 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 numbers, 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 apologetic 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 process 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 first months of the great trouble, a good deal of unsettledness, of leaning first this way, then that, then the other way. It was hard for us to get our bearings. I called to mind an instance of this. I was piloting on the Mississippi, when the news came that South Carolina had gone out of the Union on December 20, 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 property of the family when he was so straightened in means. My mate retorted that a mere impulse was nothing. Anybody could pretend to a good impulse, 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, January 26, 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 willing to set slaves free. In the following summer he was piloting a federal gunboat and shouting for the Union again, and I was in the Confederate 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 had owned slaves. In that summer of 1861 the first 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, and some other points. The Governor, Claib Jackson, issued his proclamation calling out fifty thousand militia to repel the invader. I was visiting 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 company. 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 first lieutenant. I do not know why. It was long ago. There were fifteen of us. By the advice of an innocent connected with the organization we called ourselves the Marion Rangers. I do not remember that anyone found fault with a 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 common in that region as Smith, but mainly because it had a plebeian sound to his ear. So he tried to ennoble it by writing it in this way, d'unlap. That contented his eye, but left his ear unsatisfied, 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'unlap. And he waited patiently through the long storm of mud that was flung 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 a 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'unlap, and said that if it were translated into English it would mean Peterson. Lap, Latin or Greek, he said, for stone or rock, same as the French pier, that is to say Peter, d'apostrophe of or from a, a or one, hence da 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, Peter's son. Our militia company were not learned, and the explanation confused them, so they called him Peterson d'unlap. 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 does in that twenty-five. 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. Joe Bowers, another sample, was a huge, good-natured, flax-headed lubber, lazy, sentimental, full of harmless brag, a grumbler by nature, an experienced, 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 satisfactory. 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 various directions to the Griffith 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 Mississippi River. Our objective point was the Hamlet of New London, ten miles away, in Rawls County. The first 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 somehow oozed out of it. The stillness of the woods and the somberness of the night began to throw a depressing influence 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 farmhouse, where, according to report, there was a guard of five Union soldiers. Lyman called 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 there 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 flank the farmhouse, go out, around. And that is what we did. We turned the position. We struck into the woods and entered upon a rough time, stumbling over roots, getting tangled in vines and torn by briars. 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 cheerful. We had flanked the farmhouse. We had made our first military movement, and it was a success. We had nothing to fret about. We were feeling just the other way. Horseplay 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, fagged 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 shotguns in Colonel Rawls Barn, and then went in the body and breakfast 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 metaphor and windy declamations, 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 flag they might march. This mixed us considerably, and we could not make out just what service we were embarked in. But Colonel Rawls, 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, Colonel Brown, had worn at Buena Vista and Molino del Rey, 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-reached expanses of Flowery 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 fishing. The ass with the French name gave this position a romantic title, but it was too long, so the boys shortened and simplified it to Camp Rawls. 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 horsemanship. The creature that fell to my share was a very small mule, and yet so quick and active that it could throw me without difficulty. And it did this whenever 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 presently 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 respect. There was a well by the corn crib, so I substituted thirty fathoms of rope for the bridle, and fetched him home with the windlass. I will anticipate here sufficiently to say that we did learn to ride, after some day's 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. Stephen's horse would carry him, when he was not noticing, under the hugest crescences which form on the trunks of oak trees, and wipe him out of the saddle. In this way Stephen's got several bad hurts. Sergeant Bauer'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 Bauer's legs. On the march, in the sun, Bauer slept a good deal, and as soon as the horse recognized 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 Stephen's, who laughed at everything, laughed at this, and would even get into such convulsions over it as to lose his balance and fall off his horse. And then Bauer's, 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 trouble and bad blood in the command. However I will get back to where I was, our first afternoon in the sugar-camp. The sugar-trops came very handy as horse-trops, and we had plenty of corn to fill them with. I ordered Sergeant Bauer's to feed my mule, but he said that if I reckoned he went to war to be dry nurse to a mule, it wouldn't take me very long to find out my mistake. I believed that this was insubordination, but I was full of uncertainties about everything 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 find 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 Bauer's on his staff. Bauer 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 afternoon away, some dozing under the trees, some smoking cob-pipes, and talking sweethearts and war, some playing games. By late supper-time all hands were famished, and to meet the difficulty all hands turned to on an equal footing, and gathered wood, built fires, and cooked the meal. Afterward everything was smooth for a while, then trouble broke out between the corporal and the sergeant, each claiming to rank the other. Nobody knew which was the higher office, so Lyman had to settle the matter by making the rank of both officers equal. The commander of an ignorant crew like that has many troubles and vexations, which probably do not occur in the regular army at all. However, with a song singing and yarn spinning around the campfire, everything 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 anyone tried to get in. Note one. It was always my impression that that was what the horse was there for, and I know that it was also 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. Fouquois, a member of our company, 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 artifice was not employed again. I had not thought of that before. End of note one. We had some horsemanship drill every four noon. Then afternoons 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 hides prairie. The result was a sharp stir among us, and general consternation. It was a rude awakening from our pleasant trance. The rumour was but a rumour, nothing definite about it, so in the confusion we did not know which way to retreat. Lyman was for not retreating at all, in these uncertain circumstances, but he found that if he tried to maintain that attitude he would fare badly for the command were in no humour to put up with insubordination. So he yielded the point and called a council of war, to consist of himself and the three other officers. But the privates made such a fuss about being left out that we had to allow them to remain, for they were already present, and doing the most of the talking too. The question was which way to retreat? But all were so flurried that nobody seemed to have even a guest to offer, except Lyman. He explained in a few calm words that in as much as the enemy were approaching from over hides prairie our course was simple. All we had to do was not to retreat toward him. Any other direction would answer our needs perfectly. Everybody saw in a moment how true this was and how wise. So Lyman got a great many compliments. It was now decided that we should fall back upon 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 them, and all such talk as that, which was dismal 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 complaining continued straight along whilst the brigade pawed around the pasty hillside and slopped around in the brook hunting for these things. Consequently 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 masons 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 finding the way again, so it was after nine when we reached Mason's style at last, and then before we could open our mouths to give the counter-sign several dogs came bounding 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 helplessly at what was perhaps the most mortifying spectacle 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 difficulty, all but Bowers, 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, but they got him loose at last with some scalding water of which Bowers got his share and returned thanks. Peterson Dunlap afterwards made up a fine name for this engagement, and also for the night march which preceded it, but both of 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 anything 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, begosh, said he, and wanted to know why we hadn't had a picket-guard 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 rumour, and so on, and so forth, till he made us all feel shabbier than the dogs had done, and not have so enthusiastically welcome. 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 humour for this, so there was a fight, 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 activities 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 everybody was up and flying around to find out what the alarm was about. The alarmist was a horseman 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 find, and said we had no time to lose. Farmer Mason was in a flurry this time himself. He hurried us out of the house with all haste, and sent one of his negroes with us to show us where to hide ourselves and our tell-tale guns among the ravines half a mile away. It was raining heavily. 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 black guarded the war, and the people who started it, and everybody 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 heartbreaking 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 reflection that the halter 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 out of all 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 war 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 lighthearted again, and the world was bright, and life was full of hope and promises 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 Devastation, and no soul objected. The masons gave us a Missouri country breakfast in Missouri in abundance, and we needed it. Hot biscuits, hot wheat bread, prittly criss-crossed in a lattice pattern on top, hot cornpone, fried chicken, bacon, coffee, eggs, milk, buttermilk, etc., and the world may be confidently challenged to furnish the equal to such a breakfast as it is cooked in the south. We stayed several days at masons, and after all these years the memory of the dullness, the stillness, and lifelessness of that slumberous farmhouse 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 household were away in the fields all day, the women were busy, and out of our sight. There was no sound but the plaintive whaling of the spinning wheel, forever moaning out from some distant room, the most lonesome sound in nature, a sound steeped and sodden with homesickness 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 use a custom 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 something 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 rolls. Captain Lyman had taken a hint from Mason's talk, and he now gave ordered that our camp should be guarded against surprise by the posting of 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 it seemed a perfectly natural 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 independence, 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 Redpath recognized 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 colonel's tent one day, talking, when a big private appeared at the door, and without salute or other circumlocutions said to the colonel, Say, Jim, I'm going home for a few days. What for? Well, I ain't been there for a rat-smart while, and I'd like to see how things is coming on. How long are you going to be gone? About two weeks. Well, don't be gone long in that, and get back sooner if you can. That was all, and the citizen officer resumed his conversation where the private had broken it off. This was the first months of the war, of course. The camps in our part of Missouri were under Brigadier General Thomas H. Harris. He was a townsman of ours, a first-rate fellow, and well-liked. But we had all familiarly known him as the sole and modest salaried operator in our telegraph office, where he had to send about one dispatch a week in ordinary 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 command 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 natural 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 records. 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 distinguished 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 stayed out there a couple of dreary hours in the pitchy darkness and the rain, with nothing to modify the dreariness but Bowers' monotonous growlings at the war and the weather. Then we began to nod, and presently found it next to impossible 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. Everybody 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 boy's bodies and faces, annoying and irritating everybody, and now and then they would bite someone's toe, and the person who owned the toe would start up and magnify his English and begin to throw corn in the dark. The ears were half as heavy as bricks, and when they struck they hurt. The person struck would respond, and inside of five minutes every man would be locked in a death-grip with his neighbor. There was a grievous deal of bloodshed 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 stayed 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 fine war-like 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 schoolboy hilarity. But that cooled down now, and presently the fast waning fire of forced jokes and forced laughs died out altogether, and the company became silent, silent and nervous, 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 movement presently began in the dark by a general and unvoiced impulse. When the movement was completed each man knew that he was not the only person 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 and our throats, and staring out toward the sugar troughs where the forest footpath 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 muffled sound caught our ears, and we recognized it as the hoof-beats of a horse or horses. And right away a figure 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 horseback, and it seemed to me that there were others behind him. I got hold of the gun in the dark, and pushed it through a crack between the logs, hardly knowing what I was doing. I was so dazed with fright, somebody said, Fire! and I pulled the trigger. I seemed to see a hundred flashes and hear a hundred reports. Then I saw the man fall down out of the saddle. My first feeling was of surprise gratification. My first impulse was an apprentice sportsman's impulse to run and pick up his game. Somebody said hardly audibly, Good! We got him! Wait for the rest! But the rest did not come. 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, wondering, 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 marrow. 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 five 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 forgotten 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 reproachful look out of his shadowy eyes, and it seemed to me that I would rather he had stowed me than done that. He muttered and mumbled like a dreamer in his sleep about his wife and 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 might say, and yet he was as sincerely mourned by the opposing force as if he had been their brother. The boys stood there, 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 first. It soon came out that mine was not the only shot fired. There were five 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 carrying. There were six shots fired at once, but I was not in my right mind at the time, and my heated imagination had magnified 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 circumstances, you would help if you found them in trouble, 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-respect. These morbid thoughts 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 patients of the farmers and their families. They ought to have shot us. On the contrary, they were as hospitably kind and courteous to us as if we had deserved it. In one of these camps we found Ab Grimes, an Upper Mississippi pilot who afterwards became famous as a daredevil rebel spy whose career bristled with desperate 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 fine horsemen 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 fierce and profane old blacksmith of sixty, and he had furnished his twenty recruits with gigantic homemade bowie knives to be swung with the two hands like the machetes of the Isthmus. 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 colonel was sweeping down on us with a whole regiment at his heels. This looked decidedly serious. Our boys went apart and consulted. Then we went back and told the other companies present that the war was a disappointment to us, and we were going to disband. They were getting 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 Harris' help. We could get along perfectly well without him and save time, too. So about half of our fifteen, including myself, mounted and left on the instant. The others yielded to persuasion and stayed—stayed through the war. An hour later we met General Harris on the road with two or three people in his company, his staff probably, but we could not tell. None of them was in uniform. Uniforms had not come into vogue among us yet. Harris ordered us back, but we told him there was a Union Colonel 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, exterminated 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 whiskers. In time I came to know that Union Colonel, who was coming frightened me out of the war and crippled the southern cause to that extent, General 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 difficult 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 occasion 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 first months of the rebellion when the green recruits were without discipline, without the steadying and heartening influence or trained leaders, when all their circumstances were new and strange, and charged with exaggerated terrors, and before the invaluable experience of actual collision in the field 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 scattered through the early camps of this country than exhibited itself at bull-run, and yet it learned its trade presently and helped to fight 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 invented retreating. I regard the idea of this play as a valuable invention. I call it the patent universally applicable automatically adjustable language drama. This indicates that it is adjustable to any tongue and performable in any tongue. The English portions of the play are to remain just as they are permanently, but you change the foreign portions to any language you please at will, do you see? You at once have the same old play in a new tongue, and you can keep changing it from language to language until your private theatrical pupils have become glib and at home in the speech of all nations. Zoom bespiele! Suppose we wish to adjust the play to the French tongue. First we give Mrs. Blumenthal and Gretchen French names. Next we knock the German Meisterschaft sentences out of the first scene and replace them with sentences from the French Meisterschaft. Like this, for instance. Wherever you find German, replace it with French, leaving the English parts undisturbed. When you come to the long conversation in the second act, turn to any pamphlet of your French Meisterschaft, and shovel in as much French talk on any subject as will fill up the gaps left by the expunged German. Example, page 423, French Meisterschaft, Transpirez, Mettons-nous à l'ombre, il fait du vent. Il fait un vent froid. Il fait un très agréable pour se promener aujourd'hui, and so on all the way through, and it is very easy to adjust the play to any desired language. Anybody can do it. Mrs. Blumenthal, the Werthen. Act I, Scene I. Scene of the play, the parlor of a small private dwelling in a village. Margaret, discovered crocheting, has a pamphlet. Margaret, solos. Dear, dear, it's dreary enough to have to study this impossible German tongue to be exiled from home and all human society except a body's sister in order to do it is just simply abscheulich. Here's only three weeks of the three months gone, and it seems like three years. I don't believe I can live through it, and I'm sure Annie can't. Refers to her book and rattles through several times like one memorizing. Makes mistakes and corrects them. I just hate Meisterschaft. We may see people. We can have society. Yes, on condition that the conversation shall be in German and in German only, every single word of it. Very kind. Oh, very. When neither Annie nor I can put two words together except as they are put together for us in Meisterschaft or that idiotic Olandorf. Refers to book and memorizes. Yes, we can have society. Provided we talk German. What would conversation be like? If you should stick to Meisterschaft, it would change the subject every two minutes. And if you stuck to Olandorf, it would be all about your sister's mother's good stocking of thread, or your grandfather's aunt's good hammer of the carpenter, and who's got it, and there an end. You couldn't keep up your interest in such topics. Memorizing. My mind is made up to one thing. I will be in exile, in spirit and in truth. I will see no one during these three months. Father is very ingenious. Oh, very. Thinks he is anyway. Thinks he has invented a way to force us to learn to speak German. He is a dear good soul and all that, but invention isn't his fach. He will see with eloquent energy. Why, nothing in the world shall. Oh dear, dear George, three weeks. It seems a whole century since I saw him. I wonder if he suspects that I, that I care for him, just a wee, wee bit. I believe he does, and I believe Will suspects that Annie cares for him a little of that I do, and I know perfectly well that they care for us. They agree with all our opinions, no matter what they are, and if they have a prejudice, they change it as soon as they see how foolish it is. Dear George, at first he just couldn't abide cats, but now, why, now he's just all for cats. He fairly welters in cats. I never saw such a reform, and it's just so with all his principles. He hasn't got one that he had before. If all men were like him, this world would, memorizing. Yes, and what did they go to studying German for, if it wasn't an inspiration of the highest and purest sympathy? Any other explanation is nonsense. Why, they'd as soon have thought of studying American history. Turns her back, buries herself in her pamphlet, first memorizing aloud until Annie enters, then to herself, rocking to and fro, and rapidly moving her lips without uttering a sound. Enter Annie, absorbed in her pamphlet, does not at first see Margaret. Annie, memorizing, repeats twice aloud, then to herself briskly moving her lips. Margaret, still not seeing her sister. Repets then mouths in silence. Annie repeats her sentence a couple of times aloud, then looks up, working her lips, and discovers Margaret. Oh, you hear? Running to her. Oh, lovey-dovey, dovey-lovey, I've got the greatest news. Guess, guess, guess, you'll never guess in a hundred thousand million years and more. Margaret. Oh, tell me, tell me, don't keep me in agony. Annie, well, I will. What do you think? They're here, Margaret. What? Who? When? Which? Speak, Annie. Will and George, Margaret. Annie, Alexandra, Victoria, Stevenson, what do you mean? Annie, as sure as guns, Margaret, spasmodically embracing and kissing her. Sh, don't use such language. Oh, darling, say it again. Annie, as sure as guns. Margaret, I don't mean that. Tell me again that, Annie, springing up and waltzing about the room. They're here, in this very village, to learn German for three months. Margaret joining in the dance. Oh, it's just too lovely for anything unconsciously memorizing. Annie, finishing some unconscious memorizing. Sit down, and I'll tell you all I've heard. They sit. They're here, and under that same odious law that fetters us, our tongues, I mean. The metaphor is faulty, but no matter, they can go out and see people only on condition that they hear and speak German and German only. Margaret, isn't that too lovely? Annie, and they're coming to see us. Margaret, darling, kissing her. But are you sure? Annie, sure as guns, gatling guns. Margaret, sh, don't child, it's- Shackies. Darling, you aren't mistaken. As sure as gu- batteries. They jump up and dance a moment, then, Margaret, with distress. But Annie, dear, we can't talk German, and neither can they. Annie, sorrowfully, I didn't think of that. Margaret, how cruel it is. What can we do? Annie, after a reflective pause, resolutely. Margaret, we've got to. Margaret, got to what? Annie, speak German. Margaret, why, how, child? Annie, contemplating her pamphlet with earnestness, I can tell you one thing. Just give me the blessed privilege, just hinsetsen. Will Jackson hear in front of me, and I'll talk German to him as long as this Meisterschaft holds out to burn. Margaret joyously, oh, what an elegant idea. You certainly have got a mind that's a mine of resources, if ever anybody had one. Annie, I'll skin this Meisterschaft to the last sentence in it. Margaret, with a happy idea. Why, Annie, it's the greatest thing in the world. I've been all this time struggling and despairing over these few little Meisterschaft primers. But as sure as you live, I'll have the whole fifteen by heart before this time, day after tomorrow. See if I don't. Annie, and so will I. And I'll trowl in a layer of Olandorf mush between every couple of courses of Meisterschaft bricks. Joché. Margaret. Ho, ho, ho. Annie. Stoß an. Margaret. Joché. Wir werden gleich gute deutsche Schülerinnen werden. Joché. Annie. Hey. Margaret. Annie, when are they coming to see us tonight? Annie, no. Margaret, no? Why not? When are they coming? What are they waiting for? The idea. I never heard of such a thing. What do you, Annie, breaking in? Wait, wait, give a body a chance. They have their reasons. Margaret. Reasons. What reasons? Annie. Well, now, when you stop and think they're royal good ones, they've got to talk German when they come, haven't they? Of course. Well, they don't know any German, but... Wie befinden sie sich? And haben sie gut geschlafen? And Vater Unse? And ich trinke lieber Bier als Wasser. And a few little parlor things like that. But when it comes to talking, why, they don't know a hundred and fifteen German words, put them all together. Margaret. Oh, I see. Annie. So, they're going to neither eat, sleep, smoke, nor speak the truth, till they've crammed home the whole fifteen Meisterschafts ausfändig. Margaret. Noble hearts. Annie. They've given themselves till day after tomorrow half past seven p.m. And then they'll arrive here loaded. Margaret. Oh, how lovely, how gorgeous, how beautiful. Some think this world is made of mud. I think it's made of rainbows. Memorizing. Annie. I can learn it just like nothing. Annie. So can I. Meisterschafts mere fun. I don't see how it ever could have seemed difficult. Come, we can't be disturbed here. Let's give orders that we don't want anything to eat for two days and are absent to friends, dead to strangers, and not at home even to nugget peddlers. Margaret. Shun. And we'll lock ourselves into our rooms and at the end of two days, whosoever may ask us a Meisterschaft question, shall get a Meisterschaft answer and hot from the bat, both reciting in unison. Ich habe einen Hut für meinen Sohn, ein paar Handschuhe für meinen Bruder und einen Kamm für mich selbst gekauft. Excellent. Enter Mrs. Blumenthal, the Werthen. Werthen. Solus. Ach, die armen Mädchen. Sie hassen die deutsche Sprache. Drum ist es ganz und gar unmöglich, dass sie sie je lernen können. Es bricht mir ja mein Herz, ihre Kummer über die Studien anzusehen. Warum haben sie den Entschluss gefasst, in ihrem Zimmern ein paar Tage zu bleiben? Ja, gewiss. Das versteht sich. Sie sind entmutigt. Arme Kinder. A knock at the door. Herr rein. Enter Gretchen with card. Gretchen. Er ist schon wieder da und sagt, dass er nur sie sehen will. Hands the card. Auch. Werthen. Gott im Himmel. Der Vater der Mädchen. Puts the card in her pocket. Er wünscht die Tochter nicht zu treffen? Ganz recht. Also, du schweigst. Gretchen. Zu Befehl. Werthen. Lass ihn herein kommen. Gretchen. Ja, Frau Wirtin. Exit Gretchen. Werthen. Solus. Ach, jetzt muss ich ihm die Wahrheit offenbaren. Enter Mr. Stevenson. Stevenson. Good morning, Mrs. Blumenthal. Keep your seat, keep your seat please. I'm only here for a moment, merely to get your report, you know, seating himself. Don't want to see the girl's poor things. They'd want to go home with me. I'm afraid I couldn't have the heart to say no. How's the German getting along, Werthen? Not very well. I was afraid you would ask me that. You see, they hate it. They don't take the least interest in it, and there isn't anything to incite them to an interest, you see. And so they can't talk at all, Stevenson. That's bad. I had an idea that they'd get lonesome, and have to seek society. And then, of course, my plan would work, considering the cast iron conditions of it. Werthen. But it hasn't so far. I've thrown nice company in their way. I've done my very best in every way I could think of, but it's no use. They won't go out, they won't receive anybody, and a body can't blame them. They'd be tongue-tied, couldn't do anything with a German conversation. Now when I started to learn German, such poor German as I know, the case was very different. My intended was a German. I was to live among Germans the rest of my life, and so I had to learn. Why, bless my heart, I nearly lost the man the first time he asked me. I thought he was talking about the measles. They were very prevalent at the time. Told him I didn't want any in mine. But I found out the mistake, and I was fixed for him next time. Oh, yes, Mr. Stevenson, a sweetheart, it's a prime incentive. Stevenson, I sighed. Good soul! She doesn't suspect that my plan is a double scheme. Includes a speaking knowledge of German, which I am bound they shall have, and the keeping them away from those two young fellows. Though if I had known that those boys were going off for years for and travel, I—however, the girls would never learn that language at home. They're here, and I won't relent. They've got to stick the three months out. Allowed. So they are making poor progress. Now, tell me, will they learn it after a sort of fashion, I mean, in three months? Worthen. Well, now I'll tell you the only chance I see. Do what I will, they won't answer my German with anything but English. If that goes on, they'll stand stock still. Now I'm willing to do this. I'll straighten everything up, get matters in smooth running order, and day after tomorrow I'll go to bed sick and stay sick three weeks. Stevenson, good. You are an angel. I see your idea. The servant girl, Worthen. That's it. That's my project. She doesn't know a word of English, and Gretchen's a real good soul, and can talk the slates off a roof. Her tongue's just a fluttermill. I'll keep my room just ailing a little, and they'll never see my face except when they pay their little duty visits to me. And then I'll say English disorders my mind. They'll be shut up with Gretchen's windmill, and she'll just grind them to powder. Oh, they'll get a start in the language, sort of a one, sure as you live. You come back in three weeks, Stevenson. Bless you, my... Retterin. I'll be here to the day. Get ye to your sick room. You shall have trouble pay. Looking at watch. Good. I can just catch my train. Lieben sie wohl, Exit. Worthen. Lieben sie wohl, mein Herr. End of Act One of Meisterschaft, and end of Section 32 of The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, and Other Stories by Mark Twain. This is Meisterschaft Act Two. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, and Other Stories by Mark Twain, Segment 33, Meisterschaft Act Two. Scene One. Time, a couple of days later. The girls discovered with their work and primers. Annie. Was fehlt der Wirten? Margaret. Das weiß ich nicht. Sie ist schon vor zwei Tagen ins Bett gegangen. Annie. My, how fleecent you speak, Margaret. Dankeschön, und sagte, dass sie nicht wohl sei. Annie. Good. Oh, no, I don't mean that. No, only lucky for us. You know, I mean, because it'll be so much nicer to have them all to ourselves. Do you believe your Meisterschaft will stay with you, Annie? Well, I know it is with me, every last sentence of it, and a couple of hods of Ollendorf too for emergencies. Maybe they'll refuse to deliver right off at first, you know. When I get my hand in. Margaret. What shall we talk about first when they come, Annie? Well, let me see. There's shopping and all that about the trains, you know, and going to church and buying tickets to London and Berlin and all around. And all that subjunctive stuff about the battle in Afghanistan and where the American was said to be born and so on. And, and oh, oh, there's so many things I don't think a body can choose beforehand because, you know, the circumstances and the atmosphere always have so much to do in directing a conversation, especially a German conversation, which is only a kind of insurrection anyway. I believe it's best to just depend on Prave, glancing at watch and gasping. Half past seven, Margaret. Oh, dear, I'm all of a tremble. Let's get something ready, Annie. Both fall nervously to reciting. They repeat it several times, losing their grip and mixing it all up. Both. Oh, the holy one. Excuse me, my dearest wife. There are two young, lazy gentlemen out there. But I swore to you that you love time. They're here. And, of course, down goes my back hair. Stay and receive them, dear, while I leaving. Annie, I alone? I won't. I'll go with you to Gretchen. Exit Gretchen, solace. Unsinn. Volan, ich werde sie mal beschützen. Sollte man nicht glauben, dass sie einen Sparren zu viel hatten, was sie mir doch alles gesagt haben. Der eine, guten Morgen, wie geht es ihrem Herrn Schwiegervater? Du liebe Zeit, wie sollte ich einen Schwiegervater haben können? Und der andere, es tut mir sehr leid, dass ihrer Herrvater meinen Bruder nicht gesehen hat, als er doch gestern in dem Laden des deutschen Kaufmannes war. Oh, ich war ganz rasend, wie ich aber rief, meine Herren, ich kenne sie nicht, und sie kennen meinen Vater nicht. Wissen Sie, denn er ist schon lange durchgebrannt, und geht nicht beim Tag in einen Laden hinein. Wissen Sie, und ich habe keinen Schwiegervater. Gott sei Dank werde ich auch nie einen kriegen. Werde überhaupt, wissen Sie, ein solches Ding nie haben, nie dulden, nie ausstehen. Warum greifen Sie ein Mädchen an, das nur Unschuld kennt, das Ihnen nie etwas zu Leide getan hat? Dann haben Sie sich beide die Finger in die Ohren gesteckt und gebetet. Allmächtiger Gott, erbarme Dich unser. Pauses. Nun, ich werde schon diesen Schurken Einlass gönnen, aber ich werde ein Auge mit Ihnen haben, damit Sie sich nicht wie reine Teufel geberben sollen. Exit, grumbling and shaking her head. Enter William and George. William, my land, what a girl, and what an incredible gift of gavel. Kind of patent, climate-proof compensation, balanced, self-acting automatic Meisterschaft. Touch her button, and brrr, away she goes. George, never heard anything like it. Tongue journaled on ball bearings. I wonder what she said. Seem to be swearing, mainly. William, after mumbling Meisterschaft a while. Look here, George, this is awful. Come to think, this project, we can't talk this frantic language. George, I know it will, and it is awful, but I can't live without seeing Margaret. I've endured it as long as I can. I should die if I try to hold out longer, and even German is preferable to death. William, hesitatingly. Well, I don't know. It's a matter of opinion, George irritably. It isn't a matter of opinion either. German is preferable to death. William, reflectively. Well, I don't know. The problem is so sudden, but I think you may be right. Some kinds of death. It is more than likely that a slow lingering—well, now, there in Canada, in the early times, a couple of centuries ago, the Indians would take a missionary and skin him, and get some hot ashes, and boiling water, and one thing and another, and buy and buy that missionary. Well, yes, I can see that, buy and buy, talking German could be a pleasant change for him. George, why, of course! Das versteht sich. But you have to always think a thing out, or you're not satisfied. But let's not go to bothering about thinking out this present business. We're here, we're in for it. You are as more a bun to see Annie as I am to see Margaret. You know the terms. We've got to speak German. Now stop your moaning and get at your meisterschaft. We've got nothing else in the world. William, do you think that'll see us through? George, why, it's got to. Suppose we wandered out of it and took a chance at the language on our own responsibility, where the nation would be up a stump. That's where our only safety is in sticking like wax to the text. William, but what can we talk about? George, why, anything that Meisterschaft talks about? It ain't our affair. William, I know, but Meisterschaft talks about everything, George. And yet, don't talk about anything long enough for it to get embarrassing. Meisterschaft is just splendid for general conversation. William, yes, that's so. But it's so blamed general. Won't it sound foolish, George? Foolish? Why, of course, all German sounds foolish. Well, that is true. I didn't think of that, George. Now, don't fool around any more. Load up. Load up, get ready. Fix up some sentences. You'll need them in two minutes, new. They walk up and down, moving their lips in dumb show, memorizing. William, look here. When we've said all that's in the book on a topic, and want to change the subject, how can we say so? How would a German say it, George? Well, I don't know. But you know, when they mean change cars, they say umsteigen. Don't you reckon that will answer? William, tip top. It's short and goes right to the point, and it's got a business wang to it that's almost American. Change subject. Why, it's the very thing, George. All right then, you umsteigen. For I hear them coming into the girls. Annie to William with solemnity. Guten Morgen, mein Herr. Es freut mich sehr, sie zu sehen. William. Margaret and George repeat the same sentences. Then, after an embarrassing silence, Margaret refers to her book and says, Margaret, bitte meine Herren, setzen sie sich. The gentlemen, the four seat themselves in couples, the width of the stage apart, and the two conversations begin. The talk is not flowing. At any rate, at first. There are painful silences all along. Each couple worry out her remark and her reply. There is a pause of silent thinking, and then the other couple deliver themselves. William. Annie. George. Waren sie gestern Abend im Konzert oder im Theater? Margaret. General breakdown, long pause. William. Annie. George. Margaret. William, to both girls. Annie. Margaret. William. George. Margaret aside, it's just lovely. Annie aside, it's like a poem. Pause. William. Margaret. William. George. Auf Englisch, change cars. Oder Subject. Both girls. William. Annie. George. Margaret. William. Annie. William, examining his book, maybe I was wrong. Shows the place. Annie, satisfied. William. Annie. Aside. George. Margaret. Gretchen slips in with a gun and listens. George, still to Margaret. Gretchen raising hands and eyes. Is like to betray herself with her smothered laughter and glides out. Margaret. Pause. William. Gretchen raising hands and eyes. The others, Gutt, George aside. I feel better now, I'm beginning to catch on, allowed. Margaret aside. How sweet. William aside. Hang it, I was going to say that. That's one of the noblest things in the book, Annie. Aside, it's getting as easy as 9 times 7 is 46. Margaret. William. Aside, all down but 9. Set him up on the other alley, Annie. All down but 9. Set him up on the other alley, Annie. Annie, mollified. Gretchen slips in again with her gun, William. As George gets fairly into the following, Gretchen draws a bead on him and lets drive at the close, but the gun snaps. George. Aside, that's a daisy, Gretchen aside. She draws her charge and reloads. Margaret. Annie. Gretchen, relieved. Aside. Sits William to Annie. Indicating a part of her dress. Annie. William. George. Margaret. Aside. How sweet is this communion of soul with soul, Annie. They all examine it, George. Pause, William. Annie. William. Aside. Oh, come. She's ringing in a cold deck on us. That's Olyndorf. George. Aside. Stuck. That's no meistershaft. They don't play fair, allowed. Gretchen. Aside. William. Run the following rapidly through. Margaret. Aside. Oh, I flushed an easy batch. Allowed. Gretchen. Aside. William. George. Gretchen. Aside. Annie. Gretchen. Aside. William. To George. Gretchen. Aside. George. Margaret. Annie. William. George. Gretchen. Aside. George. Aside. William. Now brace up. Pull all your confidence together, my boy, and we'll try that lovely goodbye business of Flutter. I think it's about the gaudiest thing in the book. If you boom it right along and don't get left on a base, it'll impress the girls. Allowed. Lassen sie uns gehen. Es ist schon sehr spät und ich muss morgen ganz früh aufstehen. Gretchen. Aside. Grateful. Set her gun aside. William. To George. George. To William. Gretchen looks on stupefied. William. To George. Gretchen fingers her gun again. George. To William. William. To George. Margaret. Aside. It's just music. Annie. Aside. Oh, how lovely they do it. George. To William. William. To George. Es tut mir unendlich leid, aber ich muss nach Hause. Meine Frau wird sich wundern, was aus mir geworden ist. George. To William. William. To George. George. To William. William. Umstein. Great hand clapping from the girls. Margaret. Aside. Oh, how perfect. How elegant. Annie. Aside. Perfectly enchanting. Joyous chorus. All. Gretchen faints and tumbles from her chair and the gun goes off with a crash. Each girl frightens, seizes the protecting hand of her sweetheart. Gretchen scrambles up. Tableau. William. Takes out some money. Beckins Gretchen to him. George adds money to the pile. Giving her some of the coins. Gretchen courtesy. Aside. Allowed impressively. William. More money. Gretchen. William. More money. Gretchen. William. Giving the rest of the money. Gretchen. Deep courtesy. Aside. Allowed. All in chorus with reverent joy. End of act two of Meisterschaft and end of segment 33 of The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories by Mark Twain. This is act three of Meisterschaft. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories by Mark Twain. Segment 34 Meisterschaft. Act three. Three weeks later, scene one. Enter Gretchen and puts her shawl on a chair, brushing around with the traditional feather duster of the drama, smartly dressed for she is prosperous. Gretchen. Gets out of her pocket handful after handful of silver which she piles on the table and proceeds to repile and count occasionally ringing or biting a piece to try its quality. With a sigh. and plod and schwatzen and plappern and schnattern. Gerade um sechs Uhr nehmen sie wiederum Abschied. Um halb acht, kehren sie noch einmal zurück. Und plodern und schwatzen und plappern und schnattern, bis zehn Uhr oder vielleicht ein Viertel nach, falls ihre Uhr nachgehen. Und stets gehen sie nach am Ende des Besuchs, aber stets vor Beginn desselben. Und zuweilen unterhalten sich die jungen Leute beim Spazieren gehen. Und jeden Sonntag gehen sie dreimal in die Kirche und immer plodern sie und schwatzen und plappern und schnattern, bis ihnen die Zähne aus dem Mund fallen. Und ich? Durch manglein Übung ist mir die Zunge mit Moos belegt worden. Freilich ist es mir eine dumme Zeit gewesen. Aber um Gottes Willen, was geht es mir an? Was soll ich daraus machen? Täglich sagt die Frau Wirtin, Gretchen. Dumm Show of paying a piece of money into her hand. Du bist einer der best Sprachlehrerinnen der Welt. Ach Gott. Und täglich sagen die edlen jungen Männer, Gretchen, liebes Kind. Money paying again in dumm Show, three coins. Bleibt taub, blind, tot. Und so bleibe ich. Jetzt wird es ungefähr neun Uhr sein. Bald kommen sie vom Spazieren gehen zurück. Also, es wäre gut, daß ich meinem eigenen Schatz einen Besuch abstatte und spazieren gehe. Don's her shawl. Exit left. Enter Wirtin right. Wirtin. That was Mr. Stevenson's train that just came in. Evidently the girls are out walking with Gretchen. Can't find them. And she doesn't seem to be around. A ring at the door. That's him. I'll go see. Exit right. Enter Stevenson and Wirtin right. Stevenson. Well, how does sickness seem to agree with you? Wirtin. So well that I've never been out of my room since till I heard your train come in. Stevenson. Thou miracle of fidelity. Now, I argue from that, that the new plan is working. Wirtin. Working? Mr. Stevenson, you never saw anything like it in the whole course of your life. It's absolutely wonderful the way it works. Stevenson. Succeeds? No, you don't mean it. Wirtin. Indeed I do mean it. I tell you, Mr. Stevenson, that plan was just an inspiration. That's what it was. You could teach a cat German by it. Stevenson. Dear me, this is noble news. Tell me about it. Wirtin. Well, it's all Gretchen. Every bit of it. I told you she was a jewel, and then the sagacity of that child. Why, I never dreamed it was in her. Never, you ask the young ladies a question. Never let on. Just keep mum. Leave the whole thing to me. Stevenson. Good. And she justified, did she? Wirtin. Well, sir, the amount of German gavel that that child crammed into those two girls inside the next forty-eight hours, while I was satisfied. So I've never asked a question, never wanted to ask any. I've just lain-curled up there, happy. The little dears. They've flitted in to see me a moment every morning and noon and supper-time, and as sure as I'm sitting here inside of six days, they were clattering German to me like a house of fire. Stevenson. Splendid. Splendid. Wirtin. Of course, it ain't grammatical. The inventor of the language can't talk grammatical. If the dative didn't fetch him, the accusative would. But it's German all the same, and don't you forget it. Stevenson, go on. Go on. This is delicious news. Wirtin. Gretchen, she says to me at the start, never you mind about company for him. I'm company enough. And I says, all right, fix it your own way, child. And that she was right is shown by the fact that to this day they don't care a straw for any company but hers. Stevenson. Dear me, why? It's admirable. Wirtin. Well, I should think so. They just do it on that hussy. Can't seem to get enough of her. Gretchen tells me so herself. And the care she takes of them. She tells me that every time there's a moonlight night, she coaxes them out for a walk. And if a body can believe her, she actually bullies them off to church three times every Sunday. Stevenson. Why, the little dev, uh, missionary. Really, she's a genius. Wirtin. She's a bud, I tell you. Dear me, how she's brought those girls' health up. Cheeks? Just roses. Gate? They walk on watchsprings. And happy? By the bliss in their eyes you'd think they're in paradise. Ah, that Gretchen. Just you imagine our trying to achieve these marvels. Stevenson. You're right. Every time. Those girls. Why, all they'd have wanted to know was what we wanted done. And then they wouldn't have done it, the mischievous young rascals. Wirtin. Don't tell me. Bless you, I found that out early when I was bossing. Stevenson. Well, I'm immensely pleased. Now, fetch them down. I'm not afraid now. They won't want to go home. Wirtin. Home! I don't believe you could drag them away from Gretchen with nine span of horses. But if you want to see them, put on your hat and come along. They're out somewhere traipsing along with Gretchen. Going. Stevenson. I'm with you. Lead on. Wirtin. We'll go out the side door. It's towards the unlodge. Exit both. Left. Enter George and Margaret. Right. Her head lies upon his shoulder. His arm is about her waist. They are steeped in sentiment. Margaret, turning a fond face up to him. Du Engel. George. Liebste. Margaret. George. Margaret. George. George. Margaret. Dumb show sentimentalisms. George. George. Margaret. George. Exit both. Left. Enter Gretchen. Right. In a state of mind slumps into a chair limp with despair. Gretchen. Exit. Left. Enter Annie and William. Right. Posed like the former couple and sentimental. Annie. William. Annie. William. Annie. Kiss. William. Annie. William. Aside. Smoochism. Same as I do. It was a noble good idea to play that little thing on her. George wouldn't ever think of that. Somehow he never had any invention. Annie arranging chairs. William. They said. Annie. William. Annie. William. Enter George and Margaret. George untyes Margaret's bonnet. She reties his cravat, interspersings of lovepats, etc. and dumb show of love quarreling. William. Annie. William. Annie. William. Annie. The other couple sit down and Margaret begins. A retieing of the cravat. Enter the Whirtham and Stevenson. He imposing silence with a sign. William. Lays her head on his shoulder. Dumb show between Stevenson and Whirtham. Annie. That I love you? My own. Listen to me. I love you. I love you. Oh. That I would be in hell. I love you. I love you. Oh, I'm so happy that I can't sleep. I can't read. I can't talk. Annie. Stevenson to Whirtham aside. Oh, there isn't any mistake about it. Gretchen is just a rattling teacher. Whirtham to Stevenson aside. I'll skin her alive when I get my hands on her. Margaret. They jump up, join hands and sing in chorus. Stevenson stepping forward. Well. The girls throw themselves upon his neck with enthusiasm. The girls, why father? Stevenson. My darlings. The young men hesitate a moment. Then they add their embrace, flinging themselves on Stevenson's neck along with the girls. The young men. Why father? Stevenson struggling. Oh, come. This is too thin. Too quick, I mean. Let go. You rascals. George. We'll never let go till you put us on the family list. Margaret. Right. Hold on to him. Annie. Cling to him, will. Gretchen rushes in and joins the general embrace, but is snatched away by the Whirtham, crushed up against the wall, and threatened with destruction. Stevenson suffocating. All right, all right. Have it your own way, you quartet of swindlers. Whirtham. He's a darling. Three cheers for papa. Everybody, except Stevenson, who bows with hand on heart. Hip, hip. Hooray! Hooray! Hooray! Gretchen. The tiger. Ah! Whirtham. The heroic. You hussy. Stevenson. Well, I've lost a couple of precious daughters, but I've gained a couple of precious scamps to fill up the gap with. So it's all right. I'm satisfied. And everybody's forgiven, with mock threats at Gretchen. William. Gretchen. Margaret to Whirtham. Whirtham. Well, dear, I was kind, but I didn't mean it. But I ain't sorry. Not one bit. That I ain't. Tablo. Stevenson. Come now. The situation is full of hope and grace and tender sentiment. If I had in the least poetic gift, I know I could improvise under such an inspiration. Each girl nudges her sweetheart. Something worthy to—to—is there no poet among us? Each youth turns solemnly his back upon the other, and raises his hands in benediction over his sweetheart's bowed head. Both youths at once— They turn and look reproachfully at each other. The girls contemplate them with injured surprise. Stevenson, reflectively, I think I've heard that before somewhere. Whirtham aside, why, the very cats in Germany know it. Curtain. End of Act III of Meistershof. And end of Segment 34 of The Man That Corrupted Hadleyberg and Other Stories by Mark Twain. This is My Boyhood Dreams. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. The Man That Corrupted Hadleyberg and Other Stories by Mark Twain. Section 35 My Boyhood Dreams. The dreams of my boyhood? No, they have not been realized. For all who are old, there is something infinitely pathetic about the subject which you have chosen, for in no greyhead's case can it suggest any but one thing—disappointment. Disappointment is its own reason for its pain. The quality or dignity of the hope that failed is a matter aside. The dreamer's valuation of the thing lost, not another man's, is the only standard to measure it by, and his grief, for it makes it large and great and fine, and is worthy of our reverence in all cases. We should carefully remember that. There are sixteen hundred million people in the world. Of these there is but a trifling number, in fact only thirty eight millions, who can understand why a person should have an ambition to belong to the French army, and why, belonging to it, he should be proud of that, and why, having got down that far, he should want to go on down, down, down till he struck the bottom and got on the general staff, and why, being stripped of this livery, or set free and reinvested with his self-respect by any other quick and thorough process, let it be what it might, he should wish to return to his strange surpage. But no matter. The estimate put upon these things by the fifteen hundred and sixty millions is no proper measure for their value. The proper measure, the just measure, is that which is put upon them by Dreyfus, and is cipherable merely upon the littleness or the vastness of the disappointment which their loss cost him. There you have it. The measure of the magnitude of a dream failure is the measure of the disappointment the failure cost the dreamer. The value, in others eyes of the thing lost, has nothing to do with the matter. With this straightening out and classification of the dreamer's position to help us, perhaps we can put ourselves in his place and respect his dream, Dreyfus's, and the dreams our friends have cherished and revealed to us, some that I call to mind, some that have been revealed to me are curious enough, but we may not smile at them, for they were precious to the dreamers, and their failure has left scars which give them dignity and pathos. With this theme in my mind, dear heads that were brown when they and mine were young together, rise old and white before me now, beseeching me to speak for them, and most lovingly will I do it. Howls, Hay, Aldrich, Matthews, Stockton, Cable, Remus, how their young hopes and ambitions come flooding back to my memory now, out of the vague far past, the beautiful past, the lamented past. I remember it so well, that night we met together, it was in Boston, and Mr. Fiends was there, and Mr. Osgood, Ralph Keeler, and Boyle O'Reilly, lost to us now these many years, and under the seal of confidence revealed to each other what our boyhood dreams had been, reams which had not as yet been blighted, but over which was stealing the gray of the night that was to come, a night which we prophetically felt, and this feeling oppressed us and made us sad. I remember that Howl's voice broke twice, and it was only with great difficulty that he was able to go on, in the end, he wept. For he had hoped to be an auctioneer. He told of his early struggles to climb to his goal, and how at last he attained to, within a single step of the coveted summit, but there misfortune after misfortune assailed him, and he went down, and down, and down, until now at last weary and disheartened, he had for the present given up the struggle, and become the editor of the Atlantic Monthly. This was in 1830. Seventy years are gone since, and where now is his dream? It will never be fulfilled. And it is best so. He is no longer fitted for the position. No one would take him now, even if he got it, he would not be able to do himself credit in it, on account of his deliberateness of speech and lack of trained professional vivacity. He would be put on real estate, and would have the pain of seeing younger and abler men entrusted with the furniture and other such goods, goods which draw a mixed and intellectually low order of customers, who must be beguiled of their bids by a vulgar and specialized humor and sparkle accompanied with antics. But it is not the thing lost that counts, but only the disappointment the lost brings to the dreamer that had coveted that thing, and had set his heart of hearts upon it, and when we remember this, a great wave of sorrow for howls rises in our breasts, and we wish for his sake that his fate could have been different. At that time Hayes' boyhood dream was not yet past hope of realization, but it was fading, dimming, wasting away, and the wind of a growing apprehension was blowing cold over the perishing summer of his life. In the pride of his young ambition, he had aspired to be a steamboat mate, and in fancy saw himself dominating a folksal some day on the Mississippi, and dictating terms to roust abouts in high and wounding terms. I look back now from this far distance of seventy years, and note with sorrow the stages of that dream's destruction. Hayes' history is but howls with differences of detail. Haye climbed high towards his ideal. When success seemed almost sure, his foot upon the very gang-plank, his eye upon the capstan, misfortune came, and his fall began, down, down, down, ever down, private secretary to the president, Colonel in the field, Chargé d'affaires in Paris, Chargé d'affaires in Vienna, poet, editor of the Tribune, biographer of Lincoln, ambassador to England, and now at last, there he lies, secretary of state, head of foreign affairs, and he has fallen, like Lucifer, never to rise again. And his dream, where now is his dream? Gone down in blood and tears with the dream of the auctioneer. And the young dream of Aldrich, where is that? I remember yet how he sat there that night fondling it, petting it, seeing it recede and ever recede, trying to be reconciled and give it up, but not able yet to bear the thought. For it had been his hope to be a horse-doctor. He also climbed high, but like the others fell. Then fell again, and yet again, and again, and again. And now at last he can fall no farther. He is old now, he has ceased to struggle, and is only a poet. No one would risk a horse with him now. His dream is over. Has any boyhood dream ever been fulfilled? I must doubt it. Look at Brander Matthews. He wanted to be a cowboy. What is he today? Nothing but a professor in a university. Will he ever be a cowboy? It is hardly conceivable. Look at Stockton. What was Stockton's young dream? He hoped to be a barkeep. See where he has landed? Is it better with cable? What was cable's young dream? To be ringmaster in the circus, and swell around and crack the whip. What is he today? Nothing but a theologian and novelist. And Uncle Remus, what was his young dream? To be a buccaneer. Look at him now. Ah, the dreams of our youth, how beautiful they are, and how perishable. The ruins of these might have been so pathetic. The heart secrets that were revealed that night now so long vanished, how they touched me as I give them voice. Those sweet privacies, how they endeared us to each other. We were under oath never to tell any of these things, and I have always kept that oath inviolate, when speaking with persons whom I thought not worthy to hear them. Oh, our lost youth! God keep its memory green in our hearts! For age is upon us, with the indignity of its infirmities, and death beckons, end of my boyhood dreams, and end of Segment 35 of The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories by Mark Twain. This is To The Above Old People. This is a LibriVox recording, all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories by Mark Twain, Section 36 To The Above Old People. Sleep! For the sun that scores another day against the tale allotted you to stay, reminding you is risen, and now serves notice. Ah, ignore it while you stay. The chill wind blew, and those who stood before the tavern murmured, having drunk his score, why tarries he with empty cup? Behold, the wine of youth once poured is poured no more. Come, leave the cup, and on the winter snow your summer garment of enjoyment throw. Your tide of life is ebbing fast, and it, exhausted once, for you no more shall flow. While yet the phantom of false youth was mine, I heard a voice from out the darkness wine. O youth! O wither gone! Return, and bathe my age in thy reviving wine. In this subduing draft of tender green and kindly absence, with its wimbling sheen of dusky half-lights, let me drown the haunting pathos of the might have been. For every nickel joy, marred and brief, we pay some day its weight in golden grief mined from our hearts. Ah, murmur not, from this one-sided bargain dream of no relief. The joy of life that streaming through their veins to mulch was swept, falls slack, and wanes the glory in the eye, and one by one life's pleasures perish, and make place for pains. Whether one hide in some secluded nook, whether at Liverpool or Sandy Hook, Tis one, old age will search him out, and he, he, he, when ready, will know where to look. From cradle unto grave I keep a house of entertainment, where may drow's bacilli and kindred germs, or feed or breed their festering species in a deep carose. Think, in this battered caravancery, whose portals open stand on night and day, how microbe after microbe with his pomp arrives unasked, and comes to stay. Our ivory teeth confessing to the lust of masticating once, now own disgust of clay-plugged cavities, full soon our snags are emptied, and our mouths are filled with dust. Our gums forsake the teeth and tender grow, and fat like overriped figs we know the sign. The rig's disease is ours, and we must list this sorrow at another woe. Our lungs begin to fail, and soon we cough, and chilly streaks play up our backs, and off our fevered foreheads drips an icy sweat. We scoffered before, but now we may not scoff. Some for the bunions that afflict us preyt of plaster's unsurpassable, and hate to cut a corn. Ah, cut and let the plaster go, nor murmur if the solace come too late. Some for the honours of old age, and some long for its respite from the hum and clash of sordid strife. Oh, fools, the past should teach them what's to come. Lo, for the honours cold neglect instead. For respite disputations airs a bed of thorns, for them will furnish. Go, seek not here for peace, but yonder with the dead. For whether Zal and Rustam heed this sign, and even smitten thus will not repine, let Zal and Rustam shuffle as they may, the fine once levied they must cash the fine. Oh, voices of the long ago that were so dear. Fall in silent now, for many a mouldering year. Oh, wither are he flown. Come back, and break my heart, but bless my grieving ear. Some happy day my voice will silent fall, and answer not when some that love it call. Be glad for me when this you note, and think I've found the voices lost beyond the pawl. So let me grateful drain the magic bowl that medicines hurt minds, and on the soul the healing of its peace doth lay. If then death claim me, welcome be his dole. Sana, Sweden, September 15th Private, if you don't know what Riggs' disease of the teeth is, the dentist will tell you. I've had it, and it is more than interesting. M.T. Editorial note, fearing that there might be some mistake, we submitted a proof of this article to the American gentleman named in it, and asked them to correct any errors of detail that might have crept in among the facts. They reply, with some asperity, that errors cannot creep in among facts, where there are no facts for them to creep in among, and that none are discoverable in this article, but only baseless aberrations of a disordered mind. They have no recollection of any such night in Boston or elsewhere, and in their opinion there was never any such night. They have met Mr. Twain, but have had the prudence not to entrust any privacies to him, particularly under oath, and they think they now see that this prudence was justified since he has been untrustworthy enough to even betray privacies, which had no existence. Further they think it a strange thing that Mr. Twain, who was never invited to meddle with anybody's boyhood dreams but his own, has been so gratuitously anxious to see that other peoples are placed before the world that he has quite lost his head in his zeal and forgotten to make any mention of his own at all. Provided we insert this explanation they are willing to let his article pass, otherwise they must require its suppression in the interest of truth. P.S. These replies, having left us in some perplexity, and also in some fear lest they distress Mr. Twain if published without his privity, we judged it but fair to submit them to him and give him an opportunity to defend himself. But he does not seem to be troubled, or even aware that he is in a delicate situation. He merely says, Do not worry about those former young people. They can write good literature, but when it comes to speaking the truth, they have not had my training. Mark Twain. The last sentence seems obscure and liable to an unfortunate construction. It plainly needs refashioning, but we cannot take the responsibility of doing it. Editor. End of To The Above, Old People. And end of Section 36 of The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories by Mark Twain. This is In Memoriam. Olivia Susan Clemens. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer visit LibriVox.org. The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories by Mark Twain. Section 37 In Memoriam. Olivia Susan Clemens. Died August 18, 1896. Age 24. In a fair valley, oh, how long ago, how long ago, where all the broad expanse was closed in vines and fruitful fields and meadows starred with flowers, and clear streams wandered at their idle will, and still lakes slept, their burnished surfaces a dream of painted clouds, and soft airs went whispering with odorous breath, and all was peace in that fair veil, shut from the troubled world a nameless hamlet drowsed. Hard by, apart, a temple stood, and strangers from the outer world passing noted it with tired eyes and seeing, saw it not, a glimpse of its fair form, an answering momentary thrill, and they passed on, careless and unaware. They could not know the cunning of its make, they could not know the secret shut up in its heart. Only the dwellers of the hamlet knew, they knew that what seemed brass was gold, what marble seemed was ivory. The glories that enriched the milky surfaces, the trailing vines and interwoven flowers, and tropic birds-a-wing clothed all in tinted fires, they knew for what they were, not what they seemed. In crustings all of gems not perishable splendors of the brush, they knew the secret spot where one must stand, they knew the surest hour, the proper slant of sun. To gather in unmarred, undimmed, the vision of the fane in all its fairy grace, a fainting dream against the opal sky, and more than this they knew that in the temple's inmost place a spirit-welt made all of light. For glimpses of it they had caught beyond the curtains when the priests that served the altar came and went. All loved that light, and held it dear that had this partial grace. But the adoring priests alone who lived by day and night submerged in its immortal glow knew all its power and depth, and could appraise the loss if it should fade, and fail, and come no more. All this was long ago, so long ago. The light burned on, and they that worshipped it, and they that caught its flash at intervals and held it dear, contented lived in its secure possession. Ah, how long ago it was! And then when they were nothing fearing, and God's peace was in the air, and none was prophesying harm, the vast disaster fell, where stood the temple when the sun went down, none was vacant desert when it rose again. Ah, yes, to his ages since it chanced. So long ago it was that from the memory of the Hamlet folk the light has passed. They scarce believing now that once it was, or if believing, yet not missing it, and reconciled to have it gone. Not so the priests! Oh, not so the stricken ones that served it day and night! Adoring it, abiding in the healing of its peace. They stand yet, where erst they stood speechless in that dim morning long ago, and still they gaze, as then they gazed, and murmur, it will come again. It knows our pain, it knows, it knows. Ah, surely it will come again. S. L. C. Lake Lucerne, August 18, 1897 The end of In Memoriam, Olivia Susan Clemens, and the end of The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories by Mark Twain.