 This is part two of my debut as a literary person. Henry Ferguson's Diary to Date, Given in Full. May 4, 5, 6. Doldrums. May 7, 8, 9. Doldrums. May 10, 11, 12. Doldrums. Tells it all. Never saw, never felt, never heard, never experienced such heat, such darkness, such lightning and thunder and wind and rain in my life before. That boy's diary is of the economical sort that a person might properly be expected to keep in such circumstances and be forgiven for the economy, too. His brother, perishing of consumption, hunger, thirst, blazing heat, drowning rains, loss of sleep, lack of exercise, was persistently faithful and circumstantial with his diary from the first day to the last, an instance of noteworthy fidelity and resolution. In spite of the tossing and plunging boat, he wrote it close and fine, in a hand as easy to read as print. They can't seem to get north of seven degrees north. They are still there the next day. Diary entry, May 12. A good rain last night, and we caught a good deal, though not enough to fill up our tank, pails, etc. Our object is to get out of these doldrums, but it seems as if we cannot do it. Today we have had it very variable, and hope we are on the northern edge, though we are not much above seven degrees. This morning we all thought we had made out a sail, but it was one of those deceiving clouds. Rained a good deal today, making all hands wet and uncomfortable. We filled up pretty nearly all our water-pots, however. I hope we may have a fine night, for the captain certainly wants rest, and while there is any danger of squalls or danger of any kind he is always on hand. I never would have believed that open boats such as ours with their loads could live in some of the seas we have had. During the night, 12. 13. The cry of a ship brought us to our feet. It seemed to be the glimmer of a vessel's signal lantern rising out of the curve of the sea. There was a season of breathless hope while they stood watching with their hands shading their eyes and their hearts in their throats. Then the promise failed. The light was a rising star. It is a long time ago, thirty-two years, and it doesn't matter now, yet one is sorry for their disappointment. Thought often of those at home today, and of the disappointment they will feel next Sunday at not hearing from us by telegraph from San Francisco. It will be many weeks yet before the telegram is received, and it will come as a thunder-clap of joy then, and with the seeming of a miracle, for it will raise from the grave men mourned as dead. Today our rations were reduced to a quarter of a biscuit a meal, with about half a pint of water. This is on May 13, with more than a month of voyaging in front of them yet. However, as they do not know that, we are all feeling pretty cheerful. In the afternoon of the 14th there was a thunderstorm, which toward night seemed to close in around us on every side, making it very dark and squally. Our situation is becoming more and more desperate, for they were making very little northing, and every day diminishes our small stock of provisions. They realize that the boats must soon separate, and each fight for its own life. Towing the quarter-boats is a hindering business. That night and next day light and baffling winds, and but little progress, hard to bear that persistent standing still and the food wasting away. Everything in a perfect sop, and also cramped, and no change of clothes. Soon the sun comes out and roasts them. Joe caught another dolphin today. In his maw we found a flying fish and two skip-jacks. There is an event now, which rouses an enthusiasm of hope. A land-bird arrives. It rests on the yard for a while, and they can look at it, all they like, and envy it, and thank it for its message. As a subject of talk it is beyond price, a fresh new topic for tongues tired to death of talking upon a single theme. Shall we ever see the land again, and when? Is the bird from Clipperton Rock? They hope so, and they take heart of grace to believe so. As it turned out the bird had no message. It merely came to mock. May 16. The cock still lives, and daily carols forth his praise. It will be a rainy night, but I do not care if we can fill up our water-butts. On the seventeenth one of those majestic specters of the deep a water-spout stalked by them, and they trembled for their lives. Young Henry set it down in his scanty journal with a judicious comment that it might have been a fine sight from a ship. From Captain Mitchell's log for this day only half a bushel of breadcrumbs left, and a month to wander the seas yet. It rained all night and all day, everybody uncomfortable. Now came a swordfish chasing a bonito, and the poor things seeking help and friends took refuge under the rudder. The big swordfish kept hovering around, scaring everybody badly. The men's mouths watered for him, for he would have made a whole banquet. But no one dared to touch him, of course, for he would sink about promptly if molested. Providence protected the poor bonito from the cruel swordfish. This was just and right. Providence next befriended the shipwrecked sailors. They got the bonito. This was also just and right. But in the distribution of mercies the swordfish himself got overlooked. He now went away to muse over these subtleties, probably. The men in all the boats seemed pretty well. The feeblest of the sick ones, not able for a long time to stand his watch on board the ship, is wonderfully recovered. This is the third mate's detected portugese that raised the family of abscesses. Passed a most awful night, rained hard near all the time, and blew in squalls, accompanied by terrific thunder and lightning from all points of the compass. Henry's log. Most awful night I ever witnessed. Captain's log. Latitude May 18, 11 degrees, 11 minutes. So they have averaged but 40 miles of northern a day during the fortnight, further talk of separating. Too bad, but it must be done for the safety of the whole. At first I never dreamed, but now hardly shut my eyes for a catnap without conjuring up something or other to be accounted for by weakness, I suppose. But for their disaster they think they would be arriving in San Francisco about this time. I should have liked to send Bee the telegram for her birthday. This was a young sister. On the nineteenth the captain called up the quarter-boats and said one would have to go off on its own hook. The long boat could no longer tow both of them. The second mate refused to go, but the chief mate was ready. In fact, he was always ready when there was a man's work to the fore. He took the second mate's boat, six of its crew elected to remain, and two of his own crew came with him. Nine in the boat now, including himself. He sailed away, and towards sunset passed out of sight. The diarist was sorry to see him go. It was natural. One could have better spared the Portugese. After thirty-two years I find my prejudice against this Portugese reviving. His very looks have long passed out of my memory. But no matter, I am coming to hate him as religiously as ever. Water will now be a scarce article, for as we get out of the doldrums, we shall get showers only now and then in the trades. This life is telling severely on my strength. Henry holds out first rate. Henry did not start well, but under hardships he improved straight along. Latitude Sunday May 20. Twelve degrees, zero minutes, nine seconds. They ought to be well out of the doldrums now, but they are not. No breeze. The longed fore trades still missing. They are still anxiously watching for a sail, but they have only visions of ships that come to not. The shadow without the substance. The second mate catches a booby this afternoon, a bird which consists mainly of feathers, but as they have no other meat it will go well. May 21. They strike the trades at last. The second mate catches three more boobies and gives the longboat one. Dinner, half a can of mincemeat divided up and served around, which strengthened us somewhat. They have to keep a man bailing all the time. The hole knocked in the boat when she was launched from the burning ship was never efficiently mended. Heading about north-west now. They hope they have easting enough to make some of these indefinite aisles. Failing that, they think they will be in a better position to be picked up. It was an infinitely slender chance, but the captain probably refrained from mentioning that. The next day is to be an eventful one. Diary entry May 22. Last night wind headed us off, so that part of the time we had to steer east, south-east, and then west, north-west, and so on. This morning we were all startled by a cry of sail-ho! Sure enough we could see it, and for a time we cut adrift from the second mate's boat and steered so as to attract its attention. This was about half past five a.m. After sailing in a state of high excitement for almost twenty minutes we made it out to be the chief mate's boat. Of course we were glad to see them, and have them report all well, but still it was a bitter disappointment to us all. Now that we are in the trades it seems impossible to make northing enough to strike the aisles. We have determined to do the best we can and get in the root of vessels. Such being the determination it became necessary to cast off the other boat, which, after a good deal of unpleasantness, was done. We again dividing water and stores, and taking cocks into our boat. This makes our number fifteen. The second mate's crew wanted to all get in with us and cast the other boat adrift. It was a very painful separation. So these aisles that they have struggled for so long and so hopefully have to be given up. What with lying birds that come to mock, and aisles that are but a dream, and visions of ships that come to naught. It is a pathetic time they are having, with much heartbreak in it. It was odd that the vanished boat, three days lost to sight in that vast solitude, should appear again, but it brought cocks, we can't be certain why. But if it hadn't, the direst would never have seen the land again. Diary entry. Our chances as we go west increase in regard to being picked up, but each day our scanty fare is so much reduced. Without the fish, turtle, and bird sent us, I do not know how we should have got along. The other day I offered to read prayers morning and evening for the captain, and last night commenced. The men, although of various nationalities and religions, are very attentive, and always uncovered. May God grant my weak endeavour its issue. Latitude May 24, 14°, 18 minutes north. Five oysters apiece for dinner, and three spoonfuls of juice. A gill of water, and a piece of biscuit, the size of a silver dollar. We are plainly getting weaker. God have mercy upon us all. That night heavy seas break over the weather side and make everybody wet and uncomfortable besides requiring constant bailing. Next day nothing particular happened. Perhaps some of us would have regarded it differently. Past a spar, but not near enough to see what it was. They saw some whales blow, there were flying fish skimming the seas, but none came aboard. Misty weather, with fine rain, very penetrating. Latitude May 26, 15°, 50 minutes. They caught a flying fish and a booby, but had to eat them raw. The men grow weaker and, I think, despondent. They say very little, though. And so, to all the other imaginable and unimaginable horrors, silence is added. The muteness and brooding of coming despair. It seems our best chance to get in the track of ships with the hope that some one will run near enough to our speck to see it. He hopes the other board stood west and have been picked up. They will never be heard of again in this world. Diary entry, Sunday, May 27, Latitude 16°, 0 minutes, five seconds. Longitude by chronometer, 117°, 22 minutes. Our fourth Sunday. When we left the ship, we reckoned on having about ten days' supplies, and now we hope to be able, by rigid economy, to make them last another week, if possible. Footnote number one. There are 19 days of voyaging ahead yet. M.T. Last night the sea was comparatively quiet, but the wind headed us off to about west-northwest, which has been about our course all day today. Another flying fish came aboard last night, and one more today, both small ones. No birds. A booby is a great catch, and a good large one makes a small dinner for the fifteen of us, that is, of course, as dinners go in the hornet's long boat. Tried this morning to read the full service to myself, with the communion, but found it too much, am too weak, and get sleepy, and cannot give strict attention. So I put off half till this afternoon. I trust God will hear the prayers gone up for us at home today, and graciously answer them by sending us succour and help in this our season of deep distress. The next day was a good day for seeing a ship, but none was seen. The diarist still feels pretty well, though very weak. His brother Henry bears up and keeps his strength the best of any on board. I do not feel despondent at all, for I fully trust that the Almighty will hear our and the home prayers, and he who suffers not a sparrow to fall sees and cares for us his creatures. Considering the situation and circumstances, the record for the next day, May 29, is one which has a surprise in it for those dull people who think that nothing but medicines and doctors can cure the sick. A little starvation can really do more for the average sick man than can the best medicine and the best doctors. I do not mean a restricted diet, I mean total abstention from food for one or two days. I speak from experience. Starvation has been my cold and fever doctor for fifteen years, and has accomplished a cure in all instances. The third mate told me in Honolulu that the Portugese had lain in his hammock for months, raising his family of abscesses and feeding like a cannibal. We have seen that in spite of dreadful weather, deprivation of sleep, scorching, drenching, and all manner of miseries, thirteen days of starvation wonderfully recovered him. There were four sailors down sick when the ship was burned, twenty-five days of pitiless starvation have followed, and now we have this curious record. All the men are hearty and strong, even the ones that were down sick are well, except for poor Peter. When I wrote an article some months ago urging temporary abstention from food as a remedy for an inactive appetite and for disease, I was accused of jesting, but I was in earnest. We are all wonderfully well and strong, comparatively speaking. On this day the starvation regime drew its belt a couple of buckle holes tighter. The bread ration was reduced from the usual piece of cracker the size of a silver dollar to the half of that, and one meal was abolished from the daily three. This will weaken the men physically, but if there are any diseases of an ordinary sort left in them they will disappear. Two quartz breadcrumbs left, one third of a ham, three small cans of oysters, and twenty gallons of water. Captain's log. The hopeful tone of the diaries is persistent. It is remarkable. Look at the map and see where the boat is. Latitude sixteen degrees, forty-four minutes, longitude one hundred and nineteen degrees, twenty minutes. It is more than two hundred miles west of the Revilla Guiguero Islands, so they are quite out of the question against the trades. Rigged as this boat is. The nearest land available for such a boat is the American group six hundred and fifty miles away westward. Still there is no note of surrender, none even of discouragement. Yet, May thirty, we have now left one can of oysters, three pounds of raisins, one can of soup, one third of a ham, three pints of biscuit crumbs, and fifteen starved men to live on it while they creep and crawl six hundred and fifty miles. Somehow I feel much encouraged by this change of course, west by north, which we have made today. Six hundred and fifty miles on a hatful of provisions. Let us be thankful, even after thirty-two years, that they are mercifully ignorant of the fact that it isn't six hundred and fifty that they must creep on their hatful, but twenty-two hundred. Isn't the situation romantic enough just as it stands? No. Providence added a startling detail. Pulling an oar in that boat, for common seamen's wages, was a banished duke, Danish. We hear no more of him, just that mention. That is all. With a simple remark added that he is one of our best men, a high enough compliment for a duke or any other man in those manhood testing circumstances. With that little glimpse of him at his oar and that fine word of praise, he vanishes out of our knowledge for all time. For all time, unless he should chance upon this note and reveal himself. The last day of May has come, and now there is a disaster to report. Think of it, reflect upon it, and try to understand how much it means when you sit down with your family and pass your eye over your breakfast table. Yesterday there were three pints of bread-crumbs. This morning the little bag is found open, and some of the crumbs are missing. We dislike to suspect any one of such a rascally act, but there is no question that this grave crime has been committed. Two days will certainly finish the remaining morsels. God grant us strength to reach the American group. The third mate told me in Honolulu that in these days the men remembered with bitterness that the Portugese had devoured twenty-two days rations, while he lay waiting to be transferred from the burning ship, and that now they cursed him and swore an oath that if it came to cannibalism he should be the first to suffer for the rest. Diary entry. The captain has lost his glasses, and therefore he cannot read our pocket prayer-books as much as I think he would like, though he is not familiar with them. Further of the captain, he is a good man, and has been most kind to us, almost fatherly. He says that if he had been offered the command of the ship sooner he should have brought his two daughters with him. It makes one shudder yet to think how narrow an escape it was. The two meals, rations, a day, are as follows. Fourteen raisins and a piece of cracker the size of a penny for tea, a gill of water and a piece of ham and a piece of bread each the size of a penny for breakfast. Captain's log. He means a penny in thickness as well as in circumference. Samuel Ferguson's diary says the ham was shaved about as thin as it could be cut. Diary entry June 1. Last night and to-day see very high and cobbling, breaking over and making us all wet and cold. Weather squally, and there is no doubt that only careful management with God's protecting care preserved us through both the night and the day, and really it is most marvelous how every morsel that passes our lips is blessed to us. It makes me think daily of the miracle of the loaves and fishes. Henry keeps up wonderfully, which is a great consolation to me. I somehow have great confidence and hope that our afflictions will soon be ended, though we are running rapidly across the track of both outward and inward bound vessels, and away from them. Our chief hope is a whaler, man of war, or some Australian ship. The aisles we are steering for are put down in Bowditch, but on my map are said to be doubtful. God grant they may be there. Hardest day yet, Captain's log. Doubtful! It was worse than that. A week later they sailed straight over them. Diary entry June 2. Latitude 18 degrees, nine minutes. Squally, cloudy, a heavy sea. I cannot help thinking of the cheerful and comfortable time we had aboard the hornet. Two days scanty supplies left. Ten rations of water apiece, and a little morsel of bread. But the sun shines and God is merciful, Captain's log. Diary entry Sunday June 3. Latitude 17 degrees, 54 minutes. Heavy sea all night, and from 4 a.m. very wet. The sea breaking over us in frequent sluices, and soaking everything aft particularly. All day the sea has been very high, and it is a wonder that we are not swamped. Heaven grant that it may go down this evening. Our suspense and condition are getting terrible. I managed this morning to crawl more than step to the forward end of the boat, and was surprised to find that I was so weak, especially in the legs and knees. The sun has been out again, and I have dried some things, and hope for a better night. June 4. Latitude 17 degrees, 6 minutes. Longitude 131 degrees, 30 minutes. Shipped hardly any seas last night, and today the sea has gone down somewhat, although it is still too high for comfort, as we have an occasional reminder that water is wet. The sun has been out all day, and so we have had a good drying. I have been trying for the last ten or twelve days to get a pair of drawers dry enough to put on, and today at last succeeded. I mentioned this to show the state in which we have lived. If our chronometer is anywhere near right, we ought to see the American Isles tomorrow or next day. If they are not there, we have only the chance, for a few days, of a stray ship, for we cannot eke out the provisions more than five or six days longer, and our strength is failing very fast. I was much surprised today to note how my legs have wasted away above my knees. They are hardly thicker than my upper arm used to be. Still I trust in God's infinite mercy, and feel sure He will do what is best for us. To survive, as we have done, thirty-two days in an open boat, with only about ten days fair provisions for thirty-one men in the first place, and these divided twice subsequently, is more than mere unassisted human art and strength could have accomplished and endured. Bread and raisins all gone, Captain's log. Men growing dreadfully discontented and awful grumbling and unpleasant talk is arising. God save us from all strife of men, and if we must die now, take us himself, and not embitter our bitter death still more—Henry's log. Diary entry June 5. Quiet night and pretty comfortable day, though our sail and block show signs of failing, and need taking down, which latter is something of a job, as it requires the climbing of the mast. We also had news from forward, there being discontent and some threatening complaints of unfair allowances, etc., all as unreasonable as foolish. Still these things bid us be on our guard. I am getting miserably weak, but try to keep up the best I can. If we cannot find those aisles, we can only try to make northwest and get in the track of sandwich island-bound vessels, living as best we can in the meantime. Today we changed to one meal, and that at about noon, with a small ration of water at eight or nine a.m., another at twelve a.m., and a third at five or six p.m. Nothing left but a little piece of ham and a gill of water all around, Captain's log. They are down to one meal a day now, such as it is, and fifteen hundred miles to crawl yet, and now the horror is deepened, and, though they escaped actual mutiny, the attitude of the men became alarming. Now we seem to see why that curious incident happened so long ago. I mean Cox's return, after he had been far away and out of sight several days in the chief mate's boat. If he had not come back, the captain and the two young passengers might have been slain now by these sailors who were becoming crazed through their sufferings. Note secretly passed by Henry to his brother. Cox told me last night that there is getting to be a good deal of ugly talk among the men against the captain and us aft. They say that the captain is the cause of all, that he did not try to save the ship at all, nor to get provisions, and that he even would not let the men put in some they had, and that partiality is shown us in apportioning our rations aft. Blank asked Cox the other day if he would starve first to eat human flesh. Cox answered he would starve. Blank then told him he would only be killing himself. If we do not find those islands, we would do well to prepare for anything. Blank is the loudest of all. Reply, we can depend on Blank, I think, and Blank and Cox. Can we not? Second note, I guess so, and very likely on Blank. But there is no telling. Blank and Cox are certain. There is nothing definite said or hinted as yet, as I understand Cox. But starving men are the same as maniacs. It would be well to keep a watch on your pistol, so as to have it, and the cartridges safe from theft. Henry's log, June 5. Dreadful forebodings. God spare us from all such horrors. Some of the men getting to talk a good deal. Nothing to write down. Heart, very sad. Henry's log, June 6. Past some seaweed, and something that looked like the trunk of an old tree, but no birds, beginning to be afraid, islands not there. Today it was said to the captain, in the hearing of all, that some of the men would not shrink when a man was dead from using the flesh, though they would not kill. Horrible! God give us all full use of our reason, and spare us from such things. From plague, pestilence, and famine, from battle and murder, and from sudden death, good Lord deliver us. Diary entry, June 6. Latitude, 16 degrees, 30 minutes. Longitude, chronometer, 134 degrees. Dry night, and wind steady enough to require no change in sail, but this AM, an attempt to lower it, proved abortive. First the third mate tried, and got up to the block, and fastened a temporary arrangement to reave the halyards through, but had to come down weak and almost fainting before finishing. Then Joe tried, and after twice ascending, fixed it and brought down the block. But it was very exhausting work, and afterward he was good for nothing all day. The clue iron, which we are trying to make serve for the broken block, works, however, very indifferently, and will, I am afraid, soon cut the rope. It is very necessary to get everything connected with the sail in good easy running order before we get too weak to do anything with it. Only three meals left. Captain's log. Diary entry, June 7. Latitude, 16 degrees, 35 minutes North. Longitude, 136 degrees, 30 minutes West. Night, wet, and uncomfortable. Today shows us pretty conclusively that the American Isles are not there, though we have had some signs that looked like them. At noon we decided to abandon looking any farther for them, and tonight haul a little more northerly, so as to get in the way of sandwich island vessels, which fortunately come down pretty well this way, say to latitude 19 degrees to 20 degrees, to get the benefit of the trade winds. Of course all the Westing we have made is gain, and I hope the chronometer is wrong in our favour, for I do not see how any such delicate instrument can keep good time with the constant jarring and thumping we get from the sea. With the strong trade we have, I hope that a week from Sunday will put us in sight of the sandwich islands if we are not safe by that time by being picked up. It is twelve hundred miles to the sandwich islands. The provisions are virtually exhausted, but not the perishing diarists' pluck. Diary entry. My cough troubled me a good deal last night, and therefore I got hardly any sleep at all. Still I make out pretty well, and should not complain. Yesterday the third mate mended the block, and this p.m., the sail, after some difficulty, was got down, and Harry got to the top of the mast, and roved the halyard through after some hardship, so that it now works easy and well. This getting up the mast is no easy matter at any time with the sea we have, and is very exhausting in our present state. We could only reward Harry by an extra ration of water. We have made good time and course today. Heading her up, however, makes the boat ship seas, and keeps us all wet. However it cannot be helped. Writing is a rather precarious thing these times. Our meal today for the fifteen consists of half a can of soup and buoy. The other half is reserved for to-morrow. Henry still keeps up grandly, and is a great favourite. God grant he may be spared. A better feeling prevails among the men, Captain's log. Diary entry, June 9, latitude 17°53 minutes. Finished today, I may say, our whole stack of provisions. Footnote number two. Six days to sail yet, nevertheless. M. T. We have only left a lower end of a hand-bone, with some of the outer rind and skin on. In regard to the water, however, I think we have got ten days supply at our present rate of allowance. This, with what nourishment we can get from boot-legs and such chewable matter, we hope will enable us to weather it out till we get to the Sandwich Islands, or, sailing in the meantime in the track of vessels thither bound, be picked up. My hope is in the latter, for in all human probability I cannot stand the other. Still we have been marvelously protected, and God, I hope, will preserve us all in his own good time and way. The men are getting weaker, but we are still quiet and orderly. Diary entry, Sunday, June 10, latitude 18°40 minutes. Longitude 142°34 minutes. A pretty good night last night, with some weddings, and again another beautiful Sunday. I cannot but think how we should all enjoy it at home, and what a contrast is here. How terrible their suspense must begin to be. God grant that it may be relieved before very long, and he certainly seems to be with us in everything we do, and has preserved this boat miraculously. For since we left the ship we have sailed considerably over three thousand miles, which, taking into consideration our meager stock of provisions, is almost unprecedented. As yet I do not feel the stint of food so much as I do that of water. Even Henry, who is naturally a good water drinker, can save half of his allowance from time to time when I cannot. My diseased throat may have something to do with that, however. Nothing is now left, which by any flattery can be called food, but they manage somehow for five days more. For at noon they have still eight hundred miles to go. It is a race for life now. This is no time for comments or other interruptions from me. Every moment is valuable. I will take up the boy brother's diary at this point, and clear the seas before it, and let it fly. Henry Ferguson's log. Sunday, June 10. Our ham bone has given us a taste of food to-day, and we have got left a little meat and the remainder of the bone for to-morrow. Certainly never was there such a sweet knuckle one, or one that was so thoroughly appreciated. I do not know that I feel any worse than I did last Sunday, notwithstanding the reduction of diet, and I trust that we may all have strength given us to sustain the sufferings and hardships of the coming week. We estimate that we are within seven hundred miles of the Sandwich Islands, and that our average daily is somewhat over a hundred miles, so that our hopes have some foundation in reason. Heaven's sand we may all live to see land. June 11. Eight the meat and rind of our ham bone, and have the bone and the greasy cloth from around the ham left to eat to-morrow. God send us birds or fish, and let us not perish of hunger, or be brought to the dreadful alternative of feeding on human flesh. As I feel now I do not think anything could persuade me, but you cannot tell what you will do when you are reduced by hunger and your mind wandering. I hope and pray we can make out to reach the islands before we get to this street. But we have one or two desperate men aboard, though they are quiet enough now. It is my firm trust and belief that we are going to be saved. All food gone. Captain's log. Footnote number three. It was at this time discovered that the crazed sailors had gotten the delusion that the captain had a million dollars in gold concealed aft, and they were conspiring to kill him and the two passengers, and seize it. M. T. Ferguson's log continues. June 12. Stiff breeze, and we are fairly flying, dead ahead of it, and toward the islands. Good hope, but the prospects of hunger are awful. Eight ham bone to-day. It is the captain's birthday. He is fifty-four years old. June 13. The ham rags are not quite all gone yet, and the bootlegs. We find are very palatable after we get the salt out of them. A little smoke, I think, does some little good. But I don't know. June 14. Hunger does not pain us much, but we are dreadfully weak. Our water is getting frightfully low. God grant we may see land soon. Nothing to eat, but feel better than I did yesterday. Toward evening saw a magnificent rainbow, the first we had seen. Captain said, Cheer up, boys! It's a prophecy. It's the bow of prophecy. June 15. God be forever praised for his infinite mercy, land in sight. Rapidly neared it, and soon were sure of it. Two noble Kanakas swam out and took the boat ashore. We were joyfully received by two white men, Mr. Jones and his steward Charlie, and a crowd of native men, women and children. They treated us splendidly, aided us, and carried us up the bank, and brought us water, poi, bananas, and green coconuts. But the white men took care of us and prevented those who would have eaten too much from doing so. Everybody overjoyed to see us, and all sympathy expressed in faces, deeds, and words. We were then helped up to the house, and help we needed. Mr. Jones and Charlie are the only white men here. Treated us splendidly, gave us first about a teaspoon full of spirits in water, and then to each a cup of warm tea with a little bread. Takes every care of us, gave us later another cup of tea and bread the same, and then let us go to rest. It is the happiest day of my life. God in his mercy has heard our prayer. Everybody is so kind. Words cannot tell. June 16. Mr. Jones gave us a delightful bed, and we surely had a good night's rest. But not sleep. We were too happy to sleep. Would keep the reality, and not let it turn to a delusion. Dreaded that we might wake up and find ourselves in the boat again. It is an amazing adventure. There is nothing of its sort in history that surpasses it in impossibilities made possible. In one extraordinary detail, the survival of every person in the boat, it probably stands alone in the history of adventures of its kinds. Usually merely a part of a boat's company survive. Officers, mainly, and other educated and tenderly reared men, unused to hardship and heavy labor. The untrained, roughly reared, hard workers succumb. But in this case even the rudest and roughest stood the privations and miseries of the voyage almost as well as did the college-bred young brothers and the captain. I mean, physically. The minds of most of the sailors broke down in the fourth week and went to temporary ruin, but physically the endurance exhibited was astonishing. Those men did not survive by any merit of their own, of course, but by merit of the character and intelligence of the captain. They lived by the mastery of his spirit. Without him, they would have been children without a nurse. They would have exhausted their provisions in a week, and their pluck would not have lasted even as long as the provisions. The boat came near to being wrecked at the last. As it approached the shore the sail was let go and came down with a run, then the captain saw that he was drifting swiftly toward an ugly reef, and an effort was made to hoist the sail again, but it could not be done. The men's strength was wholly exhausted. They could not even pull an oar. They were helpless, and death imminent. It was then that they were discovered by the two Kanakas who achieved the rescue. They swam out and manned the boat, and piloted her through a narrow and hardly noticeable break in the reef. The only break in it in a stretch of thirty-five miles. The spot where the landing was made was the only one in that stretch where footing could have been found on the shore. Everywhere else, precipices came sheer down into forty fathoms of water. Also in all that stretch this was the only spot where anybody lived. Within ten days after the landing all the men but one were up and creeping about. Properly they ought to have killed themselves with the food of the last few days, some of them at any rate, men who had freighted their stomachs with strips of leather from old boots and with chips from the butter cask, a freightage which they did not get rid of by digestion but by other means. The captain and the two passengers did not eat strips and chips, as the sailors did, but scraped the boot leather and the wood, and made a pulp of the scrapings by moistening them with water. The third mate told me that the boots were old and full of holes, then added thoughtfully, but the holes digested the best. Speaking of digestion, here is a remarkable thing and worth noting. During this strange voyage and for a while afterward on shore, the bowels of some of the men virtually ceased from their functions. In some cases there was no action for twenty and thirty days, and in one case for forty-four. Sleeping also came to be rare, yet the men did very well without it. During many days the captain did not sleep at all—twenty-one, I think, on one stretch. When the landing was made all the men were successfully protected from overeating except the Portugese. He escaped the watch and ate an incredible number of bananas—a hundred and fifty-two, the third mate said. But this was undoubtedly an exaggeration. I think it was a hundred and fifty-one. He was already nearly half full of leather. It was hanging out of his ears. I do not state this on the third mate's authority, for we have seen what sort of a person he was. I stated on my own. The Portugese ought to have died, of course, and even now it seems a pity that he didn't. But he got well, and as early as any of them, and all full of leather, too, the way he was, and butter-timber, and handkerchiefs and bananas. Some of the men did eat handkerchiefs in those last days, also socks, and he was one of them. It is to the credit of the men that they did not kill the rooster that crowed so gallantly mornings. He lived eighteen days, and then stood up and stretched his neck and made a brave, weak effort to do his duty once more, and died in the act. It is a picturesque detail, and so is that rainbow, too, the only one seen in the forty-three days, raising its triumphal arch in the skies for the sturdy fighters to sail under to victory and rescue. With ten days' provisions, Captain Josiah Mitchell performed this memorable voyage of forty-three days and eight hours in an open boat, sailing four thousand miles in reality and thirty-three hundred and sixty by direct courses, and brought every man safe to land. A bright, simple-hearted, unassuming, plucky, and most companionable man. I walked the deck with him twenty-eight days when I was not copying Diaries, and I remember him with reverent honor. If he is alive he is eighty-six years old now. If I remember rightly, Samuel Ferguson died soon after we reached San Francisco. I do not think he lived to see his home again. His disease had been seriously aggravated by his hardships. For a time it was hoped that the two quarter-boats would presently be heard of, but this hope suffered disappointment. They went down with all on board, no doubt, not even sparing that nightly chief mate. The authors of the Diaries allowed me to copy them exactly as they were written, and the extracts that I have given are without any smoothing over or revision. These Diaries are finely modest and unaffected, and with unconscious and unintentional art they rise toward the climax with graduated and gathering force and swing and dramatic intensity. They sweep you along with a cumulative rush, and when the cry rings out at last, land in sight, your heart is in your mouth, and for a moment you think it is you that have been saved. The last two paragraphs are not improvable by anybody's art. They are literary gold, and their very pauses and uncompleted sentences have in them an eloquence not reachable by any words. The interest of this story is unquenchable. It is of the sort that time cannot decay. I have not looked at the Diaries for thirty-two years, but I find that they have lost nothing in that time. Lost? They have gained. For some subtle law all tragic human experiences gain in pathos by the perspective of time. We realize this when in Naples, when we stand musing over the poor Pompeian mother lost in the historic storm of volcanic ashes eighteen centuries ago, who lies with her child gripped close to her breast, trying to save it, and whose despair and grief have been preserved for us by the fiery envelope which took her life but eternalized her form and features. She moves us. She haunts us. She stays in our thoughts for many days. We do not know why. For she is nothing to us. She has been nothing to anyone for eighteen centuries. Whereas of the like case today we should say, poor thing, it is pitiful. And forget it in an hour. End of part two of my debut as a literary person. And end of section fifteen of The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories by Mark Twain. This is part one of At the Appetite Cure. 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. Part one of At the Appetite Cure. This establishment's name is Hochberg Haus. It is in Bohemia, a short day's journey from Vienna, and being in the Austrian Empire is, of course, a health resort. The Empire is made up of health resorts. It distributes health to the whole world. Its waters are all medicinal. They are bottled and sent throughout the earth. The natives themselves drink beer. This is self-sacrifice, apparently, but outlanders who have drunk Vienna beer have another idea about it, particularly the Pilsner, which one gets in a small cellar up an obscure back lane in the first Bezirk. The name has escaped me, but the place is easily found. You inquire for the Greek Church. And when you get to it, go right along by the next house is that little beer mill. It is remote from all traffic and all noise. It is always Sunday there. There are two small rooms with low ceilings supported by massive arches. The arches and ceilings are whitewashed, otherwise the rooms would pass for cells in the dungeons of a Bastille. The furniture is plain and cheap. There is no ornamentation anywhere. Yet it is a heaven for the self-sacrificers, for the beer there is incomparable. There is nothing like it elsewhere in the world. In the first room you will find twelve or fifteen ladies and gentlemen of civilian quality. In the other one a dozen generals and ambassadors. One may live in Vienna many months and not here of this place, but having once heard of it and sampled it, the sampler will afterward infest it. However, this is all incidental. A mere passing note of gratitude for blessings received. It has nothing to do with my subject. My subject is health resorts. All unhealthy people ought to domicile themselves in Vienna, and use that as a base, making flights from time to time to the outlying resorts, according to need. A flight to Miriambad to get rid of fat. A flight to Karlsbad to get rid of rheumatism. A flight to Kultenoitgeben to take the water cure and get rid of the rest of the diseases. It is all so handy. You can stand in Vienna and toss a biscuit into Kultenoitgeben with a twelve-inch gun. You can run out thither at any time of the day. You go by phenomenally slow trains, and yet inside of an hour you have exchanged the glare and swelter of the city for wooded hills and shady forest paths, and soft cool airs, and the music of birds, and the repose and the peace of paradise. And there are plenty of other health resorts at your service, and convenient to get at from Vienna, charming places, all of them. Vienna sits in the center of a beautiful world of mountains with now and then a lake and forests. In fact, no other city is so fortunately situated. There is an abundance of health resorts, as I have said. Among them this place, Hochberhaus. It stands solitary on the top of a densely wooded mountain, and is a building of great size. It is called the Appetite Anstalt, and people who have lost their appetites come here to get them restored. When I arrived I was taken by Professor Heimberger to his consulting room and questioned. It is six o'clock. When did you eat last? At noon. What did you eat? Next to nothing. What was on the table? The usual things. Chops, chickens, vegetables, and so on? Yes, but don't mention them. I can't bear it. Are you tired of them? Oh, utterly! I wish I might never hear of them again. The mere sight of food offends you, does it? More it revolts me." The doctor considered a while, then got out a long menu and ran his eyes slowly down it. "'I think,' said he, "'that what you need to eat is about here. Choose for yourself!' I glanced at the list, and my stomach threw a handspring. Of all the barbarous layouts that were ever contrived, this was the most atrocious. At the top stood tough, underdone, overdue tripe, garnished with garlic. Half way down the bill stood young cat, old cat, scrambled cat. At the bottom stood sailor boots, softened with tallow, served raw. The wide intervals of the bill were packed with dishes calculated to gag a cannibal. I said, "'Doctor, it is not fair to joke over so serious a case as mine. I came here to get an appetite, not to throw away the remnant that's left.' He said gravely, "'I am not joking. Why should I joke?' But I can't eat these horrors. Why not?' He said it with a naivete that was admirable, whether it was real or assumed. Why not? Because, why, doctor, for months I have seldom been able to endure anything more substantial than omelets and custards. These unspeakable dishes of yours, oh, you will come to like them. They are very good, and you must eat them. It is a rule of the place, and is strict. I cannot permit any departure from it." I said, smiling, "'Well, then, doctor, you will have to permit the departure of the patient. I am going.' He looked hurt, and said in a way which changed the aspect of things. I am sure you would not do me that injustice. I accepted you in good faith. You will not shame that confidence. This appetite cure is my whole living. If you should go forth from it with the sort of appetite which you now have, it could become known, and you can see for yourself, that people would say my cure failed in your case, and hence can fail in other cases. You will not go. You will not do me this hurt." I apologized, and said I would stay. That is right. I was sure you would not go. It would take the food from my family's mouths. Would they mind that? Do they eat these fiendish things? They? My family? His eyes were full of gentle wonder. Of course not. Oh, they don't. Do you? Certainly not. I see. It's another case of a physician who doesn't take his own medicine. I don't need it? It is six hours since you lunched. Would you have supper now or later? I am not hungry, but now is as good a time as any, and I would like to be done with it and have it off my mind. It is about my usual time, and regularity is commanded by all the authorities. Yes, I will try to nibble a little now. I wish a light horse-whipping would answer instead. The Professor handed me that odious menu. Choose, or will you have it later? Oh, dear me, show me to my room. I forgot your hard rule. Wait, just a moment before you finally decide. There is another rule. If you choose now, the order will be filled at once, but if you wait, you will have to await my pleasure. You cannot get a dish from that entire bill until I consent. All right, show me to my room, and send the cook to bed. There is not going to be any hurry. The Professor took me up one flight of stairs and showed me into a most inviting and comfortable apartment consisting of parlor, bed chamber, and bathroom. The front windows looked out over a far-reaching spread of green glades and valleys, and tumbled hills closed with forests—a noble solitude unvext by the fussy world. In the parlor were many shelves filled with books, the Professor said he would now leave me to myself, and added, Smoke, and read as much as you please. Drink all the water you like. When you get hungry, ring and give your order, and I will decide whether it shall be filled or not. Yours is a stubborn, bad case, and I think the first fourteen dishes in the bill are each and all too delicate for its needs. I ask you as a favour to restrain yourself and not call for them. Restrain myself, is it? Give yourself no uneasiness. You are going to save money by me. The idea of coaxing a sick man's appetite back with this buzzard fare is clear insanity. I said it with bitterness, for I felt outraged by this calm, cold talk over these heartless new engines of assassination. The Doctor looked grieved, but not offended. He laid the bill of fare of the commode at my bed's head, so that it would be handy, and said, Yours is not the worst case I have encountered by any means. Still, it is a bad one, and requires robust treatment. Therefore I shall be gratified if you will restrain yourself and skip down to number fifteen, and begin with that. Then he left me, and I began to undress, for I was dog-tired and very sleepy. I slept fifteen hours, and woke up finally refreshed at ten the next morning. Vienna coffee! It was the first thing I thought of, that unapproachable luxury, that sumptuous coffee-house coffee, compared with which all other European coffee and all American hotel coffee is mere fluid poverty. I rang and ordered it, also Vienna bread, that delicious invention. The servant spoke through the wicket in the door, and said, Butch, you know what he said. He referred me to the bill of fare. I allowed him to go. I had no further use for him. After the bath I dressed and started for a walk, and got as far as the door. It was locked on the outside. I rang and the servant came and explained that it was another rule. The seclusion of the patient was required until after the first meal. I had not been particularly anxious to get out before, but it was different now. Being locked in makes a person wishful to get out. I soon began to find it difficult to put in the time. At two o'clock I had been twenty-six hours without food. I had been growing hungry for some time. I recognized that I was not only hungry now, but hungry with a strong adjective in front of it. Yet I was not hungry enough to face the bill of fare. I must put in the time somehow. I would read and smoke. I did it, hour by hour. The books were all of one breed. Shipwrecks. People lost in deserts. People shut up and caved in mines. People starving in besieged cities. I read about all the revolting dishes that ever-famishing men had stayed their hunger with. During the first hours these things nauseated me. Hours followed in which they did not so affect me. Still other hours followed in which I found myself smacking my lips over some tolerably infernal messes. When I had been without food forty-five hours I ran eagerly to the bell and ordered the second dish in the bill, which was a sort of dumplings containing a compost made of caviar and tar. It was refused me. During the next fifteen hours I visited the bell every now and then and ordered a dish that was further down the list. Always a refusal. But I was conquering prejudice after prejudice right along. I was making sure progress. I was creeping up on number fifteen with deadly certainty. And my heart beat faster and faster. My hopes rose higher and higher. At last, when food had not passed my lips for sixty hours, victory was mine and I ordered number fifteen. Soft-boiled spring chicken. In the egg. Six dozen. Hot and fragrant. In fifteen minutes it was there and the doctor along with it rubbing his hands with joy. He said with great excitement, It's a cure. It's a cure. I knew I could do it. Dear sir, my grand system never failed. Never. You've got your appetite back. You know you have. Say it and make me happy. Bring on your carrion. I can eat anything in the bill. Oh, this is noble. This is splendid. But I knew I could do it. The system never fails. How are the birds? Never was anything so delicious in the world. And yet as a rule I don't care for game. But don't interrupt me. Don't. I can't spare my mouth. I really can't. Then the doctor said, The cure is perfect. There is no more doubt, no danger. Let the poultry alone. I can trust you with a beef steak now. The beef steak came as much as a basket full of it. With potatoes and Vienna bread and coffee. And I ate a meal then that was worth all the costly preparation I had made for it. And dripped tears of gratitude into the gravy all the time. Gratitude to the doctor for putting a little plain common sense into me when I had been empty of it so many, many years. End of part one of At the Appetite Cure. And end of section sixteen of The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories by Mark Twain. This is part two of At the Appetite Cure. 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 seventeen. At the Appetite Cure. Part two. Thirty years ago Heimberger went off on a long voyage in a sailing ship. There were fifteen passengers on board. The table fair was of the regulation pattern of the day. At seven in the morning a cup of bad coffee in bed. At nine breakfast, bad coffee with condensed milk, soggy rolls, crackers, saltfish. At one p.m. luncheon, cold tongue, cold ham, cold corned beef, soggy cold rolls, crackers. Five p.m. dinner, thick pea soup, saltfish, hot corned beef and sauerkraut, boiled pork and beans, pudding. Nine until eleven p.m. supper, tea with condensed milk, cold tongue, cold ham, pickles, sea biscuit, pickled oysters, pickled pigs feet, grilled bones, golden buck. At the end of the first week eating had ceased. Nibbling had taken its place. The passengers came to the table but it was partly to put in the time and partly because the wisdom of the ages commanded them to be regular in their meals. They were tired of the course and monotonous fare and took no interest in it, had no appetite for it. All day and every day they roamed the ship half hungry, plagued by their gnawing stomachs, moody, untalkative, miserable. Among them were three confirmed dyspeptics. These became shadows in the course of three weeks. There was also a bed-ridden invalid. He lived on boiled rice. He could not look at the regular dishes. Now came shipwrecks and life in open boats, with the usual paucity of food. Provisions ran lower and lower. The appetites improved then. When nothing was left but raw ham and the ration of that was down to two ounces a day per person, the appetites were perfect. At the end of fifteen days the dyspeptics, the invalid, and the most delicate ladies in the party were chewing sailor-boots in ecstasy and only complaining because the supply of them was limited. Yet these were the same people who couldn't endure the ship's tedious corn-beef and sauerkraut and other crudities. They were rescued by an English vessel. Within ten days the whole fifteen were in as good condition as they had been when the shipwreck occurred. They had suffered no damage by their adventure, said the Professor. Do you note that? Yes. Do you note it well? Yes, I think I do. But you don't. You hesitate. You don't rise to the importance of it. I will say it again, with emphasis. Not one of them suffered any damage. And now I begin to see. Yes, it was indeed remarkable. Nothing of the kind. It was perfectly natural. There was no reason why they should suffer damage. They were undergoing nature's appetite cure, the best and wisest in the world. Is that where you got your idea? That is where I got it. It taught those people a valuable lesson. What makes you think that? Why shouldn't it? You seem to think it taught you one. That is nothing to the point. I am not a fool. I see. Were they fools? They were human beings. Is it the same thing? Why do you ask? You know it yourself. As regards his health and the rest of the things, the average man is what his environment and his superstitions have made him, and their function is to make him an ass. He can't add up three or four new circumstances together and perceive what they mean. It is beyond him. He is not capable of observing for himself. He has to get everything at second hand. If what are miscalled the lower animals were as silly as man is, they would all perish from the earth in a year. Those passengers learned no lesson then? Not a sign of it. They went to their regular meals in the English ship, and pretty soon they were nibbling again, nibbling appetiteless, disgusted with the food, moody, miserable, half hungry, their outraged stomach cursing and swearing and whining and supplicating all day long, and in vain for they were the stomachs of fools. Then, as I understand it, your scheme is quite simple. Don't eat until you are hungry. If the food fails to taste good, fails to satisfy you, rejoice you, comfort you. Don't eat again until you are very hungry. Then it will rejoice you, and do you good, too. And I am to reserve no regularity as to ours? Then you are conquering a bad appetite no. After it is conquered, regularity is no harm, so long as the appetite remains good. As soon as the appetite wavers apply the corrective again, which is starvation, long or short according to the needs of the case. The best diet, I suppose. I mean the wholesomeest. All diets are wholesome. Some are wholesomeer than others, but all the ordinary diets are wholesome enough for the people who use them. Whether the food be fine or course it will taste good and it will nourish if a watch be kept upon the appetite, and a little starvation introduced every time it weakens. Nonsan was used to find fair, but when his meals were restricted to bear meat months at a time he suffered no damage and no discomfort because his appetite was kept at par through the difficulty of getting his bear meat regularly. But doctors arrange carefully considered and delicate diets for invalids. They can't help it. The invalid is full of inherited superstitions and won't starve himself. He believes it would certainly kill him. It would weaken him, wouldn't it? Nothing to hurt. Look at the invalids in our shipwreck. They lived fifteen days on pinches of raw ham, a suck at sailor boots, and general starvation. It weakened them, but it didn't hurt them. It put them in fine shape to eat heartily of hearty food and build themselves up to a condition of robust health. But they did not know enough to profit by that. They lost their opportunity. They remained invalids. It served them right. Do you know the trick that the health resort doctors play? What is it? My system disguised. Covert starvation. Grape cure, bath cure, mud cure. It is all the same. The grape and the bath and the mud make a show and do a trifle of the work. The real work is done by the surreptitious starvation. The patient accustomed to four meals and late hours, at both ends of the day, now consider what he has to do at a health resort. He gets up at six in the morning, eats one egg, tramps up and down a promenade two hours with the other fools, eats a butterfly, slowly drinks a glass of filtered sewage that smells like a buzzard's breath, promenades another two hours but alone. If you speak to him, he says anxiously, my water, I am walking off my water, please don't interrupt, and goes stomping along again. Eats a candied rose leaf, lies at rest in the silence and solitude of his room for hours, mustn't read, mustn't smoke. The doctor comes and feels of his heart now and his pulse, and thumps his breast and his back and his stomach, and listens for results through a penny flageolet, then orders the man's bath, half a degree, rameur, cooler than yesterday, after the bath another egg, a glass of sewage at three or four in the afternoon, and the promenade solemnly with the other freaks. Dinner at six, half a doughnut and a cup of tea. Walk again. Half past eight, supper, more butterfly. At nine to bed. Six weeks of disregiment, think of it. It starves a man out and puts him in splendid condition. It would have the same effect in London, New York, Jericho, anywhere. How long does it take to put a person in condition here? It ought to take but a day or two, but in fact it takes from one to six weeks, according to the character and mentality of the patient. How is that? Do you see that crowd of women playing football and boxing and jumping fences yonder? They have been here six or seven weeks. They were spectral poor weaklings when they came. They were accustomed to nibbling at dainties and delicacies at set hours four times a day, and they had no appetite for anything. I questioned them, and then locked them into their rooms, the frailest ones to starve nine or ten hours, the others twelve or fifteen. Before long they began to beg, and indeed they suffered a good deal. They complained of nausea, headaches, and so on. It was good to see them eat when the time was up. They could not remember when the devouring of a meal had afforded them such rapture. That was their word. Now, then, that ought to have ended their cure, but it didn't. They were free to go to any meals in the house, and they chose their accustomed for. Within a day or two I had to interfere. Their appetites were weakening. I made them knock out a meal. That set them up again. Then they resumed the four. I begged them to learn to knock out a meal themselves without waiting for me. Up to a fortnight ago they couldn't. They really hadn't manhood enough, but they were gaining it, and now I think they are safe. They drop out a meal every now and then of their own accord. They are in fine condition now, and they might safely go home, I think, but their confidence is not quite perfect yet, so they are waiting a while. Other cases are different. Oh, yes. Sometimes a man learns the whole trick in a week, learns to regulate his appetite and keep it in perfect order, learns to drop out a meal with frequency and not mind it. But why drop the entire meal out? Why not a part of it? It's a poor device and inadequate. If the stomach doesn't call vigorously, with a shout, as you may say, it is better not to pester it, but just give it a real rest. Some people can eat more meals than others and still thrive. There are all sorts of people and all sorts of appetites. I will show you a man presently who was accustomed to nibble at eight meals a day. It was beyond the proper gait of his appetite by two. I have got him down to six a day now, and he is all right and enjoys life. How many meals do you affect per day? Formerly, for twenty-two years, a meal and a half. During the past two years, two and a half. Coffee and a roll at nine. Luncheon at one. Dinner at seven thirty or eight. Formerly, a meal and a half. That is, coffee and a roll at nine. Dinner in the evening. Nothing between, is that it? Yes. Why did you add a meal? It was the family's idea. They were uneasy. They thought I was killing myself. You found a meal and a half per day enough? All through the twenty-two years? Plenty. Your present poor condition is due to the extra meal. Drop it out. You are trying to eat oftener than your stomach demands. You don't gain. You lose. You eat less food now in a day on two and a half meals than you formerly ate on one and a half. True. A good deal less. For in those old days my dinner was a very sizable thing. Put yourself on a single meal a day now. Dinner for a few days. Till you secure a good sound, regular trustworthy appetite. Then take to your one and a half permanently and don't listen to the family anymore. When you have any ordinary ailment, particularly of a feverish sort, eat nothing at all during twenty-four hours. That will cure it. It will cure the stubbornness cold in the head too. No cold in the head can survive twenty-four hours unmodified starvation. I know it. I have proved it many a time. End of part two at the Appetite Cure. And end of section seventeen of The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories by Mark Twain. This is Concerning the Jews. 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 18 Concerning the Jews. Some months ago I published a magazine article, note one, see Stirring Times in Austria in this volume, a magazine article descriptive of a remarkable scene in the Imperial Parliament in Vienna. Since then I have received from Jews in America several letters of inquiry. They were difficult letters to answer for they were not very definite. But at last I have received a definite one. It is from a lawyer, and he really asks the questions which the other writers probably believed they were asking. By help of this text I will do the best I can to publicly answer this correspondent and also the others, at the same time apologizing for having failed to reply privately. The lawyer's letter reads as follows, I have read Stirring Times in Austria. One point in particular is of vital import to not a few thousand people, including myself, being a point about which I have often wanted to address a question to some disinterested person. The show of military force in the Austrian Parliament, which precipitated the riots, was not introduced by any Jew. No Jew was a member of that body. No Jewish question was involved in the Ausgleich or in the language proposition. No Jew was insulting anybody. In short, no Jew was doing any mischief toward anybody whatsoever. In fact, the Jews were the only ones of the 19 different races in Austria which did not have a party. They are absolute non-participants. Yet in your article you say that in the rioting which followed, all classes of people were unanimous only on one thing, these, in being against the Jews. Now will you kindly tell me why, in your judgment, the Jews have thus ever been, and are even now, in these days of supposed intelligence, the but of baseless, vicious animosities. I dare say that for centuries there has been no more quiet, undisturbing and well-behaving citizen as a class than that same Jew. It seems to me that ignorance and fanaticism cannot alone account for these horrible and unjust persecutions. Tell me, therefore, from your advantage point of cold view, what in your mind is the cause? Can American Jews do anything to correct it either in America or abroad? Will it ever come to an end? Will a Jew be permitted to live honestly, decently, and peaceably like the rest of mankind? What has become of the Golden Rule? I will begin by saying that if I thought myself prejudiced against the Jew I should hold it fairest to leave this subject to a person not crippled in that way, but I think I have no such prejudice. A few years ago a Jew observed to me that there was no uncourteous reference to his people in my books and asked how it happened. It happened because the disposition was lacking. I am quite sure that, bar one, I have no race prejudices, and I think I have no color prejudices, nor caste prejudices, nor creed prejudices. Indeed, I know it. I can stand any society. All that I care to know is that a man is a human being. That is enough for me. He can't be any worse. I have no special regard for Satan, but I can at least claim that I have no prejudice against him. It may even be that I lean a little his way on account of his not having a fair show. All religions issue Bibles against him, and say the most injurious things about him, but we never hear his side. We have none but the evidence for the prosecution, and yet we have rendered the verdict. To my mind this is irregular. It is un-English. It is un-American. It is French. Without this precedent, Dreyfus could not have been condemned. Of course Satan has some kind of a case. It goes without saying. It may be a poor one, but that is nothing. That can be said about any of us. As soon as I can get at the facts, I will undertake his rehabilitation myself, if I can find an un-Politic publisher. It is a thing which we ought to be willing to do for anyone who is under a cloud. We may not pay Satan reverence, for that would be indiscreet, but we can at least respect his talents. A person who has, during all time, maintained the imposing position of spiritual head of four-fifths of the human race, and political head of the whole of it, must be granted the possession of executive abilities of the loftiest order. In his large presence the other popes and politicians shrink to midges for the microscope. I would like to see him. I would rather see him and shake him by the tail than any other member of the European concert. In the present paper I shall allow myself to use the word Jew as if it stood for both religion and race. It is handy, and besides, that is what the term means to the general world. In the above letter one notes these points. One, the Jew is a well-behaved citizen. Two, can ignorance and fanaticism alone account for his unjust treatment? Three, can Jews do anything to improve the situation? Four, the Jews have no party. They are non-participants. Five, will the persecution ever come to an end? Six, what has become of the Golden Rule? Point number one, we must grant proposition number one for several sufficient reasons. The Jew is not a disturber of the peace of any country. Even his enemies will concede that. He is not a loafer. He is not a sought. He is not noisy. He is not a brawler nor a rioter. He is not quarrelsome. In the statistics of crime his presence is conspicuously rare in all countries. With murder and other crimes of violence he has but little to do. He is a stranger to the hangman. In the police court's daily long roll of assaults and drunken disorderlies his name seldom appears. That the Jewish home is a home in the truest sense is a fact which no one will dispute. The family is knitted together by the strongest affections. Its members show each other every due respect. And reverence for the elders is an inviolate law of the house. The Jew is not a burden on the charities of the state nor of the city. These could cease from their functions without affecting him. When he is well enough he works. When he is incapacitated his own people take care of him. And not in a poor and stingy way but with a fine and large benevolence. His race is entitled to be called the most benevolent of all the races of men. A Jewish beggar is not impossible perhaps, such a thing may exist. But there are few men that can say they have seen that spectacle. The Jew has been staged in many uncomplementary forms, but so far as I know no dramatist has done him the injustice to stage him as a beggar. Whenever a Jew has real need to beg his people save him from the necessity of doing it. The charitable institutions of the Jews are supported by Jewish money and amply. The Jews make no noise about it. It is done quietly. They do not nag and pester and harass us for contributions. They give us peace and set us an example. An example which we have not found ourselves able to follow. For by nature we are not free-givers and have to be patiently and persistently hunted down in the interest of the unfortunate. These facts are all on the credit side of the proposition that the Jew is a good and orderly citizen. Summed up they certify that he is quiet, peaceable, industrious, unaddicted to high crimes and brutal dispositions, that his family life is commendable, that he is not a burden upon public charities, that he is not a beggar, that in benevolence he is above the reach of competition. These are the very quintessentials of good citizenship. If you can add that he is as honest as the average of his neighbors, but I think that question is affirmatively answered by the fact that he is a successful businessman. The basis of successful business is honesty. A business cannot thrive where the parties to it cannot trust each other. In the matter of numbers the Jew counts for little in the overwhelming population of New York, but that his honesty counts for much is guaranteed by the fact that the immense wholesale business of Broadway from the battery to Union Square is substantially in his hands. I suppose that the most picturesque example in history of a trader's trust in his fellow trader was one where it was not Christian trusting Christian, but Christian trusting Jew. That Hessian duke, who used to sell his subjects to George III to fight George Washington with, got rich at it, and by and by when the wars engendered by the French Revolution made his throne too warm for him he was obliged to fly the country. He was in a hurry and had to leave his earnings behind. Nine million dollars. He had to risk the money with someone without security. He did not select a Christian, but a Jew. A Jew of only modest means, but of high character. A character so high that it left him lonesome. Rothschild of Frankfurt. Thirty years later, when Europe had become quiet and safe again, the duke came back from overseas, and the Jew returned the loan with interest added. Note number two. Here is another piece of picturesque history. It reminds us that shabbiness and dishonesty are not the monopoly of any race or creed, but are merely human. Congress has passed a bill to pay $379.56 to Moses Pendergrass of Libertyville, Missouri. The story of the reason of this liberality is pathetically interesting and shows the sort of pickle that an honest man may get into who undertakes to do an honest job of work for Uncle Sam. In 1886, Moses Pendergrass put in a bid for the contract to carry the mail on the route from Knoblick to Libertyville and Coffman, 30 miles a day, from July 1, 1887, for one years. He got the postmaster at Knoblick to write the letter for him, and while Moses intended that his bid should be $400, his scribe carelessly made it $4. Moses got the contract and did not find out about the mistake until the end of the first quarter, when he got his first pay. When he found at what rate he was working, he was sorely cast down and opened communication with the post office department. The department informed him that he must either carry out his contract or throw it up, and that if he threw it up, his bondsman would have to pay the government $1,459.85 damages. So Moses carried out his contract, walked 30 miles every weekday for a year, and carried the mail, and received for his labor $4, or, to be accurate, $6.84. For the route being extended after his bid was accepted, his pay was proportionately increased. Now, after ten years, a bill was finally passed to pay to Moses the difference between what he earned in that unlucky year and what he received. The son, which tells the above story, says that bills were introduced in three or four Congresses for Moses's relief, and that committees repeatedly investigated his claim. It took six Congresses, containing in their persons the compressed virtues of seventy million of people, and cautiously and carefully giving expression to those virtues in the fear of God and the next election, eleven years to find out some way to cheat a fellow Christian out of about thirteen dollars on his honestly executed contract, and out of nearly three hundred dollars do him on its enlarged terms, and they succeeded. During the same time they paid out one billion dollars in pensions, a third of it unearned and undeserved. This indicates a splendid all round competency and theft, for it starts with farthings and works its industries all the way up to ship-loads. It may be possible that the Jews can beat this, but the man that bets on it is taking chances. END OF NOTE TWO The Jew has his other side. He has some discreditable ways, though he has not a monopoly of them, because he cannot get entirely rid of vexatious Christian competition. We have seen that he seldom transgresses the laws against crimes of violence, indeed his dealings with courts are almost restricted to matters connected with commerce. He has a reputation for various small forms of cheating, and for practicing oppressive usury, and for burning himself out to get the insurance, and for arranging cunning contracts which leave him in exit but lock the other man in, and for smart evasions which find him safe and comfortable just within the strict letter of the law when court and jury know very well that he has violated the spirit of it. He is a frequent and faithful and capable officer in the civil service, but he is charged with an unpatriotic disinclination to stand by the flag as a soldier, like the Christian Quaker. Now if you offset these discreditable features by the creditable ones summarized in a preceding paragraph beginning with the words, these facts are all on the credit side, and strike a balance, what must the verdict be? This, I think, that the merits and demerits being fairly weighed and measured on both sides, the Christian can claim no superiority over the Jew in the matter of good citizenship. Yet in all countries from the dawn of history the Jew has been persistently and implacably hated, and with frequency persecuted. Point number two, can fanaticism alone account for this? Years ago I used to think that it was responsible for nearly all of it, but laterally I have come to think that this was an error. Indeed, it is now my conviction that it is responsible for hardly any of it. In this connection I call to mind Genesis chapter forty-eight. We have all, thoughtfully or unthoughtfully, read the pathetic story of the years of plenty and the years of famine in Egypt, and how Joseph, with that opportunity, made a corner in broken hearts and the crusts of the poor and human liberty. A corner whereby he took a nation's money all away, to the last penny, took a nation's livestock all away, to the last hoof, took a nation's land away, to the last acre, then took the nation itself, buying it for bread, man by man, woman by woman, child by child, till all were slaves. A corner which took everything, left nothing. A corner so stupendous that, by comparison with it, the most gigantic corners in subsequent history are but baby things. For it dealt in hundreds of millions of bushels, and its profits were reckonable by hundreds of millions of dollars, and it was a disaster so crushing that its effects have not wholly disappeared from Egypt today, more than three thousand years after the event. Is it, presumably, that the eye of Egypt was upon Joseph the foreign Jew all this time? I think it likely. Was it friendly? We must doubt it. Was Joseph establishing a character for his race which could survive long in Egypt? And in time would his name come to be familiarly used to express that character like Shilox? It is hardly to be doubted. Let us remember that this was centuries before the crucifixion. I wish to come down eighteen hundred years later and refer to a remark made by one of the Latin historians. I read it in a translation many years ago, and it comes back to me now with force. It was alluding to a time when people were still living who could have seen the Saviour in the flesh. Christianity was so new that the people of Rome had hardly heard of it, and had but confused notions of what it was. The substance of the remark was this. Some Christians were persecuted in Rome through error, they being mistaken for Jews. The meaning seems plain. These pagans had nothing against Christians, but they were quite ready to persecute Jews. For some reason or other they hated a Jew before they even knew what a Christian was. May I not assume then that the persecution of Jews is a thing which anti-dates Christianity and was not born of Christianity? I think so. What was the origin of the feeling? When I was a boy, in the back settlements of the Mississippi Valley, where a gracious and beautiful Sunday school simplicity and practicality prevailed, the Yankee, citizen of the New England States, was hated with a splendid energy, but religion had nothing to do with it. In a trade the Yankee was held to be about five times the match of the Westerner. His shrewdness, his insight, his judgment, his knowledge, his enterprise, and his formidable cleverness in applying these forces were frankly confessed and most competently cursed. In the cotton states, after the war, the simple and ignorant Negroes made the crops for the white planter on shares. The Jew came down in force, set up shop on the plantation, supplied all the Negroes' wants on credit, and at the end of the season was proprietor of the Negroes' share of the present crop and of part of his share of the next one. Before long the whites detested the Jew, and it is doubtful if the Negro loved him. The Jew is being legislated out of Russia. The reason is not concealed. The movement was instituted because the Christian peasant and villager stood no chance against his commercial abilities. He was always ready to lend money on a crop and sell vodka and other necessities of life on credit while the crop was growing. When settlement day came he owned the crop, and next year or year after he owned the farm, like Joseph. In the dull and ignorant English of John's time everybody got into debt to the Jew. He gathered all lucrative enterprises into his hands. He was the king of commerce. He was ready to be helpful in all profitable ways. He even financed crusades for the rescue of the sepulcher. To wipe out his account with the nation and restore business to its natural and incompetent channels, he had to be banished the realm. For the like reasons Spain had to banish him four hundred years ago and Austria about a couple of centuries later. In all the ages Christian Europe has been obliged to curtail his activities. If he entered upon a mechanical trade the Christian had to retire from it. If he set up as a doctor he was the best one and he took the business. If he exploited agriculture the other farmers had to get at something else. Since there was no way to successfully compete with him in any vocation the law had to step in and save the Christian from the poor house. Trade after trade was taken away from the Jew by statute till practically none was left. He was forbidden to engage in agriculture. He was forbidden to practice law. He was forbidden to practice medicine, except among Jews. He was forbidden the handicrafts. Even the seats of learning and the schools of science had to be closed against this tremendous antagonist. Still, almost bereft of employments, he found ways to make money, even ways to get rich. Also ways to invest his takings well, for usury was not denied him. In the hard conditions suggested the Jew without brains could not survive and the Jew with brains had to keep them in good training and well sharpened up or starve. Ages of restriction to the one tool which the law was not able to take from him, his brain, have made that tool singularly competent. Ages of compulsory disuse of his hands have atrophied them, and he never uses them now. This history has a very, very commercial look. A most sordid and practical commercial look. The business aspect of a Chinese cheap labour crusade. Religious prejudices may account for one part of it, but not for the other nine. Protestants have persecuted Catholics, but they did not take their livelihoods away from them. The Catholics have persecuted the Protestants with bloody and awful bitterness, but they never closed agriculture and handicrafts against them. Why was that? That has the candid look of genuine religious persecution, not a trade union boycott in a religious dispute. The Jews are harried and obstructed in Austria and in Germany and lately in France, but England and America give them an open field and yet survive. Scotland offers them an unembarrassed field too, but there are not many takers. There are a few Jews in Glasgow, and one in Aberdeen, but that is because they can't earn enough to get away. The Scotch pay themselves that compliment, but it is authentic. I feel convinced that the crucifixion has not much to do with the world's attitude toward the Jew, that the reasons for it are older than that event suggested by Egypt's experience, and by Rome's regret for having persecuted an unknown quantity called a Christian under the mistaken impression that she was merely persecuting a Jew, merely a Jew, a skinned eel who was used to it, presumably. I am persuaded that in Russia, Austria, and Germany, nine-tenths of the hostility to the Jew comes from the average Christian's inability to compete successfully with the average Jew in business, in either straight business or the questionable sort. In Berlin a few years ago, I read a speech which frankly urged the expulsion of the Jews from Germany, and the agitator's reason was as frank as his proposition. It was this, that eighty-five percent of the successful lawyers of Berlin were Jews, and that about the same percentage of the great and lucrative businesses of all sorts in Germany were in the hands of the Jewish race. Isn't it an amazing confession? It was but another way of saying that in a population of 48 million of whom only 500,000 were registered as Jews, eighty-five percent of the brains and honesty of the whole was lodged in the Jews. I must insist upon the honesty. It is an essential of successful business, taken by and large. Of course it does not rule out rascals entirely, even among Christians, but it is a good working rule nevertheless. The speaker's figures may have been inexact, but the motive of persecution stands out as clear as day. The man claimed that in Berlin the banks, the newspapers, the theatres, the great mercantile, shipping, mining, and manufacturing interests, the big army and city contracts, the tramways, and pretty much all properties of high value and also the small businesses, were in the hands of the Jews. He said the Jew was pushing the Christians to the wall, all along the line, that it was all a Christian could do to scrape together a living, and that the Jew must be banished, and soon there was no other way of saving the Christian. Here in Vienna, last autumn, an agitator said that all these disastrous details were true of Austria Hungary also, and in fierce language he demanded the expulsion of the Jews. When politicians come out without a blush and read the baby act in this frank way, unrebuked, it is a very good indication that they have a market back of them, and nowhere to fish for votes. You note the crucial point of the mentioned agitation. The argument is that the Christian cannot compete with the Jew, and that hence his very bread is in peril. To human beings this is a much more hate-inspiring thing than is any detail connected with religion. With most people, of a necessity, bread and meat take first rank, religion second. I am convinced that the persecution of the Jew is not due in any large degree to religious prejudice. No, the Jew is a money-getter. And in getting his money he is a very serious obstruction to less capable neighbors who are on the same quest. I think that that is the trouble. In estimating worldly value the Jew is not shallow, but deep. With precocious wisdom he found out in the morning of time that some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, and that over these ideals they dispute and cannot unite, but that they all worship money, so he made it the end and aim of his life to get it. He was added in Egypt thirty-six centuries ago. He was added in Rome when that Christian got persecuted by mistake for him. He has been at it ever since. The cost to him has been heavy. His success has made the whole human race his enemy, but it has paid for it has brought him envy, and that is the only thing which men will sell both soul and body to get. He long ago observed that a millionaire commands respect, a two millionaire homage, a multi-millionaire the deepest deeps of adoration. We all know that feeling. We have seen it express itself. We have noticed that when the average man mentions the name of a multi-millionaire he does it with that mixture in his voice of awe and reverence and lust, which burns in a Frenchman's eye when it falls on another man's sanctime. .4 The Jews have no party. They are non-participants. Perhaps you have let the secret out and given yourself away. It seems hardly a credit to the race that it is able to say that, or to you, sir, that you can say it without remorse. More that you should offer it as a plea against maltreatment, injustice, and oppression. Who gives the Jew the right? Who gives any race the right to sit still in a free country and let somebody else look after its safety? The oppressed Jew was entitled to all pity in the former times under brutal atrocities, for he was weak and friendless, and had no way to help his case. But he has ways now, and he has had them for a century, but I do not see that he has tried to make serious use of them. When the revolution set him free in France it was an act of grace, the grace of other people. He does not appear in it as a helper. I do not know that he helped when England set him free. Among the twelve sane men of France who have stepped forward with great Zola at their head to fight and win, I hope and believe. Note three. The article was written in the summer of 1898. To fight the battle for the most infamously misused Jew of modern times, do you find a great or rich or illustrious Jew helping? In the United States he was created free in the beginning. He did not need to help, of course. In Austria and Germany and France he has a vote. But of what considerable use is it to him? He doesn't seem to know how to apply it to the best effect. With all his splendid capacities and all his fat wealth he is today not politically important in any country. In America, as early as 1854, the ignorant Irish hod carrier, who had a spirit of his own and a way of exposing it to the weather, made it apparent to all that he must be politically reckoned with. Yet fifteen years before that we hardly knew what an Irishman looked like. As an intelligent force and numerically he has always been a way down, but he has governed the country just the same. It was because he was organized. It made his vote valuable, in fact, essential. You will say the Jew is everywhere numerically feeble. That is nothing to the point with the Irishman's history for an object lesson. But I am coming to your numerical feebleness presently. In all parliamentary countries you could no doubt elect Jews to the legislature and even one member in such a body is sometimes a force which counts. How deeply have you concerned yourselves about this in Austria, France, and Germany, or even in America for that matter? You remark that the Jews were not to blame for the riots in this Reichsracht here, and you add with satisfaction that there wasn't one in that body. That is not strictly correct. If it were, would it not be in order for you to explain it and apologize for it, not try to make a merit of it? But I think that the Jew was by no means in his large force there as he ought to have been with his chances. Austria opens the suffrage to him on fairly liberal terms, and it must surely be his own fault that he is so much in the background politically. As to your numerical weakness. I mentioned some figures a while ago, five hundred thousand, as the Jewish population of Germany. I will add some more. Six million in Russia, five million in Austria, two hundred and fifty thousand in the United States. I take them from memory. I read them in the Encyclopedia Britannica, ten or twelve years ago. Still I am entirely sure of them. If those statistics are correct, my argument is not as strong as it ought to be as concerns America, but it still has strength. It is plenty strong enough as concerns Austria. For ten years ago, five million was nine percent of the empire's population. The Irish would govern the Kingdom of Heaven if they had a strength there like that. I have some suspicions. I got them at second hand, but they have remained with me these ten or twelve years. When I read in the E.B. that the Jewish population of the United States was two hundred and fifty thousand, I wrote the editor and explained to him that I was personally acquainted with more Jews than that in my country, and that his figures were without a doubt a misprint for twenty-five million. I also added that I was personally acquainted with that many there, but that was only to raise his confidence in me, for it was not true. His answer miscarried and I never got it. But I went around talking about the matter, and people told me they had reason to suspect that for business reasons many Jews whose dealings were mainly with the Christians did not report themselves as Jews in the census. It looked plausible. It looks plausible yet. Look at the city of New York, and look at Boston, and Philadelphia, New Orleans, and Chicago, and Cincinnati, and San Francisco, how your race swarms in those places, and everywhere else in America, down to the least little village. Read the signs on the marts of commerce and on the shops. Goldstein, Goldstone, Adelstein, Preciousstone, Blumenthal, Flowerveil, Rosenthal, Roseveil, Weichenduft, Violentoder, Zinkvogel, Songbird, Rosenweich, Rosebranch, and all the amazing list of beautiful and enviable names which Prussia and Austria glorified you with so long ago. It is another instance of Europe's course and cruel persecution of your race. Not that it was course and cruel to outfit it with pretty and poetical names like those, but it was course and cruel to make it pay for them, or else take such hideous and often indecent names that today their owners never use them, or if they do only on official papers. And it was the many, not the few, who got the odious names, they being too poor to bribe the officials to grant them better ones. Now why was the race renamed? I have been told that in Prussia it was given to using fictitious names and often changing them so as to beat the tax-gatherer, escape military service, and so on. And that finally the idea was hit upon of furnishing all the inmates of a house with one and the same surname, and then holding the house responsible right along for those inmates, and accountable for any disappearances that might occur. It made the Jews keep track of each other for self-interest's sake, and saved the government the trouble. Note four. In Austria the renaming was merely done because the Jews in some newly acquired regions had no surnames, but were mostly named Abraham and Moses, and therefore the tax-gatherer could tell Tother from which, and was likely to lose his reason over the matter. The renaming was put into the hands of the war department, and a charming mess the graceless young lieutenants made of it. To them a Jew was of no sort of consequence, and they labelled the race in a way to make the angels weep. As an example take these to Abraham Belliak, and Shmuel Godbe Damned, called from Naaman's Studien by Carl Emile Francis. End of note four. If that explanation of how the Jews of Prussia came to be renamed is correct, if it is true that they fictitiously registered themselves to gain certain advantages, it may possibly be true that in America they refrain from registering themselves as Jews to fend off the damaging prejudices of the Christian customer. I have no way of knowing whether this notion is well founded or not. There may be other and better ways of explaining why only that poor little two hundred and fifty thousand of our Jews got into the encyclopedia. I may, of course, be mistaken, but I am strongly of the opinion that we have an immense Jewish population in America. Point number three. Can Jews do anything to improve the situation? I think so. If I may make a suggestion without seeming to be trying to teach my grandmother to suck eggs, I will offer it. In our days we have learned the value of combination. We apply it everywhere in railway systems, in trusts, in trade unions, in salvation armies, in minor politics, in major politics, in European concerts. Whatever our strength may be, big or little, we organize it. We have found out that that is the only way to get the most out of it that is in it. We know the weakness of individual sticks and the strength of the concentrated faggot. Suppose you try a scheme like this, for instance. In England and America, put every Jew on the census book as a Jew, in case you have not been doing that. Get up volunteer regimens, composed of Jews solely, and when the drum beats, fall in and go to the front, so as to remove the reproach that you have few messanas among you and that you feed on a country but don't like to fight for it. Next, in politics organize your strength, band together, and deliver the casting vote where you can, and, where you can't, compel as good terms as possible. You huddle to yourselves already in all countries, but you huddle to no sufficient purpose, politically speaking. You do not seem to be organized, except for your charities. There you are omnipotent. There you compel your due of recognition. You do not have to beg for it. It shows what you can do when you band together for a definite purpose. And then, from America and England, you can encourage your race in Austria, France, and Germany, and materially help it. It was a pathetic tale that was told by a poor Jew a fortnight ago during the riots, after he had been raided by the Christian peasantry and despoiled of everything he had. He said his vote was of no value to him, and he wished he could be excused from casting it, for indeed casting it was a sure damage to him, since, no matter which party he voted for, the other party would come straight and take its revenge out of him. Nine percent of the population, these Jews, and apparently they cannot put a plank into any candidate's platform. If you will send our Irish lads over here, I think they will organize your race and change the aspect of the Reichsracht. You seem to think that the Jews take no hand in politics here, that they are absolutely non-participants. I am assured by men competent to speak that this is a very large error, that the Jews are exceedingly active in politics all over the Empire, but that they scatter their work and their votes among the numerous parties and thus lose the advantages to be had by concentration. I think that in America they scatter too, but you know more about that than I do. Speaking of concentration, Dr. Herzl has a clear insight into the value of that. Have you heard of his plan? He wishes to gather the Jews of the world together in Palestine, with a government of their own, under the suzerainty of the Sultan, I suppose. At the Convention of Barron last year there were delegates from everywhere, and the proposal was received with decided favour. I am not the Sultan and I am not objecting, but if that concentration of the cunningest brains in the world were going to be made in a free country, bar Scotland, I think it would be politic to stop it. It will not be well to let that race find out its strength. If the horses knew theirs, we should not ride any more. 5. Will the persecution of the Jews ever come to an end? On the score of religion I think it has already come to an end. On the score of race prejudice and trade I have the idea that it will continue. That is, here and there in spots about the world where a barbarous ignorance and a sort of mere animal civilization prevail. But I do not think that elsewhere the Jew need now stand in any fear of being robbed and raided. Among the high civilizations he seems to be very comfortably situated indeed, and to have more than his proportionate share of the prosperity he's going. It has that look in Vienna. I suppose the race prejudice cannot be removed, but he can stand that. It is no particular matter. By his make and ways he is substantially a foreigner wherever he may be, and even the angels dislike a foreigner. I am using this word foreigner in the German sense, stranger. Nearly all of us have an antipathy to a stranger, even of our own nationality. We pile grip-sacks in a vacant seat to keep him from getting in, and a dog goes further and does as a savage would, challenges him on the spot. The German dictionary seems to make no distinction between a stranger and a foreigner. In its view a stranger is a foreigner, a sound position I think. You will always be, by ways and habits and predilections, substantially strangers, foreigners, wherever you are, and that will probably keep the race prejudice against you alive. But you were the favourites of heaven originally, and your manifold and unfair prosperity's convinced me that you have crowded back into that snug place again. Here is an incident that is significant. Last week in Vienna a hail storm struck the prodigious central cemetery and made wasteful destruction there. In the Christian part of it, according to the official figures, 621 window panes were broken, more than 900 singing birds were killed, five great trees and many small ones were torn to shreds, and the shreds scattered far and wide by the wind. The ornamental plants and other decorations of the graces were ruined, and more than 100 tomb lanterns shattered, and it took the cemetery's whole force of 300 laborers, more than three days, to clear the storm's wreckage. In the report occurs this remark, and in its italics you can hear it grit its Christian teeth. Not a hailstone hit the Jewish reservation. Such nepotism makes me tired. Point number six, what has become of the Golden Rule? It exists, it continues to sparkle and is well taken care of. It is exhibit A in the church's assets, and we pull it out every Sunday and give it an airing. But you are not permitted to try to smuggle it into this discussion where it is irrelevant and would not feel at home. It is strictly religious furniture, like an acolyte, or a contribution plate, or any of those things. It is never intruded into business, and Jewish persecution is not a religious passion. It is a business passion. To conclude, if the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of stardust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also way out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvellous fight in this world in all the ages, and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself and be excused for it. The Egyptians, the Babylonians, and the Persian arose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away. The Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone. Other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now or have vanished. The Jews saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal to the Jew, all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality? Post-Script The Jew as Soldier When I published the above article in Harper's Monthly, I was ignorant, like the rest of the Christian world, of the fact that the Jew had a record as a soldier. I have since seen the official statistics, and I find that he furnished soldiers and high officers to the Revolution, the War of 1812, and the Mexican War. In the Civil War he was represented in the armies and navies of both the North and the South by ten percent of his numerical strength, the same percentage that was furnished by the Christian populations of the two sections. This large fact means more than it seems to mean, for it means that the Jew's patriotism was not merely level with the Christians, but over-passed it. When the Christian volunteer arrived in camp he got a welcome and applause, but as a rule the Jew got a snub. His company was not desired, and he was made to feel it. That he nevertheless conquered his wounded pride and sacrificed both that and his blood for his flag raises the average and quality of his patriotism above the Christians. His record for capacity, for fidelity, and for gallant soldiership in the field is as good as any one's. This is true of the Jewish private soldiers and of the Jewish generals alike. Major General O. O. Howard speaks of one of his Jewish staff officers as being, of the bravest and best, of another killed at Chancellorsville as being, a true friend and a brave officer. He highly praises two of his Jewish brigadier generals. Finally he uses these strong words. Intrinsically there are no more patriotic men to be found in the country than those who claim to be of Hebrew descent, and who served with me in parallel commands or more directly under my instructions. Fourteen Jewish Confederate and Union families contributed between them fifty-one soldiers to the war. Among these a father and three sons, and another a father and four sons. In the above article I was neither able to endorse nor repel the common approach that the Jew is willing to feed upon a country but not to fight for it, because I did not know whether it was true or false. I supposed it to be true, but it is not allowable to endorse wandering maxims upon supposition, except when one is trying to make out a case. That slur upon the Jew cannot hold up its head in presence of the figures of the War Department. It has done its work, and done it long and faithfully and with high approval. It ought to be penchant off now and retired from active service.