, very deliberate, “Well, 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 an’t only a amature, as it were. Anyways, I’ve got my opinion, and I’ll risk 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 an’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 filled him full of quail shot—filled him pretty near up to his chin—and set him on the floor. Smiley he went to the swamp and slopped around in the mud for a long time, and finally 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 fore-paws just even with Dan’l and I’ll give the word.” Then he says, “one—two—three—jump!” and him and the feller touched up the frogs from behind, and the new frog hopped off, but Dan’l give a heave, and hysted up his shoulders—so—like a French-man, but it wan’t no use—he couldn’t budge; he was planted as solid as an anvil, 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 shoulders—this way—at Dan’l, and says again, very deliberate, “Well, 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 wonder what in the nation that frog throw’d off for—I wonder if there an’t something the matter with him—he ‘pears to look might baggy, somehow.” And he ketched Dan’l by the nap of the neck, and lifted him up and says, “Why, blame my cats, if he don’t weigh five 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—

[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 an’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 information concerning the Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, and so I started away.

At the door I met the sociable Wheeler returning, and he buttonholed 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—”

“Oh! hang Smiley and his afflicted cow!” I muttered, good-naturedly, and bidding the old gentleman good-day, I departed.