 This is Chapter 6 of Alonzo Fitz and Other Stories. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Alonzo Fitz and Other Stories by Mark Twain, Chapter 6 The Canvasser's Tale. Poor, sad-eyed stranger! There was that about his humble mien, his tired look, his decayed gentility of clothes, that almost reached the mustard seed of charity that still remained, remote and lonely, in the empty vastness of my heart, notwithstanding I observed a portfolio under his arm, and said to myself, Behold! Providence hath delivered his servant into the hands of another canvasser. Well, these people always get one interested. Before I well knew how it came about, this one was telling me his history, and I was all attention and sympathy. He told it something like this. My parents died, alas, when I was a little sinless child. My uncle Ethereal took me to his heart and reared me as his own. He was my only relative in the wide world, but he was good and rich and generous. He reared me in the lap of luxury. I knew no want that money could satisfy. In the fullness of time I was graduated and went with two of my servants, my chamberlain and my valet, to travel in foreign countries. During four years I flitted upon careless wing amid the beauteous gardens of the distant strand, if you will permit this form of speech in one whose tongue was ever attuned to poise. And indeed I so speak with confidence, as one unto his kind, for I perceive by your eyes that you too, sir, are gifted with the divine inflation. In those far lands I reveled in the ambrosial food that fructifies the soul, the mind, the heart. But of all things that which most appealed to my inborn aesthetic taste was the prevailing custom there, among the rich, of making collections of elegant and costly rarities, dainty objets de vertu, and in an evil hour I tried to uplift my uncle Ethuriel to a plain of sympathy with this exquisite employment. I wrote and told him of one gentleman's vast collection of shells, another's noble collection of Mierscham pipes, another elevating and refining collection of undecipherable autographs, another's priceless collection of old china, another's enchanting collection of postage stamps, and so forth and so on. Soon my letters yielded fruit. My uncle began to look about for something to make a collection of. You may know, perhaps, how fleetly a taste like this dilates. His soon became a raging fever, though I knew it not. He began to neglect his great pork business. Presently he wholly retired and turned an elegant leisure into a rabid search for curious things. His wealth was vast, and he spared it not. First he tried cowbells. He made a collection which filled five large salons, and comprehended all the different sorts of cowbells that ever had been contrived, save one. That one, an antique, and the only specimen extant, was possessed by another collector. My uncle offered enormous sums for it, but the gentleman would not sell. Doubtless you know what necessarily resulted. A true collector attaches no value to a collection that is not complete. His great heart breaks, he sells his hoard, he turns his mind to some field that seems unoccupied. Thus did my uncle. He next tried brick-brats. After piling up a vast and intensely interesting collection, the former difficulty supervened. His great heart broke again. He sold out his soul's idol to the retired brewer who possessed the missing brick. Then he tried flint-hatchets and other implements of primeval man. But by and by discovered that the factory where they were made was supplying other collectors as well as himself. He tried Aztec inscriptions and stuffed whales—another failure, after incredible labor and expense. When his collection seemed at last perfect, a stuffed whale arrived from Greenland, and an Aztec inscription from the Cundurango region of Central America that made all former specimens insignificant. My uncle hastened to secure these noble gems. He got the stuffed whale, but another collector got the inscription. A real Cundurango, as possibly you know, is a possession of such supreme value when once a collector gets it. He will rather part with his family than with it. So my uncle sold out, and saw his darlings go forth, never more to return, and his coal-black hair turned white as snow in a single night. Now he waited and thought. He knew another disappointment might kill him. He was resolved that he would choose things next time that no other man was collecting. He carefully made up his mind, and once more entered the field, this time to make a collection of echoes. Of what, said I? Echoes, sir! His first purchase was an echo in Georgia that repeated four times. His next was a six-repeater in Maryland. His next was a thirteen-repeater in Maine. His next was a nine-repeater in Kansas. His next was a twelve-repeater in Tennessee, which he got cheap, so to speak, because it was out of repair, a portion of the crag which reflected it having tumbled down. He believed he could repair it at a cost of a few thousand dollars, and, by increasing the elevation with masonry, treble the repeating capacity. But the architects who undertook the job had never built an echo before, and so he utterly spoiled this one. Before he meddled with it, it used to talk back like a mother-in-law, but now it was only fit for the deaf and dumb asylum. Well, next he bought a lot of cheap little double-barreled echoes scattered around over various states and territories. He got them at twenty percent off by taking the lot. Next he bought a perfect gattling gun of an echo in Oregon, and it cost a fortune, I can tell you. You may know, sir, that in the echo market the scale of prices is cumulative, like the carrot scale in diamonds. In fact, the same phraseology is used. A single-carat echo is worth but ten dollars over and above the value of the land it is on. A two-carat, or double-barreled, echo is worth thirty dollars. A five-carat is worth nine hundred and fifty. A ten-carat is worth thirteen thousand. My uncle's Oregon Echo, which he called the Great Pit Echo, was a twenty-two-carat gem, and cost two hundred and sixteen thousand dollars. They threw the land in for it was four hundred miles from a settlement. Well, in the meantime my path was a path of roses. I was the accepted suitor of the only and lovely daughter of an English Earl, and was beloved to distraction. In that dear presence I swam in seas of bliss. The family were content, for it was known that I was sole heir to an uncle held to be worth five millions of dollars. However, none of us knew that my uncle had become a collector, at least in anything more than a small way for aesthetic amusement. Now gathered the clouds above my unconscious head. That divine echo, since known throughout the world as the Great Courignure, or Mountain of Repetitions, was discovered. It was a sixty-five-carat gem. You could utter a word, and it would talk back at you for fifteen minutes, when the day was otherwise quiet. But behold, another fact came to light at the same time. Another echo-collector was in the field. The two rushed to make the peerless purchase. The property consisted of a couple of small hills with a shallow swale between, out yonder among the back settlements of New York State. Both men arrived on the ground at the same time, and neither knew the other was there. The echo was not all owned by one man. A person by the name of Williamson Bolivar Jarvis owned the East Hill, and a person by the name of Harbison J. Bledsoe owned the West Hill. The swale between was the dividing line. So while my uncle was buying Jarvis's Hill for three million two hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars, the other party was buying Bledsoe's Hill for a shade over three million. Now, do you perceive the natural result? Why, the noblest collection of echoes on earth was forever and ever incomplete, since it possessed but the one-half of the king echo of the universe. Neither man was content with this divided ownership, yet neither would sell to the other. There were jawings, bickering, heart-burnings, and at last that other collector, with a malignity which only a collector can ever feel toward a man and a brother, proceeded to cut down his hill. You see, as long as he could not have the echo, he was resolved that nobody should have it. He would remove his hill, and then there would be nothing to reflect my uncle's echo. My uncle remonstrated with him, but the man said, I own one end of this echo. I choose to kill my end. You must take care of your own end yourself. Well, my uncle got an injunction put on him. The other man appealed and fought it in a higher court. They carried it on up, clear to the Supreme Court of the United States. It made no end of trouble there. Two of the judges believed that an echo was personal property, because it was impalpable to sight and touch, and yet was purchasable, saleable, and consequently taxable. Two others believed that an echo was real estate, because it was manifestly attached to the land, and was not removable from place to place. Other of the judges contended that an echo was not property at all. It was finally decided that the echo was property, that the hills were property, that the two men were separate and independent owners of the two hills, but tenants in common in the echo. Therefore, defendant was at full liberty to cut down his hill since it belonged solely to him, but must give bonds in three million dollars as indemnity for damages which might result to my uncle's half of the echo. This decision also debarred my uncle from using defendant's hill to reflect his part of the echo without defendant's consent. He must use only his own hill. If his part of the echo would not go, under these circumstances it was sad, of course, but the court could find no remedy. The court also debarred defendant from using my uncle's hill to reflect his end of the echo without consent. You see the grand result. Neither man would give consent, and so that astonishing and most noble echo had to cease from its great powers, and since that day that magnificent property is tied up and unsaleable. A week before my wedding-day, while I was still swimming in bliss and the nobility were gathering from far and near to honour our espousals, came news of my uncle's death, and also a copy of his will, making me his sole heir. He was gone, alas my dear benefactor was no more. The thought surcharges my heart even at this remote day. I handed the will to the Earl. I could not read it for the blinding tears. The Earl read it. Then he sternly said, Sir, do you call this wealth? But doubtless you do in your inflated country. Sir, you are left sole heir to a vast collection of echoes, if a thing can be called a collection that is scattered far and wide over the huge length and breadth of the American continent. Sir, this is not all. You are head and ears in debt. There is not an echo in the lot but has a mortgage on it. Sir, I am not a hard man, but I must look to my child's interest. If you had but one echo, which you could honestly call your own, if you had but one echo which was free from encumbrance, so that you could retire to it with my child, and by humble painstaking industry cultivate and improve it, and thus rest from it a maintenance, I would not say you nay, but I cannot marry my child to a beggar. Leave his side, my darling. Go, sir, take your mortgage-ridden echoes, and quit my sight for ever. My noble Celestine clung to me in tears, with loving arms, and swore she would willingly nay gladly marry me, though I had not an echo in the world. But it could not be. We were torn asunder, she to pine and die within the twelve-month, I to toil life's long journey sad and alone, praying daily, hourly, for that release which shall join us together again in that dear realm where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest. Now, sir, if you will be so kind as to look at these maps and plans in my portfolio, I am sure I can sell you an echo for less money than any man in the trade. Now this one, which cost my uncle ten dollars thirty years ago, and is one of the sweetest things in Texas, I will let you have it for—let me interrupt you, I said. My friend, I have not had a moment's respite from canvassers this day. I have bought a sewing machine which I did not want. I have bought a map which is mistaken in all its details. I have bought a clock which will not go. I have bought a moth-poison which the moths prefer to any other beverage. I have bought no end of useless inventions, and now I have had enough of this foolishness. I would not have one of your echoes if you were even to give it to me. I would not let it stay on the place. I always hate a man that tries to sell me echoes. You see this gun? Now take your collection and move on. Let us not have bloodshed." But he only smiled a sad, sweet smile, and got out some more diagrams. You know the result perfectly well, because you know that when you have once opened the door to a canvasser, the trouble is done, and you have got to suffer defeat. I compromised with this man at the end of an intolerable hour. I bought two double-barreled echoes in good condition, and he threw in another which he said was not saleable because it only spoke German. He said, she was a perfect polyglot once, but somehow her palate got down. CHAPTER VII. An encounter with an interviewer. The nervous dapper, pert young man, took the chair I offered him, and said he was connected with the daily thunderstorm, and added, hoping it's no harm I've come to interview you. Come to what? Interview you? Ah, I see. Yes. Yes. Hmm. Yes. Yes. I was not feeling bright that morning. Indeed, my powers seemed a bit under a cloud. However, I went to the bookcase, and when I had been looking six or seven minutes, I found I was obliged to refer to the young man. I said, how do you spell it? Spell what? Interview? Oh, my goodness! What do you want to spell it for? I don't want to spell it. I want to see what it means. Well, this is astonishing, I must say. I can tell you what it means, if you—if you—oh, all right. That will answer, and much obliged to you two. In—in—ter—ter—inter—then you spell it with an I? Why, certainly. Oh! That is what took me so long. Why, my dear sir, what did you propose to spell it with? Well, I—I hardly know. I had the unabridged, and I was suffering around in the back end, hoping I might tree her among the pictures. But it's a very old addition. Why, my friend, they wouldn't have a picture of it, in even the latest—my dear sir, I beg your pardon, I mean no harm in the world, but you do not look as—as intelligent as I had expected you would. No harm? I—I mean no harm at all. Oh, don't mention it. It has often been said, and by people who would not flatter and who could have no inducement to flatter, that I am quite remarkable in that way. Yes—yes, they always speak of it with rapture. I can easily imagine it. But about this interview. You know it is the custom now to interview any man who has become notorious. Indeed, I had not heard of it before. It must be very interesting. What do you do it with? Ah, well—well—well—well, this is disheartening. It ought to be done with a club in some cases, but customarily it consists in the interviewer asking questions, and the interviewed answering them. It is all the rage now. Will you let me ask you certain questions calculated to bring out the salient points of your public and private history? Oh, with pleasure, with pleasure. I have a very bad memory, but I hope you will not mind that. That is to say, it is an irregular memory, singularly irregular. Sometimes it goes in a gallop, and then again it will be as much as a fortnight passing a given point. This is a great grief to me. Oh, it is no matter, so you will try to do the best you can. I will. I will put my whole mind on it. Thanks! Are you ready to begin? Ready. Question. How old are you? Answer. 19 in June. Question. Indeed, I would have taken you to be thirty-five or six. Where were you born? Answer. In Missouri. Question. When did you begin to write? Answer. In 1836. Question. Why, how could that be if you are only nineteen now? Answer. I don't know. It does seem curious somehow. Question. It does indeed. Whom do you consider the most remarkable man you ever met? Answer. Aaron Burr. Question. But you never could have met Aaron Burr if you were only nineteen years. Answer. Now, if you know more about me than I do, what do you ask me for? Question. Well, it was only a suggestion. Nothing more. How did you happen to meet Burr? Answer. Well, I happened to be at his funeral one day, and he asked me to make less noise, and—question. But good heavens! If you were at his funeral he must have been dead. And if he was dead how could he care whether you made a noise or not? Answer. I don't know. He was always a particular kind of a man that way. Question. Still, I don't understand it at all. You say he spoke to you and that he was dead. Answer. I didn't say he was dead. Question. But wasn't he dead? Answer. Well, some said he was, some said he wasn't. Question. What did you think? Answer. Oh, it was none of my business. It wasn't any of my funeral. Question. Did you—however, we can never get this matter straight. Let me ask about something else. What was the date of your birth? Answer. Monday, October 31, 1693. Question. What? Impossible. That would make you 180 years old. How do you account for that? Answer. I don't account for it at all. Question. But you said at first you were only 19, and now you make yourself out to be 180. It is an awful discrepancy. Answer. Why, have you noticed that? Shaking hands. Many a time it has seemed to me like a discrepancy, but somehow I couldn't make up my mind. How quick you notice a thing. Question. Thank you for the compliment, as far as it goes. Had you, or have you, any brothers or sisters? Answer. Eh. I—I—I think so. Yes. But I don't remember. Question. Well, that is the most extraordinary statement I ever heard. Answer. Why, what makes you think that? Question. How could I think otherwise? Why, look here. Who is this a picture of on the wall? Isn't that a brother of yours? Answer. Oh, yes. Yes, yes. Now you remind me of it. That was a brother of mine. That's William. Bill, we called him. Poor old Bill. Question. Why? Is he dead then? Answer. Ah! Well, I suppose so. We never could tell. There was a great mystery about it. Question. That is sad. Very sad. He disappeared then? Answer. Well, yes, in a sort of general way. We buried him. Question. Buried him. Buried him without knowing whether he was dead or not? Answer. Oh, no! Not that. He was dead enough. Question. Well, I confess I can't. You'll understand this. If you buried him and you knew he was dead, I answer. No, no. We only thought he was. Question. Oh, I see. He came to life again? Answer. I bet he didn't. Question. Well, I never heard anything like this. Somebody was dead. Somebody was buried. Now, where was the mystery? Answer. Ah! That's just it. That's it exactly. You see, we were twins, defunct and I, and we got mixed in the bathtub when we were only two weeks old, and one of us was drowned. But we didn't know which. Some think it was Bill. Some think it was me. Question. Well, that is remarkable. What do you think? Answer. Goodness knows! I would give whole worlds to know. This solemn, this awful mystery has cast a gloom over my whole life. But I will tell you a secret now, which I never have revealed to any creature before. One of us had a peculiar mark. A large mole on the back of his left hand. That was me. That child was the one that was drowned. Question. Very well, then. I don't see that there is any mystery about it after all. Answer. You don't. Well, I do. Anyway, I don't see how they could ever have been such a blundering lot as to go and bury the wrong child. But, shh, don't mention it where the family can hear of it. Heaven knows they have heart-breaking troubles enough without adding this. Question. Well, I believe I have got material enough for the present, and I am very much obliged to you for the pains you have taken. But I was a good deal interested in that account of Aaron Burr's funeral. Would you mind telling me what particular circumstance it was that made you think Burr was such a remarkable man? Answer. Oh! It was a mere trifle. Not one man in fifty would have noticed it at all. When the sermon was over and the procession all ready to start for the cemetery, and the body all arranged nice in the hearse, he said he wanted to take a last look at the scenery, and so he got up and rode with the driver. Then the young man reverently withdrew. He was very pleasant company, and I was sorry to see him go. CHAPTER VIII. Crowded out of a tramp abroad to make room for more vital statistics. M. T. The Parisian travels but little, he knows no language but his own, reads no literature but his own, and consequently he is pretty narrow and pretty self-sufficient. However, let us not be too sweeping. There are Frenchmen who know languages not their own. These are the waiters. Among the rest they know English. That is, they know it on the European plan, which is to say they can speak it but can't understand it. They easily make themselves understood, but it is next to impossible to word an English sentence in such a way as to enable them to comprehend it. They think they comprehend it. They pretend they do, but they don't. Here is a conversation which I had with one of these beings. I wrote it down at the time in order to have it exactly correct. I. These are fine oranges. Where are they grown? He. More? Yes, I will bring them. I. No, do not bring any more. I only want to know where they are from, where they are raised. He. Yes, with imperturbable mean and rising inflection. I. Yes, can you tell me what country they are from? He. Yes, blandly with rising inflection. I, disheartened. They are very nice. He. Good night. Bows and retires. Quite satisfied with himself. That young man could have become a good English scholar by taking the right sort of pains, but he was French, and wouldn't do that. How different is the case with our people they utilize every means that offers. There are some alleged French Protestants in Paris, and they built a nice little church on one of the great avenues that lead away from the Arch of Triumph, and proposed to listen to the correct thing, preached in the correct way there, in their precious French tongue, and be happy. But their little game does not succeed. Our people are always there ahead of them Sundays, and take up all the room. When the minister gets up to preach, he finds his house full of devout foreigners, each ready and waiting, with his little book in his hand—a Morocco-bound testament, apparently. But only apparently. It is Mr. Bellow's admirable and exhaustive little French English dictionary which, in look and binding and size, is just like a testament, and those people are there to study French. The building has been nicknamed the Church of the Gratice French Lesson. These students probably acquire more language than general information, for I am told that a French sermon is like a French speech. It never names a historical event, but only the date of it. If you are not up in dates, you get left. A French speech is something like this. Comrades, citizens, brothers, noble parts of the only sublime and perfect nation, let us not forget that the 21st January cast off our chains, that the 10th August relieved us of the shameful presence of foreign spies, that the 5th September was its own justification before heaven and humanity, that the 18th Brumaire contained the seeds of its own punishment, that the 14th July was the mighty voice of liberty proclaiming the resurrection, the new day, and inviting the oppressed peoples of the earth to look upon the divine face of France and live. And let us here record our everlasting curse against the man of the 2nd December, and declare in thunder-tones, the native tones of France, that but for him there had been no 17th March in history, no 12th October, no 19th January, no 22nd April, no 16th November, no 30th September, no 2nd July, no 14th February, no 29th June, no 15th August, no 31st May, that but for him France the pure, the grand, the peerless, had had a serene and vacant almanac to-day. I have heard of one French sermon which closed in this odd yet eloquent way. My hearers, we have sad cause to remember the man of the 13th January. The results of the vast crime of the 13th January have been in just proportion to the magnitude of the set itself, but for it there had been no 30 November, sorrowful spectacle. The grisly deed of the 16th June had not been done but for it, nor had the man of the 16th June known existence. To it alone the 3rd September was due, also, the fatal 12th October. Shall we then be grateful for the 13th January with its freight of death for you and me and all that breathe? Yes, my friends, for it gave us also that which had never come but for it, and it alone, the blessed 25th December. It may be well enough to explain, though in the case of many of my readers this will hardly be necessary, the man of the 13th January is Adam. The crime of that date was the eating of the apple. The sorrowful spectacle of the 30th November was the expulsion from Eden. The grisly deed of the 16th June was the murder of Abel. The act of the 3rd September was the beginning of the journey to the land of Nod. The 12th day of October the last mountaintops disappeared under the flood. When you go to church in France you want to take your almanac with you. Annotated. This is Chapter 9 of Alonzo Fitts. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Alonzo Fitts and other stories by Mark Twain, Chapter 9, Legend of Sagenfeld in Germany. Left out of a trap abroad because its authenticity seemed doubtful and could not at that time be proved. 1. More than a thousand years ago this small district was a kingdom, a little bit of a kingdom, a sort of dainty little toy kingdom, as one might say. It was far removed from the jealousies, strife and turmoil of that old war-like day, and so its life was a simple life, its people a gentle and guileless race. It lay always in a deep dream of peace, a soft Sabbath tranquility. There was no malice, there was no envy, there was no ambition. Consequently there were no heart-burnings, there was no unhappiness in the land. In the course of time the old king died and his little son Hubert came to the throne. The people's love for him grew daily. He was so good and so pure and so noble that by and by his love became a passion, almost a worship. Now at his birth the soothsayers had diligently studied the stars and found something written in that shining book to this effect. In Hubert's fourteenth year a pregnant event will happen. The animal whose singing shall sound sweetest in Hubert's ear shall save Hubert's life. So long as the king and the nation shall honour this animal's race for this good deed, the ancient dynasty shall not fail of an air, nor the nation no war or pestilence or poverty. But beware, an airing choice! All through the king's thirteenth year but one thing was talked of by the soothsayers, the statesmen, the little parliament, and the general people. That one thing was this. How is the last sentence of the prophecy to be understood? What goes before seems to mean that the saving animal will choose itself at the proper time. But the closing sentence seems to mean that the king must choose beforehand, and say what singer among the animals pleases him best, and that if he choose wisely the chosen animal will save his life, his dynasty, his people, but that if he should make an airing choice, beware. By the end of the year there were as many opinions about this matter as there had been in the beginning, but a majority of the wise and the simple were agreed that the safest plan would be for the little king to make choice beforehand, and the earlier the better. So an edict was sent forth commanding all persons who owned singing creatures to bring them to the great hall of the palace in the morning of the first day of the new year. This command was obeyed. When everything was in readiness for the trial, the king made his solemn entry with the great officers of the crown, all clothed in their robes of state. The king mounted his golden throne and prepared to give judgment, but he presently said, �These creatures all sing at once. The noise is unendurable. No one can choose in such a turmoil. Take them all away, and bring back one at a time.� This was done. One sweet warbler after another charmed the young king's ear and was removed to make way for another candidate. The precious minute slipped by. Among so many bewitching songsters he found it hard to choose, and all the harder because the promised penalty for an error was so terrible that it unsettled his judgment and made him afraid to trust his own ears. He grew nervous, and his face showed distress. His ministers saw this, for they never took their eyes from him a moment. Now they began to say in their hearts, �He has lost courage. The cool head is gone. He will err. He and his dynasty and his people are doomed.� At the end of an hour the king sat silent a while, and then said, �Bring back the linnet.� The linnet trilled forth her jubilant music. In the midst of it the king was about to uplift his scepter in sign of choice, but checked himself and said, �Let us be sure. Bring back the thrush. Let them sing together.� The thrush was brought, and the two birds poured out their marvels of song together. The king wavered. Then his inclination began to settle and strengthen. One could see it in his countenance. Hope budded in the hearts of the old ministers. Their pulses began to beat quicker. The scepter began to rise slowly when there was a hideous interruption. It was a sound like this, just at the door. Everybody was sorely startled, and enraged at himself for showing it. The next instant the dearest, sweetest, prettiest little peasant maid of nine years came tripping in, her brown eyes glowing with childish eagerness. But when she saw that august company in those angry faces she stopped, and hung her head, and put her poor coarse apron to her eyes. Nobody gave her welcome. None pitied her. Presently she looked up timidly through her tears and said, �My Lord the King, I pray you pardon me, for I meant no wrong. I have no father and no mother, but I have a goat and a donkey, and they are all in all to me. My goat gives me the sweetest milk, and when my dear good donkey braves, it seems to me there is no music like to it. So when my Lord the King's jester said, �The sweetest singer among all the animals should save the crown and nation,� and moved me to bring him here, all the court burst into a rude laugh, and the child fled away crying without trying to finish her speech. The chief minister gave a private order that she and her disastrous donkey be flogged beyond the precincts of the palace, and commanded to come within them no more. Then the trial of the birds was resumed. The two birds sang their best, but the scepter lay motionless in the King's hand. Hope died slowly out in the breasts of all. An hour went by. Two hours, still no decision. The day waned to its close, and the waiting multitudes outside the palace grew crazed with anxiety and apprehension. The twilight came on. The shadows fell deeper and deeper. The King and his court could no longer see each other's faces. No one spoke. None called for lights. The great trial had been made. It had failed. Each and all wished to hide their faces from the light, and cover up their deep trouble in their own hearts. Finally Hark! a rich full strain of the divinest melody streamed forth from a remote part of the hall, the Nightingale's voice. Up shouted the King. Let all the bells make proclamation to the people, for the choice is made, and we have not erred. King, dynasty, and nation are saved. From henceforth let the Nightingale be honoured throughout the land for ever, and publish it among all the people that whosoever shall insult a Nightingale, or injure it, shall suffer death. The King hath spoken. All that little world was drunk with joy. The castle and the city blazed with bonfires all night long. The people danced and drank and sang, and the triumphant clamour of the bells never ceased. From that day the Nightingale was a sacred bird. Its song was heard in every house. The poets wrote its praises. The painters painted it. Its sculptured image adorned every arch and turret, and fountain, and public building. It was even taken into the King's councils, and no grave matter of state was decided until the soothsayers had laid the thing before the state Nightingale, and translated to the ministry what it was that the bird had sung about it. The young King was very fond of the chase. When the summer was come he rode forth with hawk and hound one day in a brilliant company of his nobles. He got separated from them by and by in a great forest, and took what he imagined, a near cut, to find them again. But it was a mistake. He rode on and on, hopefully at first, but with sinking courage finally. Night came on, and still he was plunging through a lonely and unknown land. Then came a catastrophe. In the dim light he forced his horse through a tangled thicket overhanging a steep and rocky declivity. When horse and rider reached the bottom, the former had a broken neck, and the latter a broken leg. The poor little King lay there suffering agonies of pain, and each hour seemed a long month to him. He kept his ear strained to hear any sound that might promise hope of rescue, but he heard no voice, no sound of horn or bay of hound. So at last he gave up all hope, and said, Let death come, for come it must. Just then the deep sweet song of a Nightingale swept across the still wastes of the night. Saved, the King said. Saved! It is the sacred bird, and the prophecy is come true. The gods themselves protected me from error in the choice. He could hardly contain his joy. He could not word his gratitude. Every few moments now he thought he caught the sound of approaching sucker. But each time it was a disappointment no sucker came. The dull hours drifted on. Still no help came. But still the sacred bird sang on. He began to have misgivings about his choice, but he stifled them. Toward dawn the bird ceased. The morning came, and with it thirst and hunger. But no sucker. The day waxed and waned. At last the King cursed the Nightingale. Immediately the song of the thrush came from out the wood. The King said in his heart, This was the true bird. My choice was false. Sucker will come now. But it did not come. Then he lay many hours insensible. When he came to himself a linnet was singing. He listened with apathy. His faith was gone. These birds, he said, can bring no help. I and my house and my people are doomed. He turned him about to die, for he was grown very feeble from hunger and thirst and suffering, and felt that his end was near. In truth he wanted to die, and be released from pain. For long hours he lay without thought or feeling or emotion. Then his senses returned. The dawn of the third morning was breaking. Ah, the world seemed very beautiful to those worn eyes. Suddenly a great longing to live rose up in the lad's heart, and from his soul welled a deep and fervent prayer that heaven would have mercy upon him and let him see his home and his friends once more. In that instant a soft, a faint, a far off sound, but oh how inexpressibly sweet to his waiting ear came floating out of the distance. That, oh, that song is sweeter, a thousand times sweeter, than the voice of the nightingale thrush or linnet, for it brings not mere hope but certainty of succour. And now indeed am I saved. The sacred singer has chosen itself, as the oracle intended. The prophecy is fulfilled. And my life, my house, and my people are redeemed. The ass shall be sacred from this day. The divine music grew nearer and nearer, stronger and stronger, and ever sweeter and sweeter to the perishing sufferer's ear. Down the declivity the docile little donkey wandered, cropping herbage and singing as he went. And when at last he saw the dead horse and the wounded king, he came and snuffed at them with simple and marvelling curiosity. The king petted him, and he knelt down as had been his want when his little mistress desired to mount. With great labour and pain the lad drew himself upon the creature's back, and held himself there by aid of the generous ears. The ass went singing forth from the place and carried the king to the little peasant maid's hut. She gave him her pallet for a bed, refreshed him with goat's milk, and then flew to tell the great news to the first scouting-party of searchers she might meet. The king got well. His first act was to proclaim the sacredness and the inviolability of the ass. His second was to add this particular ass to his cabinet and make him chief minister of the crown. His third was to have all the statues and effigies of nightingales throughout his kingdom destroyed and replaced by statues and effigies of the sacred donkey. And his fourth was to announce that when the little peasant maid should reach her fifteenth year he would make her his queen, and he kept his word. Such is the legend. This explains why the mouldering image of the ass adorns all these old crumbling walls and arches, and it explains why during many centuries an ass was always the chief minister in that royal cabinet, just as is still the case in most cabinets to this day. And it also explains why, in that little kingdom, during many centuries, all great poems, all great speeches, all great books, all public solemnities, and all royal proclamations, always began with these stirring words. CHAPTER X I like that. We have not all had the good fortune to be ladies. We have not all been generals or poets or statesmen. But when the toast works down to the babies we stand on common ground. It is a shame that for a thousand years the world's banquets have utterly ignored the baby, as if he didn't amount to anything. If you will stop and think a minute, if you will go back fifty or one hundred years to your early married life and re-contemplate your first baby, you will remember that he amounted to a great deal and even something over. You soldiers all know that when the little fellow arrived at family headquarters you had to hand in your resignation. He took entire command. You became his lackey, his mere body-servant, and you had to stand around, too. He was not a commander who made allowances for time, intelligence, whether or anything else. You had to execute his order whether it was possible or not, and there was only one form of marching in his manual of tactics, and that was the double quick. He treated you with every sort of insolence and disrespect, and the bravest of you didn't dare to say a word. You could face the death-storm at Donaldson and Vicksburg and give back blow for blow, but when he clawed your whiskers and pulled your hair and twisted your nose, you had to take it. When the thunders of war were sounding in your ears you set your faces toward the batteries and advanced with steady tread. But when he turned on the terrors of his war-woop you advanced in the other direction and might he glad of the chance, too. When he called for soothing syrup did you venture to throw out any side remarks about certain services being unbecoming an officer and a gentleman? No. You got up and got it. When he ordered his pep bottle and it was not warm, did you talk back? Not you. You went to work and warmed it. You even descended so far in your menial office as to take a suck at that warm, insipid stuff yourself to see if it was right. Three parts water to one of milk, a touch of sugar to modify the colic, and a drop of peppermint to kill those hiccups. I can taste that stuff yet. And how many things you learned as you went along? Sentimental young folks still take stock in that beautiful old saying that when the baby smiles in his sleep it is because the angels are whispering to him. They're pretty, but too thin. Simply wind on the stomach, my friends. If the baby proposed to take a walk at his usual hour, two o'clock in the morning, didn't you rise up promptly and remark, with a mental addition which would not improve a Sunday school book much, that that was the very thing you were about to propose yourself? Oh, you were under good discipline, and as you went fluttering up and down the room in your undress uniform, you not only prattled undignified baby-talk, but even turned up your marshal voices and tried to sing, Rockabye baby in the treetop, for instance. What a spectacle for an army of the Tennessee! And what an affliction for the neighbors, too, for it is not everybody within a mile around that likes military music at three in the morning. And when you had been keeping this sort of thing up two or three hours, and your little velvet head intimated that nothing suited him like exercise and noise, what did you do? Go on! You simply went on until you dropped in the last ditch. The idea that a baby doesn't amount to anything. Why, one baby is just a house in a front yard full by itself. One baby can furnish more business than you and your whole interior department can attend to. He is enterprising, irrepressible, brimful of lawless activities. Do what you please, you can't make him stay on the reservation. Sufficient unto the day is one baby. As long as you are in your right mind, don't you ever pray for twins. Twins amount to a permanent riot, and there ain't any real difference between triplets and an insurrection. Yes, it was high time for a toastmaster to recognize the importance of the babies. Think what is in store for the present crop. Fifty years from now we shall all be dead, I trust, and then this flag, if it still survive, and let us hope it may, will be floating over every public numbering two hundred million souls according to the settled laws of our increase. Our present schooner of state will have grown into a political leviathan, a great Eastern. The cradle babies of today will be on deck. Let them be well trained, for we are going to leave a big contract on their hands. Among the three or four million cradles now rocking in the land are some which this nation would preserve for ages as sacred things, if we could know which ones they are. In one of these cradles the unconscious farragut of the future is at this moment teething. Think of it, and putting in a world of dead earnest, unarticulated, but perfectly justifiable profanity over it too. In another the future renowned astronomer is blinking at the shining milky way with but a languid interest, poor little chap, and wondering what has become of that other one they call the wet nurse. In another the future great historian is lying, and doubtless will continue to lie until his earthly mission is ended. In another the future president is busying himself with no profounder problem of state than what the mischief has become of his hair so early. And in a mighty array of other cradles there are now some sixty thousand future office-seekers getting ready to furnish him occasion to grapple with that same old problem a second time. And in still one more cradle, somewhere under the flag, the future illustrious commander-in-chief of the American armies is so little burdened with his approaching grandeurs and responsibilities as to be giving his whole strategic mind at this moment to trying to find out some way to get his big toe into his mouth, an achievement which meaning no disrespect, the illustrious guest of this evening turned his entire attention to some fifty-six years ago, and if the child is but a prophecy of the man there are mighty few who will doubt that he succeeded. END OF CHAPTER X Next toast was the oldest inhabitant, the weather of New England. Who can lose it and forget it? Who can have it and regret it? Be interposer, twixt us, Twain, merchant of Venice. To this Samuel L. Clemens, Mark Twain, replied as follows, I reverently believe that the maker, who made us all, makes everything in New England, but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I think it must be raw apprentices in the weather clerk's factory who experiment and learn how in New England for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for countries that require a good article, and will take their custom elsewhere if they don't get it. There is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather that compels the stranger's admiration and regret. The weather is all was doing something there, all was attending strictly to business, all was getting up new designs and trying them on the people to see how they will go, but it gets through more business in spring than in any other season. In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours. It was I that made the fame and fortune of that man that had that marvellous collection of weather on exhibition at the centennial that so astounded the foreigners. He was going to travel all over the world and get specimens from all the climbs. I said, Don't you do it! You come to New England on a favourable spring day. I told him what we could do in the way of style, variety, and quantity. Well, he came and he made his collection in four days as to variety. Why, he confessed that he got hundreds of kinds of weather that he had never heard of before. And as to quantity, well, after he had picked out and discarded all that was blemished in any way, he not only had weather enough but weather to spare, whether to hire out, whether to sell, to deposit, whether to invest, whether to give to the poor. The people of New England are by nature patient and forbearing, but there are some things which they will not stand. Every year they kill a lot of poets for writing about beautiful spring. These are generally casual visitors who bring their notions of spring from somewhere else, and cannot, of course, know how the natives feel about spring. And so the first thing they know, the opportunity to inquire how they feel, has permanently gone by. Old Probabilities has a mighty reputation for accurate prophecy and thoroughly well deserves it. You take up the paper and observe how crisply and confidently he checks off what today's weather is going to be on the Pacific, down south, in the Middle States, in the Wisconsin region. See him sail along in the joy and pride of his power till he gets to New England, and then see his tail drop. He doesn't know what the weather is going to be in New England. Well, he mulls over it, and by and by he gets out something about like this, probable northeast to southwest winds, varying to the southward and westward and eastward, and points between, high and low barometer swapping around from place to place. Probable areas of rain, snow, hail, and drought succeeded or preceded by earthquakes with thunder and lightning. Then he jots down this post-script from his wandering mind to cover accidents. But it is possible that the program may be wholly changed in the meantime. Yes, one of the brightest gems in the New England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it. There is only one thing certain about it. You are certain there is going to be plenty of it. A perfect grand review. But you never can tell which end of the procession is going to move first. You fix up for the drought, you leave your umbrella in the house and sally out, and two to one you get drowned. You make up your mind that the earthquake is due, you stand from under and take hold of something to steady yourself, and the first thing you know you get struck by lightning. These are great disappointments, but they can't be helped. The lightning there is peculiar. It is so convincing that when it strikes a thing it doesn't leave enough of that thing behind for you to tell whether—well, you'd think it was something valuable, and a congressman had been there. And the thunder. When the thunder begins to merely tune up and scrape and saw and key up the instruments for the performance, strangers say, Why, what awful thunder you have here! But when the baton is raised and the real concert begins, you'll find that stranger down in the cellar with his head in the ash-barrel, now as to the size of the weather in New England—lengthwise, I mean—it is utterly disproportioned to the size of that little country. Half the time, when it is packed as full as it can stick, you will see that New England weather sticking out beyond the edges and projecting around hundreds and hundreds of miles over the neighbouring states. She can't hold a tenth part of her weather. You can see cracks all about where she has strained herself trying to do it. I could speak volumes about the inhuman perversity of the New England weather, but I will give but a single specimen. I like to hear rain on a tin roof, so I covered part of my roof with tin with an eye to that luxury. Well, sir, do you think it ever rains on that tin? No, sir. Skips it every time. Mind, in this speech I have been trying merely to do honour to the New England weather. No language could do it justice. But after all, there is at least one or two things about that weather, or if you please, effects produced by it, which we residents would not like to part with. If we hadn't our bewitching autumn foliage, we should still have to credit the weather with one feature which compensates for all its bullying vagaries. The ice-storm, when a leafless tree is clothed with ice from the bottom to the top, ice that is as bright and clear as crystal, when every bow and twig is strung with ice-beads, frozen dew-drops, and the whole tree sparkles cold and white like the Shaw of Persia's diamond plume. Then the wind waves the branches and the sun comes out and turns all those myriads of beads and drops to prisms that glow and burn and flash with all manner of coloured fires, which change and change again with inconceivable rapidity from blue to red, from red to green, and green to gold. The tree becomes a spraying fountain, a very explosion of dazzling jewels, and it stands there, the acme, the climax, the primus possibility in art or nature of bewildering, intoxicating, intolerable magnificence. One cannot make the words too strong. CHAPTER XII Concerning the American language, being part of a chapter which was crowded out of a tramp abroad—M.T. There was an English man in our compartment, and he complimented me on—on what?—but he would never guess. He complimented me on my English. He said Americans in general did not speak the English language as correctly as I did. I said I was obliged to him for his compliments, since I knew he meant it for one, but that I was not fairly entitled to it, for I did not speak English at all. I only spoke American. He laughed, and said it was a distinction without a difference. I said no. The difference was not prodigious, but still it was considerable. We fell into a friendly dispute over the matter. I put my case as well as I could, and said, The languages were identical several generations ago, but our changed conditions and the spread of our people far to the south and far to the west have made many alterations in our pronunciation, and have introduced new words among us and changed the meanings of many old ones. English people talk through their noses. We do not. We say no. English people say now. We say cow. The Briton says cow. We oh come! That is pure Yankee. Nobody knows that. Yes, it is pure Yankee. That is true. One cannot hear it in America outside of the little corner called New England, which is Yankee land. The English themselves planted it there two hundred and fifty years ago, and there it remains. It has never spread. But England talks through her nose yet. The Londoner and the Backwoods New Englander pronounce no and cow alike, and then the Briton unconsciously satirizes himself by making fun of the Yankee's pronunciation. We argued this point at some length. Nobody won. But no matter the fact remains, English men say now and cow, for no and cow, and that is what the rustic inhabitant of a very small section of America does. You conferred your A upon New England, too, and there it remains. It has not traveled out of the narrow limits of those six little states in all these two hundred and fifty years. All England uses it. New England's small population, say four million, use it. But we have forty-five millions who do not use it. You say gloss of Wata. So does New England. At least New England says gloss. America at large flattens the A and says glass of water. These sounds are pleasanter than yours. You may think they are not right. Well, in English they are not right. But in American they are. You say flask and bosket and jackass. We say flask, basket, jackass, sounding the A as it is in tallow, fallow, and so on. Up to as late as 1847 Mr. Webster's dictionary had the impudence to still pronounce basket, bosket, when he knew that outside of his little New England all America shortened the A and paid no attention to his English broadening of it. However, it called itself an English dictionary, so it was proper enough that it should stick to English forms, perhaps. It still calls itself an English dictionary today, but it has quietly ceased to pronounce basket as if it were spelt bosket. In the American language the H is respected. The H is not dropped or added improperly. Same is the case in England. I mean among the educated classes, of course. Yes, that is true. But a nation's language is a very large matter. It is not simply a manner of speech obtaining among the educated handful. The manner obtaining among the vast uneducated multitude must be considered also. Your uneducated masses speak English, you will not deny that. Our uneducated masses speak American. It won't be fair for you to deny that, for you can see yourself, that when your stable boy says, It isn't the unthing that hurts the horse, but the amma, amma, amma on the odd highway. And our stable boy makes the same remark without suffocating a single H. These two people are manifestly talking two different languages. But if the signs are to be trusted, even your educated classes used to drop the H. They say, humble now, and heroic, and historic, etc. But I judge that they used to drop those H's, because your writers still keep up the fashion of putting an before those words instead of a. This is what Mr. Darwin might call a rudimentary sign, that as an was justifiable once, and useful when your educated classes used to say umble and heroic and historical, correct writers of the American language do not put an before those words. The English gentleman had something to say upon this matter, but never mind what he said. I'm not arguing his case. I have him at a disadvantage now. I proceeded. In England you encourage an orator by exclaiming, hia, hia! We pronounce it here in some sections, here in others, and so on. But our whites do not say, hia, pronouncing the A's like the ah of ah. I have heard English ladies say, don't you? Making two separate and distinct words of it. Your Mr. Burnham has satirized it. But we always say, don't you? This is much better. Your ladies say, oh, it's awful nice. Ours say, oh, it's awful nice. We say four hundred. You say four, as in the word oar. Your clergymen speak of the Lord. Ours of the Lord. Yours speak of the gods of the heathen. Ours of the gods of the heathen. When you are exhausted, you say you are knocked up. We don't. When you say you will do a thing directly, you mean immediately. In the American language, generally speaking, the word signifies after a little. When you say clever, you mean capable. With us the word used to mean accommodating, but I don't know what it means now. Your word stout means fleshy. Our word stout usually means strong. Your words gentlemen and lady have a very restricted meaning. With us they include the barmaid, butcher, burglar, harlot, and horse thief. You say, I haven't got any stockings on. I haven't got any memory. I haven't got any money in my purse. We usually say, I haven't any stockings on. I haven't any memory. I haven't any money in my purse. You say, out of window. We always put in a the. If one asks, how old is that man, the Britain answers, he will be about forty. In the American language we should say, he is about forty. However, I won't tire you, sir, but if I wanted to I could pile up differences here until I not only convinced you that English and American are separate languages, but that when I speak my native tongue in its utmost purity, an Englishman can't understand me at all. I don't wish to flatter you, but it is about all I can do to understand you now. That was a very pretty compliment, and it put us on the pleasantest terms directly. I used the word in the English sense. Later, 1882, esthetes in many of our schools are now beginning to teach the pupils to broaden the a, and to say, don't you, in the elegant foreign way. This man Rodgers happened upon me, and introduced himself at the town of Blank, Blank, Blank in the south of England where I stayed a while. His stepfather had married a distant relative of mine who was afterward hanged, and so he seemed to think a blood relationship existed between us. He came in every day and sat down and talked. Of all the bland, serene human curiosities I ever saw, I think he was the chiefest. He desired to look at my new chimney-pot hat. I was very willing, for I thought he would notice the name of the great Oxford Street Hatter in it, and respect me accordingly. But he turned it about with a sort of grave compassion, pointed out two or three blemishes, and said that I, being so recently arrived, could not be expected to know where to supply myself, said he would send me the address of his Hatter. Then he said, pardon me, and proceeded to cut a neat circle of red tissue paper, daintily notched the edges of it, took the mucilage, and pasted it in my hat so as to cover the manufacturer's name. He said, No one will know now where you got it. I will send you a hat-tip of my Hatter, and you can paste it over this tissue circle. It was the calmest, coolest thing. I never admired a man so much in my life. Mind, he did this while his own hat sat offensively near our noses on the table, an ancient extinguisher of the slouch pattern, limp and shapeless with age, discolored by vicissitudes of the weather, and banded by an equator of bear's grease that had stood through. Another time he examined my coat. I had no terrors, for over my tailor's door was the legend, by special appointment tailor to H. R. H., the Prince of Wales, etc. I did not know at the time that the most of the tailor's shops had the same sign out, and that whereas it takes nine tailors to make an ordinary man, it takes a hundred and fifty to make a prince. He was full of compassion for my coat, wrote down the address of his tailor for me, did not tell me to mention my norm de plume, and the tailor would put his best work on my garment, as complementary people sometimes do, but said his tailor would hardly trouble himself for an unknown person—unknown person—when I thought I was so celebrated in England. That was the cruelest cut. But cautioned me to mention his name, and it would be all right. Thinking to be facetious, I said, but he might sit up all night and injure his health. Well, let him, said Rogers. I've done enough for him, for him to show some appreciation of it. I might as well have tried to disconcert a mummy with my facetiousness, said Rogers. I get all my coats there, and they're the only coats fit to be seen in. I made one more attempt. I said, I wish you had brought one with you. I would like to look at it. Bless your heart! Haven't I got one on? This article is Morgan's Make. I examined it. The coat had been bought ready-made of a Chatham Street Jew without any question, about 1848. It probably cost four dollars when it was new. It was ripped, it was frayed, it was napless and greasy. I could not resist showing him where it was ripped. It so affected him that I was almost sorry I had done it. First he seemed plunged into a bottomless abyss of grief. Then he roused himself, made a faint with his hands as if waving off the pity of a nation, and said, with what seemed to me a manufactured emotion, no matter, no matter, don't mind me, do not bother about it. I can get another. When he was thoroughly restored, so that he could examine the rip and command his feelings, he said, ah, now he understood it. His servant must have done it while dressing him that morning. His servant. There was something awe-inspiring in infretery like this. Nearly every day he interested himself in some article of my clothing. One would hardly have expected this sort of infatuation in a man who always wore the same suit, and it a suit that seemed co-evil with the conquest. It was an unworthy ambition, perhaps, but I did wish I could make this man admire something about me or something I did. You would have felt the same way. I saw my opportunity. I was about to return to London and had listed my soiled linen for the wash. It made quite an imposing mountain in the corner of the room fifty-four pieces. I hoped he would fancy it was the accumulation of a single week. I took up the wash list, as if to see that it was all right, and then tossed it on the table with pretended forgetfulness. Sure enough, he took it up and ran his eye along down to the grand total. Then he said, You get off easy! and laid it down again. His gloves were the saddest ruin, but he told me where I could get some like them. His shoes would hardly hold walnuts without leaking. But he liked to put his feet up on the mantelpiece and contemplate them. He wore a dim glass breastpin, which he called a morpholytic diamond, or whatever that may mean, and said only two of them had ever been found. The Emperor of China had the other one. Afterward in London it was a pleasure to me to see this fantastic vagabond come marching into the lobby of the hotel in his grand ducal way, for he always had some new imaginary grandeur to develop. There was nothing stale about him but his clothes. If he addressed me when strangers were about, he always raised his voice a little and called me Sir Richard, or General, or Your Lordship. And when people began to stare and look deferential, he would fall to inquiring in a casual way why I disappointed the Duke of Argyle the night before, and then remind me of our engagement at the Duke of Westminster's for the following day. I think that for the time being these things were realities to him. He once came and invited me to go with him and spend the evening with the Earl of Warwick at his townhouse. I said I had received no formal invitation. He said that that was of no consequence. The Earl had no formalities for him or his friends. I asked if I could go just as I was. He said, no, that would hardly do. Evening dress was requisite at night in any gentleman's house. He said he would wait while I dressed, and then we would go to his apartment and I could take a bottle of champagne and a cigar while he dressed. I was very willing to see how this enterprise would turn out, so I dressed and we started to his lodgings. He said if I didn't mind we would walk, so we trapped some four miles through the mud and fog, and finally found his apartments. They consisted of a single room over a barber's shop in a back street, two chairs, a small table, an ancient valise, a wash basin and pitcher, both on the floor and a corner, an unmade bed, a fragment of a looking-glass, and a flower pot with a perishing little rose geranium in it, which he called a century plant, and said it had not bloomed now for upward of two centuries, given to him by the late Lord Palmerston, been offered a prodigious sum for it. These were the contents of the room. Also a brass candlestick and a part of a candle. Rogers lit the candle and told me to sit down and make myself at home. He said he hoped I was thirsty because he would surprise my palate with an article of champagne that seldom got into a commoner's system. Or would I prefer sherry or port? Said he had port and bottles that were swathed in stratified cobwebs every stratum representing a generation, and as for his cigars, well, I should judge of them myself. Then he put his head out at the door and called, Sackville? No answer. Hi, Sackville? No answer. Now what the devil can have become of that butler? I never allow a servant to—oh, con found that idiot! He's got the keys! Can't get into the other rooms without the keys! I was just wondering at his intrapidity and still keeping up the delusion of the champagne and trying to imagine how he was going to get out of the difficulty. Now he stopped calling Sackville and began to call Anglesey. But Anglesey didn't come. He said, This is the second time that that equary has been absent without leave. Tomorrow I'll discharge him. Now he began to whoop for Thomas! But Thomas didn't answer. Then for Theodore! But no Theodore replied, Well, I give it up, said Rogers. The servants never expect me at this hour, and so they're all off on a lock. Might get along without the equary and the page, but can't have any wine or cigars without the butler, and can't dress without my valet. I offered to help him dress, but he would not hear of it, and besides, he said he would not feel comfortable unless dressed by a practised hand. However, he finally concluded that he was such old friends with the Earl that it would not make any difference how he was dressed. So we took a cab, he gave the driver some directions, and we started. By and by we stopped before a large house and got out. I never had seen this man with a collar on. He now stepped under a lamp and got a venerable paper collar out of his coat pocket along with a hoary cravat and put them on. He ascended the stoop and entered. Presently he reappeared, descended rapidly, and said, Come quick! We hurried away and turned the corner. Now we're safe," he said, and took off his collar and cravat and returned them to his pocket. Made a mighty narrow escape, said he. How, said I, but George, the Countess was there! Well, what of that? Don't she know you? Now me! Absolutely worships me. I just did happen to catch a glance of her before she saw me, and out I shot. Haven't seen her for two months. To rush in on her without any warning might have been fatal. She could not have stood it. I didn't know she was in town. Thought she was at the castle. Let me lean on you, just a moment. There, now I am better. Thank you. Thank you ever so much. Lord bless me, what an escape! So I never got to call on the Earl after all. But I marked the house for future reference. It proved to be an ordinary family hotel, with about a thousand plebeians roosting in it. In most things Rogers was by no means a fool. In some things it was plain enough that he was a fool, but he certainly did not know it. He was in the deadest earnest in these matters. He died at sea last summer, as the Earl of Ramsgate. End of Chapter 13. And End of Alonzo Fitts and Other Stories by Mark Twain. Read by John Greenman.