 I have scattered through this volume a mass of matter which has never been in print before, such as learned fables for good old boys and girls, the jumping frog restored to the English tongue after martyrdom in the French, the membranous croup sketch, and many others which I need not specify, not doing this in order to make an advertisement of it, but because these things seemed instructive. Hartford, 1875, Mark Twain. It is new and old. My watch, written about 1870. An instructive little tale. My beautiful new watch had run eighteen months without losing or gaining, and without breaking any part of its machinery or stopping. I had come to believe it infallible in its judgements about the time of day, and to consider its constitution and its anatomy imperishable. But, at last, one night I let it run down. I grieved about it as if it were a recognized messenger and forerunner of calamity, but by and by I cheered up, set the watch by guess, and commanded my boatings and superstitions to depart. Next day I stepped into the chief jewelers to set it by the exact time, and the head of the establishment took it out of my hand and proceeded to set it for me. Then he said, She is four minutes slow. Regulator wants pushing up. I tried to stop him, tried to make him understand that the watch kept perfect time. But, no, all this human cabbage could see was that the watch was four minutes slow, and the regulator must be pushed up a little. And so, while I danced around him in anguish and implored him to let the watch alone, he calmly and cruelly did the shameful deed. My watch began to gain. It gained faster and faster day by day. Within the week it sickened to a raging fever, and its pulse went up to a hundred and fifty in the shade. At the end of two months it had left all the timepieces of the town far in the rear, and was a fraction over thirteen days ahead of the almanac. It was away into November, enjoying the snow, while the October leaves were still turning. It hurried up house rent, bills payable and such things, in such a ruinous way that I could not abide it. I took it to the watchmaker to be regulated. He asked me if I had ever had it repaired. I said, no, it had never needed any repairing. He looked to look of vicious happiness, and eagerly pried the watch open, and then put a small dice-box into his eye, and peered into its machinery. He said it wanted cleaning and oiling, besides regulating. Come in a week. After being cleaned and oiled and regulated, my watch slowed down, to that degree, that it ticked like a tolling-bell. I began to be left by trains. I failed all appointments. I got to missing my dinner. My watch strung out three days' grace to four, and let me go to protest. I gradually drifted back into yesterday, then day before, then into last week, and by and by the comprehension came upon me that all solitary and alone I was lingering along in week before last, and the world was out of sight. I seemed to detect in myself a sort of sneaking, fellow feeling for the mummy in the museum, and a desire to swap news with him. I went to a watchmaker again. He took the watch all to pieces while I waited, and then said the barrel was swelled. He said he could reduce it in three days. After this the watch averaged well, but nothing more. For half a day it would go like the very mischief, and keep up such a barking and wheezing and whooping and sneezing and snorting that I could not hear myself think for the disturbance. And as long as it held out there was not a watch in the land that stood any chance against it. But the rest of the day it would keep on slowing down and fooling along until all the clocks it had left behind caught up again. So at last at the end of twenty-four hours it would trot up to the judge's stand all right and just in time. It would show a fair and square average, and no man could say it had done more or less than its duty. But a correct average is only a mild virtue in a watch, and I took this instrument to another watchmaker. He said the King Bolt was broken. I said I was glad it was nothing more serious. To tell the plain truth I had no idea what the King Bolt was, but I did not choose to appear ignorant to a stranger. He repaired the King Bolt, but what the watch gained in one way it lost in another. It would run a while, and then stop a while, and then run a while again, and so on, using its own discretion about the intervals. And every time it went off it kicked back like a musket. I patted my breast for a few days, but finally took the watch to another watchmaker. He picked it all to pieces and turned the ruin over and over under his glass. And then he said there appeared to be something the matter with the hair-trigger. He fixed it and gave it a fresh start. It did well now, except that all was at ten minutes to ten the hands would shut together like a pair of scissors. And from that time forth they would travel together. The oldest man in the world could not make head or tail of the time of day by such a watch, and so I went again to have the thing repaired. This person said that the crystal had got bent, and that the mainspring was not straight. He also remarked that part of the works needed half-solling. He made these things all right, and then my time-piece performed unexceptionably, save that Now and then, after working along quietly for nearly eight hours, everything inside would let go all of a sudden, and begin to buzz like a bee, and the hands would straightaway begin to spin around and around so fast that their individuality was lost completely, and they simply seemed a delicate spider's web over the face of the watch. She would reel off the next twenty-four hours in six or seven minutes, and then stop with a bang. I went with heavy heart to one more watchmaker, and looked on while he took her to pieces. Then I prepared to cross-question him rigidly, for this thing was getting serious. The watch had cost two hundred dollars originally, and I seemed to have paid out two or three thousand for repairs. While I waited and looked on, I presently recognized in this watchmaker an old acquaintance, a steamboat engineer of other days, and not a good engineer either. He examined all the parts carefully, just as the other watchmakers had done, and then delivered his verdict with the same confidence of manner. He said, "'She makes too much steam! You want to hang the monkey wrench on the safety valve!' I bringed him on the spot, and had him buried at my own expense. My Uncle William, now deceased alas, used to say that a good horse was a good horse until it had run away once, and that a good watch was a good watch, until the repairs got a chance at it. And he used to wonder what became of all the unsuccessful tinkers, and gunsmiths, and shoemakers, and engineers, and blacksmiths. But nobody could ever tell him." CHAPTER II Political Economy is the basis of all good government. The wisest men of all ages have brought to bear upon this subject the— Here I was interrupted and informed that a stranger wished to see me down at the door. I went and confronted him, and asked to know his business, struggling all the time to keep a tight reign on my seething political economy ideas, and not let them break away from me or get tangled in their harness. And privately I wished the stranger was in the bottom of the canal with a cargo of wheat on top of him. I was all in a fever, but he was cool. He said he was sorry to disturb me, but as he was passing he noticed that I needed some lightning rods. I said, yes, yes, go on, what about it? He said there was nothing about it in particular, and nothing except that he would like to put them up for me. I am new to housekeeping, have been used to hotels and boarding houses all my life. Like anybody else of similar experience I try to appear, to strangers, to be an old housekeeper. Consequently I said in an offhand way that I had been intending for some time to have six or eight lightning rods put up, but—the stranger started, and looked inquiringly at me, but I was serene. I thought that if I chanced to make any mistakes he would not catch me by my countenance. He said he would rather have my custom than any man's in town. I said, all right, and started off to wrestle with my great subject again, when he called me back and said it would be necessary to know exactly how many points I wanted put up, what parts of the house I wanted them on, and what quality of rod I preferred. It was close quarters for a man not used to the exigencies of housekeeping, but I went through creditably, and he probably never suspected that I was a novice. I told him to put up eight points, and put them all on the roof, and use the best quality of rod. He said he could furnish the plain article at twenty cents a foot, coppered twenty-five cents, zinc-plated spiral twist at thirty cents that would stop a streak of lightning any time no matter where it was bound, and render its errand harmless and its further progress apocryphal. I said apocryphal was no slouch of a word emanating from the source it did, but philology aside, I liked the spiral twist and would take that brand. Then he said he could make two hundred and fifty feet answer, but to do it right, and make the best job in town of it, and attract the admiration of the just and the unjust alike, and compel all parties to say they never saw a more symmetrical and hypothetical display of lightning rod since they were born, he supposed he really couldn't get along without four hundred, though he was not vindictive, and trusted he was willing to try. I said go ahead and use four hundred, and make any kind of a job he pleased out of it, but let me get back to my work, so I got rid of him at last, and now, after half an hour spent in getting my train of political economy thoughts coupled together again, I am ready to go on once more. Richest treasures of their genius, their experience of life, and their learning, the great lights of commercial jurisprudence, international confraternity, and biological deviation of all ages, all civilizations, and all nationalities, from Zoroaster down to Horace Greeley, have—here I was interrupted again—and required to go down and confer further with that lightning rod man. I hurried off, boiling and surging with prodigious thoughts wound in words of such majesty that each one of them was in itself a straggling procession of syllables that might be fifteen minutes passing a given point, and once more I confronted him. He, so calm and sweet, I, so hot and frenzied. He was standing in the contemplative attitude of the colossus of roads, with one foot on my infant tuber-rose, and the other among my pansies. His hands on his hips, his hat-brim tilted forward, one eye shut, and the other gazing critically and admiringly in the direction of my principal chimney. He said, now there was a state of things to make a man glad to be alive, and added, I leave it to you if you ever saw anything more deliriously picturesque than eight lightning rods on one chimney. I said I had no present recollection of anything that transcended it. He said that in his opinion nothing on earth but Niagara Falls was superior to it in the way of natural scenery. All that was needed now, he verily believed, to make my house a perfect bomb to the eye, was to kind of touch up the other chimneys a little, and thus add to the generous coup d'etat a soothing uniformity of achievement which would allay the excitement naturally consequent upon the coup d'etat. I asked him if he learned to talk out of a book, and if I could borrow it anywhere. He smiled pleasantly, and said that his manner of speaking was not taught in books, and that nothing but familiarity with lightning could enable a man to handle his conversational style with impunity. He then figured up an estimate, and said that about eight more rods scattered about my roof would about fix me right, and he guessed five hundred feet of stuff would do it, and added that the first eight had got a little of the start of him, so to speak, and used up a mere trifle of material more than he had calculated on, a hundred feet or along there. I said I was in a dreadful hurry, and I wished we could get this business permanently mapped out so that I could go on with my work. He said, I could have put up those eight rods and marched off about my business. Some men would have done it, but no, I said to myself, this man is a stranger to me, and I will die before I'll wrong him. There ain't lightning rods enough on that house, and for one I'll never stir out of my tracks till I've done as I would be done by. And told him so. Stranger, my duty is accomplished. If the recalcitrant and deflogistic messenger of heaven strikes your—there, now, there—I said, put on the other eight. Add five hundred feet of spiral twist, do anything and everything you want to do, but calm your sufferings, and try to keep your feelings where you can reach them with a dictionary. Meanwhile, if we understand each other now, I will go to work again. I think I have been sitting here a full hour this time trying to get back to where I was when my train of thought was broken up by the last interruption, but I believe I have accomplished it at last, and may venture to proceed again. Wrestled with this great subject, and the greatest among them have founded a worthy adversary, and one that always comes up fresh and smiling after every throw, the great Confucius said that he would rather be a profound political economist than chief of police. Cicero frequently said that political economy was the grand disconsemation that the human mind was capable of consuming, and even our own Greeley had said vaguely, but forcefully, that political here the lightning-rod man sent up another call for me. I went down in a state of mind bordering on impatience. He said he would rather have died than interrupt me, but when he was employed to do a job, and that job was expected to be done in a clean, workman-like manner, and when it was finished and fatigue urged him to seek the rest and recreation he stood so much in need of, and he was about to do it, but looked up and saw at a glance that all the calculations had been a little out, and if a thunderstorm were to come up, and that house, which he felt a personal interest in, stood there with nothing on earth to protect it but sixteen lightning-rods, let us have peace, I shrieked. Put up a hundred and fifty. Put some on the kitchen. Put a dozen on the barn. Put a couple on the cow. Put one on the cook. Scatter them all over the persecuted place till it looks like a zinc-plated spiral-twisted silver-mounted cane-break. Move! Use up all the material you can get your hands on, and when you run out of lightning-rods, put up ram-rods, cam-rods, stair-rods, piston-rods, anything that will pander to your dismal appetite for artificial scenery, and bring respite to my raging brain and healing to my lacerated soul!" Holy and moved, further than to smile sweetly, this iron being simply turned back his wrist-bands daintily, and said he would now proceed to hump himself. Well, all that was nearly three hours ago. It is questionable whether I am calm enough yet to write on the noble theme of political economy, but I cannot resist the desire to try, for it is one subject that is nearest to my heart and dearest to my brain of all this world's philosophy. Economy is Heaven's best boon to man. When the loose but gifted Byron lay in his Venetian exile he observed that if it could be granted him to go back and live his miss-spent life over again he would give his lucid and un-intoxicated intervals to the composition not of frivolous rhymes but of essays upon political economy. Washington loved this exquisite science. Such names as Baker, Beckwith, Judson, Smith are imperishably linked with it, and even Imperial Homer, in the ninth book of the Iliad, has said, fiat giustitia ruat curlum, post mortem unum antebellum, hic jacet hoc exparte res politicum economico est. The grandeur of these conceptions of the Old Poet, together with the facility of the wording which closed them, and the sublimity of the imagery whereby they are illustrated, have singled out that stanza, and made it more celebrated than any that ever. Now, not a word out of you, not a single word. Just state your bill and relapse into impenetrable silence for ever and ever on these premises. Nine hundred dollars? Is that all? This check for the amount will be honored at any respectable bank in America. What is that multitude of people gathered in the street for? How, looking at the lightning rods? Bless my life! Did they never see any lightning rods before? Never saw such a stack of them on one establishment, did I understand you to say? I will step down and critically observe this popular abolition of ignorance. Three days later. We are all about worn out. For four and twenty hours our bristling premises were the talk and wonder of the town. The theatres languished, for their happiest scenic conventions were tame and commonplace compared with my lightning rods. Our street was blocked night and day with spectators, and among them were many who came from the country to see. It was a blessed relief on the second day when a thunderstorm came up and the lightning began to go for my house, as the historian Josephus quaintly phrases it. It cleared the galleries, so to speak. In five minutes there was not a spectator within half a mile of my place, but all the high houses about that distance away were full, windows, roof and all, and well they might be, for all the falling stars and fourth of July fireworks of a generation put together and rained down simultaneously out of heaven in one brilliant shower upon one helpless roof would not have any advantage of the pyrotechnic display that was making my house so magnificently conspicuous in the general gloom of the storm. By actual count the lightning struck at my establishment seven hundred and sixty-four times in forty minutes, but tripped on one of those faithful rods every time, and slid down the spiral twist and shot into the earth before it probably had time to be surprised at the way the thing was done. And through all that bombardment only one patch of slates was ripped up, and that was because for a single instant the rods in the vicinity were transporting all the lightning they could possibly accommodate. Well, nothing was ever seen like it since the world began. For one whole day and night not a member of my family stuck his head out of the window, but he got the hair snatched off it as smooth as a billiard-ball, and, if the reader will believe me, not one of us ever dreamt of stirring abroad. But at last the awful siege came to an end, because there was absolutely no more electricity left in the clouds above us within grappling distance of my insatiable rods. Then I sallied forth, and gathered daring workmen together, and not a bite or a nap did we take till the premises were utterly stripped of all their terrific armament except just three rods on the house, one in the kitchen and one in the barn. And, behold, these remain there even unto this day. And then, and not till then, the people ventured to use our street again. I will remark here, in passing, that during that fearful time I did not continue my essay upon political economy. I am not even yet settled enough in nerve and brain to resume it. To whom it may concern. Parties having need of three thousand two hundred and eleven feet of best-quality zinc-plated spiral-twist lightning-rod stuff, and sixteen hundred and thirty-one silver-tipped points, all intolerable repair, and, although much worn by use, still equal to any ordinary emergency, can hear of a bargain by addressing the publisher. CHAPTER II Even a criminal is entitled to fair play, and certainly when a man who has done no harm has been unjustly treated, he is privileged to do his best to write himself. My attention has just been called to an article some three years old in a French magazine entitled Revue des deux mondes, Revue of some two worlds, wherein the writer treats of les humoristes américaines, these humorists-Americans. I am one of these humorists-Americans dissected by him, and hence the complaint I am making. This gentleman's article is an able one, as articles go, in the French, where they always tangle up everything to that degree that, when you start into a sentence you never know whether you are going to come out alive or not. It is a very good article, and the writer says all manner of kind and complementary things about me, for which I am sure I thank him with all my heart. But then why should he go and spoil all his praise by one unlucky experiment? What I refer to is this. He says my jumping frog is a funny story, but still he can't see why it should ever really convulse anyone with laughter, and straightway proceeds to translate it into French in order to prove to his nation that there is nothing so very extravagantly funny about it. Just there is where my complaint originates. He has not translated it at all. He has simply mixed it all up. It is no more like the jumping frog when he gets through with it than I am like a meridian of longitude. But my mere assertion is not proof. Wherefore I print the French version that all may see that I do not speak falsely. Furthermore, in order that even the unlettered may know my injury and give me their compassion, I have been at infinite pains and trouble to retranslate this French version back into English, and to tell the truth I have well now worn myself out at it, having scarcely rested from my work during five days and nights. I cannot speak the French language, but I can translate very well, though not fast, I being self-educated. I ask the reader to run his eye over the original English version of the jumping frog, and then read the French or my retranslation, and kindly take notice how the Frenchman has riddled the grammar. I think it is the worst I ever saw, and yet the French are called a polished nation. If I had a boy that put sentences together as they do, I would polish him to some purpose. Without further introduction, the jumping frog, as I originally wrote it, was as follows. After it will be found the French version, and after the latter my retranslation from the French. The notorious jumping frog of Calaveras County, pronounced Calaveras. In compliance with the request of a friend of mine who wrote me from the east, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and inquired after my friend's friend, Leonidas W. Smiley, as requested to do, and I hereon to append the result. I have a lurking suspicion that Leonidas W. Smiley is a myth, but my friend never knew such a personage, and that he only conjectured that if I asked old Wheeler about him it would remind him of his infamous Jim Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me to death with some exasperating reminiscence of him as long and as tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was the design, it succeeded. I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the bar room stove of the dilapidated tavern in the decayed mining-camp of angels, and I noticed that he was fat and bald-headed, and had an expression of winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countens. He roused up and gave me good day. I told him that a friend of mine had commissioned me to make some inquiries about a cherished companion of his boyhood named Leonidas W. Smiley, Reverend Leonidas W. Smiley, a young minister of the gospel, who he had heard was at one time resident of Angel's Camp. I added that if Mr. Wheeler could tell me anything about this Reverend Leonidas W. Smiley I would feel under many obligations to him. Simon Wheeler backed me into a corner and blockaded me there with his chair, and then sat down and reeled off the monotonous narrative which follows this paragraph. He never smiled, he never frowned, he never changed his voice from the gentle flowing key to which he tuned his initial sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of enthusiasm. But all through the interminable narrative there ran a vein of impressive earnestness and sincerity which showed me plainly that so far from his imagining that there was anything ridiculous or funny about his story, he regarded it as a really important matter and admired its two heroes as men of transcendent genius in finesse. I let him go on in his own way and never interrupted him once. Reverend Leonidas W. Well, there was a fella here once by the name of Jim Smiley in the winter of 49, or maybe it was the spring of 50, I don't recollect exactly somehow, though what makes me think it was one or the other is because I remember the big flume weren't finished when he first come to the camp. But anyway, he was the curiousest man about always betting on anything that turned up you ever see if he could get anybody to bet on the other side, and if he couldn't he'd change sides any way that suited the other man would suit him, any way just so he got a bet he was satisfied. But still he was lucky, uncommon lucky, he most always come out winner. He was always ready and laying for a chance. There couldn't be no solitary thing mentioned but that fella offered a bet on it and take airy side you please, as I was just telling you. If there was a horse race you'd find him flush or you'd find him busted at the end of it. If there was a dog-fight he'd bet on it. If there was a cat-fight he'd bet on it. If there was a chicken-fight he'd bet on it. Why, if there was two birds setting on a fence, he would bet you which one would fly first. Or if there was a camp meeting he would be there regular to bet on Parson Walker, which he judged to be the best exhorter about here. And so he was, too, and a good man. If he even see a straddle-bug start to go anywheres he would bet you how long it would take him to get to wherever he was going to, and if you took him up he would follow that straddle-bug to Mexico, but what he would find out where he was bound for and how long he was on the road. Lots of the boys here have seen that smiley and can tell you about him. Why, it never made no difference to him. He'd bet on anything that banged a feller. Parson Walker's wife laid very sick once for a good while, and it seemed as if they weren't going to save her. But one morning he come in and smiley up and asked him how she was, and he said she was considerable better. Thank the Lord for His infinite mercy, and coming on so smart that with a blessing of providence she'd get well yet. This smiley, before he thought, says, Well, I'll risk two-and-a-half. She don't, anyway. This year's smiley had a mare. The boys called her the 15-minute nag, but that was only in fun, you know, because, of course, she was faster than that. And he used to win money on that horse, for all she was so slow and always had the asthma or the distemper or the consumption or something of that kind. They used to give her two or three hundred yards start, and then pass her under way. But always at the fad end of the race she'd get excited and desperate like, and come caverding and straddling up and scattering her legs around limber, sometimes in the air and sometimes out to one side among the fences, and kicking up more dust and raising more racket with her coughing and sneezing and blowing her nose, and always fetch up at the stand just about a neck ahead, as near as you could cipher it down. And he had a little small bullpup that to look at him you'd think he weren't worth a cent but to sit around and look ornery and lay for a chance to steal something. But as soon as money was up on him he was a different dog. His underjawed began to stick out like a folk-soul of a steamboat, and his teeth would uncover and shine like the furnaces. And a dog might tackle him and bully-rag him and bite him and throw him over his shoulder two or three times, and Andrew Jackson, which was the name of the pup, Andrew Jackson would never let on but that he was satisfied and hadn't expected nothing else, and the bets being doubled and doubled on the other side all the time till the money was all up, and then all of a sudden he would grab that other dog just by the joint of his hind leg and freeze to it, not jaw you understand but only just grip and hang on till they throwed up the sponge if it was a year. Smiley always come out winner on that pup till he harnessed a dog once that didn't have no hind legs because they'd been sawed off in a circular saw, and when the thing had gone long far enough and the money was all up, and he come to make a snatch for his pet-holt he see in a minute how he'd been imposed on and how the other dog had him in the door so to speak, and he peered surprised, and then he looked sort of discouraged like and didn't try no more to win the fight, and so he got chucked out bad. He gives Smiley a look as much as to say his heart was broke, and it was his fault for putting up a dog that hadn't no hind legs for him to take hold of, which was his main dependence in a fight, and then he limped off a piece and laid down and died. It was a good pup, was that Andrew Jackson, and would have made a name for himself if he lived, for the stuff was in him and he had genius, I know it, because he had no opportunities to speak of, and it don't stand to reason that a dog could make such a fight as he could under them circumstances if he had no talent. It always makes me feel sorry when I think of that last fight of his and the way it turned out. Well, this year Smiley had rat-tarriers and chicken-cocks and Tom-cats and all them kind of things till you couldn't rest, and you couldn't fetch nothing for him to bet on, but he'd match you. He catched a frog one day and took him home and said he cowlated to educate him, and so he never done nothing for three months but sat in his backyard and learned that frog to jump. And you bet you he did learn him too. He'd give him a little punch behind, and the next minute you'd see that frog whirling in the air like a donut. See him turn one summer set, or maybe a couple if he got a good start, and come down flat-footed and all right like a cat. He got him up so in the matter of catching flies and kept them in practice so constant that he'd nail a fly every time as far as he could see them. Smiley said all the frog wanted was education, and he could do most anything, and I believe him. Why, I've seen him set Dan a Webster down here on this floor. Dan a Webster was the name of the frog. And sing out, flies, Daniel, flies! And quicker you could wink, he'd spring straight up and snake a fly off in the counter there, and flop down on the floor again as solid as a gob of mud, and fall to scratching the side of his head with his hind foot as indifferent as if he hadn't no idea he'd been doing any more than any frog might do. You never see a frog so modest and as straightforward as he was, for all he was so gifted. And when it come to fire and squire jumping on a dead level, he could get over more ground at one straddle than any animal of his breed you ever see. Jumping on a dead level was his strong suit, you understand, and when it come to that, Smiley would ante up money on him as long as he had a red. Smiley was monstrous proud of his frog, and, well, he might be, for fellers that had travelled and been everywhere's all said he laid over any frog that ever they see. Well, Smiley kept the beast in a little lattice box, and he used to fetch him downtown sometimes and lay for a bet. One day a feller, a stranger in the camp he was, come across him with his box and says, What might it be that you've got in the box? And Smiley says, sort of indifferent like it might be a parrot or might be a canary maybe, but it ain't. It's only just a frog. And the feller took it and looked at it careful and turned it round this way and that and says, Hmm, so it is. Well, what's he good for? Well, Smiley says, easy and careless. He's good for one thing, I should judge. He can out jump any frog in Calaveras County. The feller took the box again and took another long particular look, and give it back to Smiley and says, very deliberate. Well, he says, I don't see no pints about that frog that's any better than any other frog. Maybe you don't, Smiley says. Maybe you understand frogs and maybe you don't understand them. Maybe you've had experience and maybe you ain't only an amateur, as it were. Anyways, I've got my opinion and I'll risk $40 that he can out jump any frog in Calaveras County. And the feller studied a minute and then says, kind or sad like, Well, I'm only a stranger here and I ain't got no frog. But if I had a frog, I'd bet you. And then Smiley says, That's all right. That's all right. If you'll hold my box a minute, I'll go and get you a frog. And so the feller took the box and put up his $40 along with Smiley's and sat down to wait. So he sat there good while thinking and thinking to himself and then he got the frog out and prized his mouth open and took a teaspoon and filled him full of coil shot, filled him pretty near up to his chin and set him on the floor. Smiley he went to the swamp and slopped around in the mud for a long time and finally he catched a frog and fetched him in and give him to this feller and says, Now, if you're ready, set him alongside of Daniel with this four paws just even with Daniels and I'll give the word. Then he says, One, two, three, get. And him and the feller touches up the frogs from behind and the new frog hopped off lively but Daniels give a heave and hasted up his shoulders so like a Frenchman. But it weren't no use. He couldn't budge. He was planted as solid as a church. He couldn't know more stir than if he was anchored out. Smiley was a good deal surprised and he was disgusted too. But he didn't have no idea what the matter was, of course. The feller took the money and started away. When he was going out at the door, he sort of jerked his thumb over his shoulder. So, a Daniel and says again very deliberate, Well, he says, I don't see no pats about that frog that's any better than any other frog. Smiley, he stood scratching his head and looking down at Daniel a long time and at last he says, I do wonder what in the nation that frog throwed off for. I wonder if there ain't something the matter with him. He appears to look mighty baggy somehow. And he catched Daniel by the nap of the neck and hefted him and says, Why, I blame my cats if he don't weigh five pound. And turned him upside down and he belched out a double hand full of shot. And then he see how it was. And he was the maddest man. He set the frog down and took out after that feller. But he never catched him. And here Simon Wheeler heard his name called from the front yard and got up to see what was wanted. And turning to me as he moved away he said, Just set where you are, stranger and rest easy. I ain't going to be gone a second. But by your leave I did not think that a continuation of the history of the enterprising vagabond Jim Smiley would be likely to afford me much information concerning the reverend Leonidas W. Smiley, and so I started away. At the door I met the sociable Wheeler returning, and he buttonholed me and recommenced. Well, this year Smiley had a yaller one-eyed cow that didn't have no tail, only just a short stump like a banana. And however lacking both time and inclination, I did not wait to hear about the afflicted cow, but took my leave. Now let the learned look upon this picture and say if iconoclasm can further go. From the Revue des deux mondes of July 15, 1872. La grenouille sauteuse du comté de Calaveras. Il y avait une fois ici un individu connu sur le nom de Jim Smiley. C'était dans l'hiver de 49, peut-être bien au printemps de 50, je ne me rappelle pas exactement. Ce qui me fait croire que c'était l'un ou l'autre, c'est que je me souviens que le grand bief n'était pas achevé lorsqu'il arriva au camp pour la première fois. Mais de toute façon, il était l'homme le plus friant de Paris qui puisse se voir, pariant sur tout ce qui se présenta, quand il pouvait trouver un adversaire, et quand il n'en trouvait pas, il passait du côté opposé. Tout ce qui convenait à l'autre, lui convenait. Pourvu qu'il eût un paris, Smiley était satisfait. Et il avait une chance, une chance inouïe, presque toujours il gagnait. Il faut dire qu'il était toujours prêt à s'exposer, qu'on ne pouvait mentionner la moindre chose, sans que ce gaillard offrit de parier là-dessus n'importe quoi, et de prendre le côté qu'on l'en voudrait, comme je vous disais tout à l'heure. S'il y avait des courses, vous le trouviez riche ou ruiné à la fin. S'il y avait un combat de chien, il apportait son enjeu. Il apportait pour un combat de chat, pour un combat de coque, par bleu. Si vous aviez vu deux oiseaux sur une haie, il vous aurait offert de parier lequel s'envolerait le premier, et s'il y avait meeting au camp, il venait parier régulièrement pour le Curie Valcaire, qu'il jugeait être le meilleur prédicateur des environs, et qu'il était en effet un brave homme. Il aurait rencontré une punaise de bois en chemin, qu'il aurait parié sur le temps qu'il lui faudrait pour aller où elle voudrait aller, et si vous l'aviez prise aux mots, il aurait suivi la punaise jusqu'au Mexique, sans se soucier d'aller si loin, ni du temps qu'il y perdrait. Une fois, la femme du Curie Valcaire fut très malade pendant longtemps. Il semblait qu'on ne la sauverait pas. Mais un matin, le Curie arrive, et smiley lui demande comment elle va, et il dit qu'elle est bien mieux, grâce à l'infini miséricorde tellement mieux qu'avec la bénédiction de la providence, qu'elle s'en tirerait, et voilà que, sans y penser, smiley répond, eh bien, je gage deux ennemis qu'elle mourra tout de même. Ce smiley avait une jugement que les gars appelaient le bidet du quart d'heure, mais seulement pour plaisanter, vous comprenez, parce que, bien entendu, elle était plus vite que ça. Et il avait coutume de gagner de l'argent avec cette bête. Quoi qu'elle fut pussive, cornarde, toujours prise d'asme, de coliques ou de consumptions, ou de quelque chose d'approchant. On lui donnait deux ou trois cents yard au départ, puis on la dépassait sans peine. Mais jamais à la fin, elle ne manquait de s'échauffer, de s'exaspérer, et elle arrivait, s'écartant, se défendant, ses jambes grêlent en l'air devant les obstacles, quelquefois les évitant et faisant avec cela plus de poussière qu'aucun cheval, plus de bruit surtout avec ses éternuments et reniflements. Crac, elle arrivait donc, toujours première d'une tête, aussi juste qu'on peut le mesurer. Et il avait un petit boule-d'ogue qui, à le voir, ne valait pas un sou. On aurait cru que parier contre lui, c'était volé, tant il était ordinaire, mais aussitôt les oranges faits, il devenait un autre chien. Sa mâchoire inférieur commençait à ressortir comme un gaillard avant. Ses dents se découvraient brillantes, comme des fournaises, et un chien pouvait le taquiner et l'exciter et le mordre, le jeter deux ou trois fois par-dessus de son épaule. André Jackson, c'était le nom du chien, André Jackson prenait cela tranquillement, comme s'il ne se fut jamais attendu à autre chose. Et quand les paris étaient doubles et redoubles contre lui, il vous saisissait l'autre chien juste à l'articulation de la jambe de derrière, et il ne la lâchait plus, non pas qu'il a mâché à vous concever, mais, il s'y serait tenu pendu jusqu'à ce qu'on jeta l'éponge en l'air, fallut-il attendre un an. Sma League allait toujours avec cette bête-là. Malheureusement, ils ont fini par dresser un chien qui n'avait pas de pâtes de derrière, parce qu'on les avait sillées. Et quand les choses furent aux points qu'il voulait et qu'il en vint à se jeter sur son morceau favori, le pauvre chien, compris en un instant qu'on s'en était moqué de lui et que l'autre le tenait. Vous n'avez jamais vu personne avoir l'air plus penot et plus découragé. Une fille aucun effort pour gagner le combat et fut rudement secouée, de sorte que, regardant Sma League, comme pour lui dire, mon cœur est brisé. C'était à faute. Pourquoi m'avoir livré un chien qui n'a pas de pâtes de derrière, puisque c'est par là que je l'ai bas ? Il s'en a là en clopinant et se coucha pour mourir. Ah, c'était un bon chien, c'est André Jackson, et il se serait fait un nom s'il avait vécu. Car il y avait de l'étoffe en lui, il avait du génie, je le sais, bien que de grandes occasions lui ait manqué. Mais il est impossible de supposer qu'un chien capable de se battre comme lui, certaines circonstances étant données, est manqué de talent. Je me sens triste toutes les fois que je pense à son dernier combat et au dénouement qu'il a eu. Eh bien, ce smiley nourrissait des terriaras et des coques de combat et des chats et toutes sortes de choses, au point qu'il était toujours à mesure de vous tenir tête et qu'avec sa rage de Paris, on n'avait plus de repos. Il attrapa un jour une grenouille et l'emporta chez lui, disant qu'il prétendait faire son éducation. Vous me croirez si vous voulez, mais pendant trois mois, il n'a rien fait que de lui apprendre à sauter dans une cour retirée de sa maison. Et je vous réponds qu'il avait réussi. Il lui donnait un petit coup par derrière et l'instant d'après, vous voyez la grenouille tourner en l'air comme un baignet au-dessus de la poêle, faire une culbute, quelquefois de lorsqu'elle était bien partie, et retomber sur ses pattes comme un chat. Il l'avait dressé dans l'art de gober des mouches et lui exerçait continuellement, si bien qu'une mouche, du plus loin qu'elle apparaissait, était une mouche perdue. Smiley, avec coutume de dire que tout ce qui manquait à une grenouille, c'était l'éducation. Qu'avec l'éducation, elle pouvait faire presque tout et je le crois, tenez. Je l'ai vu poser Daniel Webster, là, sur ce plancher. Daniel Webster était le nom de la grenouille et lui chantait des mouches, Daniel, des mouches. En un clin d'œil, Daniel avait bondi et saisit une mouche ici, sur le comptoir, puis sautait de nouveau par terre où il restait vraiment à se gratter la tête avec sa pâte de derrière, comme s'il n'avait pas eu la moindre idée de sa supériorité. Jamais vous n'avez vu de grenouille aussi modeste, aussi naturelle, douée comme elle l'était. Et, quand il s'agissait de sauter purement et simplement sur terrain plat, elle faisait plus de chemin en un saut qu'aucune bête de son espèce que vous puissiez connaître. Sauter à plat, c'était son fort. Quand il s'agissait de cela, Smiley entassait les enjeux sur elle tant qu'il lui restait un rouge au liard. Il faut le reconnaître, Smiley était monstrueusement fier de sa grenouille et il en avait le droit, car des gens qui avaient voyagé, qui avaient tout vu, disaient qu'on lui faisait un jour de la comparer à une autre, de façon que Smiley gardait Daniel dans une petite boîte à clair voie qui l'emportait parfois à la ville pour quelques paris. Un jour, un individu étranger au camp l'arrête avec sa boîte, il lui dit, qu'est-ce que vous avez donc serré là-dedans? Smiley dit d'un air indifférent. Cela pourrait être un pierroquet ou un serin, mais ce n'est rien de pareil, ce n'est qu'une grenouille. L'individu la prend, la regarde avec soin, la tourne d'un côté et de l'autre, puis il dit, tiens, en effet, à quoi est-elle bonne? Mon Dieu, répond Smiley, toujours d'un air dégagé. Elle est bonne pour une chose à mon avis, elle peut battre en sautant toute grenouille du côté de Calaveras. L'individu reprend la boîte, il examine de nouveau longuement et la rend à Smiley en disant d'un air délibéré. Mais bien, je ne vois pas que cette grenouille ait rien de mieux qu'aucune grenouille. Possible que vous ne le voyez pas, dit Smiley, possible que vous vous entendiez en grenouille, possible que vous ne vous entendiez point, possible que vous ayez de l'expérience et possible que vous ne soyez canamateur, de toute manière, je parie 40 dollars qu'elle battra en sautant n'importe quelle grenouille du côté de Calaveras. L'individu réfléchit une seconde et dit, comme attristé, je ne suis qu'un étranger ici, je n'ai pas de grenouille, mais si je n'avais une, je tiendrai le pari. Fort bien, répond Smiley, rien de plus facile. Si vous voulez tenir ma boîte une minute, j'irai vous chercher une grenouille. Voilà donc l'individu qui garde la boîte, qui met ses 40 dollars sur ceux de Smiley et qui attend. Il attend assez longtemps, réfléchissant tout seul et figurez-vous qu'il prend Daniel, lui ouvre la bouche de force avec une cuillère à thé, l'empli de menu plomb de chasse, mais l'empli jusqu'au menton, puis il le pose par terre. Smiley, pendant ce temps, était abarbotté dans une mare. Finalement, il attrape une grenouille, la porte à cet individu est dit. Maintenant, si vous êtes prêts, mettez-la tout contre Daniel avec leurs pattes de devant sur la même ligne et je donnerai le signal. Puis il ajoute 1, 2, 3, sauté. Lui et l'individu touchent leur grenouille pas derrière et la grenouille neuve se met à sautiller, mais Daniel se soulève lourdement. Ose les épaules ainsi, comme un français. À quoi bon? Il ne pouvait bouger. Il était planté solide, comme une enclume. Il n'avancé pas plus que si on lui mise à l'encre. Smiley, surpris et dégoûté, mais il ne se doutait pas du tout, bien entendu. L'individu empoche l'argent, s'en va, et, en s'en allant, est-ce qu'il ne donna pas un coup de pouce par-dessus l'épaule, comme ça, au pauvre Daniel, en disant de son air délibéré. Et bien, je ne vois pas que cette grenouille est rien de mieux qu'une autre. Smiley se grata longtemps la tête, les yeux fixés sur Daniel, jusqu'à ce qu'enfin il dit. Je me demande, comment diable il se fait que cette bête est refusée? Est-ce qu'il aurait quelque chose? On croirait qu'elle est enflée? Il empoigne Daniel par la peau du coup, le soulève et dit, le loup me croque si elle ne pèse pas cinq livres. Il le retourne et le malheureux crash de poignée de plomb. Quand Smiley reconnue ce qui en était, il fut comme fou. Vous le voyez d'ici, poser sa grenouille par terre et courir après cet individu. Mais, il ne le rattrape pas jamais et... Translation of the above back from the French. The frog jumping of the county of Calaveras. It there was one time here, an individual known under the name of Jim Smiley. It was in the winter of 49, possibly well at the spring of 50, I know me recollect not exactly. This which me makes to believe that it was the one or the other, it is that I shall remember that the grand flume is not achieved when he arrives at the camp for the first time, but of all sides he was the man the most fond of to bet which one have seen, betting upon all that which is presented, when he could find an adversary, and when he not of it could not he pass to the side opposed. All that which convenience to the other, to him convenience also, seeing that he had a bet, Smiley was satisfied, and he had a chance, a chance even worthless, nearly always he gained. It must to say that he was always near to himself expose, but one no could mention the least thing without that guillard offered to bet the bottom, no matter what, and to take the side that one him would, as I, you, it said, all at the hour, tout à l'heure. If it there was of races, you him find rich or ruined at the end. If it there is a combat of dogs, he bring his bet. He himself laid always for a combat of cats, for a combat of cocks, by blue. If you have see two birds upon a fence, he you should have offered to bet which of those birds shall fly the first, and if there is meeting at the camp, meeting au camp, he comes to bet regularly for the curé walker, which he judged to be the best predicator of the neighborhood, predicateur des environs, and which he was, in effect, and a brave man. He would encounter a bug of wood in the road, whom he will bet upon the time which he shall take to go where she would go, and if you him have take at the word, he will follow the bug as far as Mexico, without himself caring to go so far, neither of the time which he there lost. One time the woman of the curé walker is very sick during long time. It seemed that one not her saved not, but one morning the curé arrives, and Smiley him demanded how she goes, and he said that she is well better, graced to the infinite misery, lui demande comme elle va, et il dit qu'elle est bien mieux, grâce à l'infini miséricorde. So much better that with the benediction of the providence she herself of it would pull out, elle sentirait, and behold, that without there thinking Smiley responds, well, I gauge two-and-a-half that she will die all of same. This Smiley had an animal which the boys called the nag of the quarter of hour, but solely for pleasantry you comprehend, because, well, understand, she was more fast as that. Now why that exclamation? M.T. And it was custom of to gain of the silver with this beast, notwithstanding she was pussive, Cornard always taken of asthma, of colics, or of consumption, or something of approaching. One hymn would give two or three-hundred yards at the departure, then one hymn passed without pain, but never at the last she not fail of herself et chovée, of herself exasperate, and she arrives herself ecartant, se défendant, her legs grell in the air before the obstacles, sometimes them elevating and making with this more of dust than any horse, more of noise above with his itirlement, and reniflement crack. She arrives then always first by one head, as just as one can it measure. And he had a small bulldog, bulldog, who to him see no value, not assent. One would believe that to bet against him it was to steal, so much he was ordinary. But as soon as the game made, she becomes another dog. Her jaw inferior commenced to project like a deck of before. His teeth themselves discover brilliant like some furnaces, and a dog could him tackle the taquine. Him excite, him murder, le mudre. Him throw two or three times over his shoulder. André Jackson, this was the name of the dog, andré Jackson takes that tranquillity, as if he not himself was never expecting other thing. And when the bets were doubled and redoubled against him, he, you sees, the other dog, just at the articulation of the leg of behind, and he knotted leave more, not that he masticate you conceive, but he himself there shall be holding during until that one throws the sponge in the air, must he wait a year. Smiley gained always with this beast, la. Happily they have finished by elevating a dog who, no had not a feet of behind, because one them had sawed. And when things were at the point that he would, and that he came to himself throw upon his morsel favorite, the poor dog comprehended in an instant, that he himself was deceived in him, and that the other dog him had, you know have never seen person having the air more pennil and more discouraged. He not made no effort to gain the combat, and was rudely shucked. Eh bien! This Smiley nourished some terriers arra, and some cocks of combat, and some cats, and all sorts of things, and with his rage of betting one no had more of repose. He trapped one day a frog, and him imported with him, et l'emportat chillerie, saying that he pretended to make his education. You me believe, if you will, but during three months he not has nothing done but to him apprehend to jump, apprendre à sauter, in a court retired of her mansion, de sa maison. And I, you respond, that he have succeeded. He, him, gives a small blow by behind, and the instant after you shall see the frog turn in the air like a grease biscuit, make one somersault, sometimes two, when she was well started, and refall upon his feet like a cat. He, him, had accomplished in the art of to gobble the flies, gobe de mouche, and him their exercise continually, so well that a fly at the most far that she appeared was a fly lost. Smiley had custom to say that all which lacked to a frog it was the education, but with the education she could do nearly all, and I, him, believe. Tene, I, him, have seen pose Daniel Webster there upon this plank, Daniel Webster was the name of the frog, and to him sing, Some flies, Daniel, some flies! In a flash of the eye Daniel had bounded and seized a fly here upon the counter, then jumped anew at the earth, where he rested truly to himself, scratched the head with his behind foot, as if he no had not the least idea of his superiority. Never you not have seen frog as modest, as natural sweet as she was, and when he himself agitated to jump purely and simply upon plain earth, she does more ground in one jump than any beast of his species, than you can know. To jump plain, this was his strong. When he himself agitated for that, Smiley multiplied the bets upon her as long as there to him remained a red. It must to know Smiley was monstrously proud of his frog, when he of it was right, for some men who were traveled, who had all seen, said that they to him would be injurious to him compared to another frog. Smiley guarded Daniel in a little box, latticed, which he carried by times, to the village for some bet. One day, an individual stranger at the camp, him arrested with his box, and him said, What is this that you have them shut up there within? Smiley said with an air indifferent. That could be a parochette, or a syringe, ou un serrant. But this know is nothing of such, it not is but a frog. The individual it took, it regarded with care, it turned from one side and from the other, then he said tiens, in effect. At what is she good? My God, responds Smiley, always with an air disengaged. She is good for one thing, to my noticed, a mon avis. She can batter in jumping, elle peut battre en sautant. All frogs of the county of Calaveris. The individual retook the box, it examined of new longly, and it rendered to Smiley in saying with an air deliberate, et bien, I know so not that that frog had nothing of better than each frog. Je ne vois pas que cet grenouille est rien de mieux qu'aucune grenouille. If that isn't grammar gone to seed, then I count myself no judge. M.T. Possible that you not it saw not, said Smiley, possible that you, you comprehend frogs, possible that you not you, there comprehend nothing, possible that you had of the experience, and possible that you not be but an amateur. Of all manner, de toute manière, I bet forty dollars that she batter in jumping no matter which frog of the county of Calaveris. The individual reflected a second, and said, like sad, I not am but a stranger here, I know have not a frog, but if I of it had one, I would embrace the bet. Strong well, responds Smiley, nothing of more facility. If you will hold my box a minute, I go you to search a frog. Je vais vous chercher. Behold then the individual who guards the box, who puts his forty dollars upon those of Smiley, and who attends, et qui attend. He attended enough long times, reflecting all solely, and figure you that he takes Daniel, him opens the mouth by force, and with a teaspoon him fills with shot of the hunt, even him fills just the chin, then he, him puts by the earth. Smiley, during these times, was at slopping in a swamp. Finally he trapped, attrape, a frog, him carried to that individual, and said, Now, if you be ready, put him all against Daniel, with their before feet upon the same line, and I give the signal, then he added one, two, three, advance. Him and the individual touched their frogs by behind, and the individual knew, put to jump smartly, but Daniel himself lifted ponderously, exalted the shoulders thus, like a Frenchman. To what good? He not could budge. He is planted solid like a church. He not advance no more than if one him had put at the anchor. Smiley was surprised and disgusted, but he not himself doubted not of the turn being intended, mais il ne se doutait pas du tour, bien entendu. The individual in pocket of the silver, himself with it, went, and of it himself in going, is it that he no gives not a jerk of thumb over the shoulder, like that, at poor Daniel, in saying with his air deliberate, l'individu l'empoche largeant, s'en va, et en s'en allant, est-ce qu'il ne donne pas un coup de pouce par-dessus l'épaule? Comme ça, au pauvre Daniel, en disant de son air délibéré. Eh bien! I know, see not, that that frog has nothing of better than another. Smiley himself scratched long times the head, the eyes fixed upon Daniel, until that which at last he said, I me demand how the devil it makes itself that this beast has refused. Is it that she had something? One would believe that she is stuffed. He grasped Daniel by the skin of the neck, him lifted, and said, The wolf me bite if he know way not five pounds. He him reversed, and the unhappy belch two handfuls of shot, il me l'heure, et cetera. When Smiley recognized how it was, he was like mad. He deposited his frog by the earth, and ran after that individual, but he not him caught never. Such is the jumping frog to the distorted French eye. I claim that I never put together such an odious mixture of bad grammar and delirium tremens in my life. And what has the poor foreigner like me done to be abused and misrepresented like this? When I say, well, I don't see no pints about that frog that's any better than any other frog, is it kind? Is it just for this French man to try to make it appear that I said, eh bien, I know saw not that that frog had nothing of better than each frog. I have no heart to write more. I never felt so about anything before. CHAPTER IV Journalism in Tennessee Written about 1871. The editor of the Memphis Avalanche swoops thus mildly down upon a correspondent who posted him as a radical. While he was writing the first word, the middle, dotting his eyes, crossing his tees, and punching his period, he knew he was concocting a sentence that was saturated with infamy and reeking with falsehood. EXCHANGE I was told by the physician that a southern climate would improve my health, and so I went down to Tennessee and got a birth on the Morning Glory and Johnson County War-Woop as Associate Editor. When I went on duty I found the chief editor sitting tilted back in a three-legged chair with his feet on a pine table. There was another pine table in the room and another afflicted chair, and both were half-buried under newspapers and scraps and sheets of manuscript. There was a wooden box of sand sprinkled with cigar-stubs and old soldiers, and a stove with a door hanging by its upper hinge. The chief editor had a long-tailed black cloth frock coat on and white linen pants. His boots were small and neatly blacked. He wore a ruffled shirt, a large seal ring, a standing collar of obsolete pattern, and a checkered neckerchief with the ends hanging down. Date of costume, about 1848. He was smoking a cigar and trying to think of a word, and in pawing his hair he had rumpled his locks a good deal. He was scowling fearfully, and I judged that he was concocting a particularly knotty editorial. He told me to take the exchanges and skim through them and write up the Spirit of the Tennessee Press, condensing into the article all of their contents that seemed of interest. I wrote as follows. The editors of the semi-weekly earthquake evidently labor under a misapprehension with regard to the Ballyhack Railroad. It is not the object of the company to leave Buzzardville off to one side. On the contrary, they consider it one of the most important points along the line, and consequently can have no desire to slight it. The gentlemen of the earthquake will, of course, take pleasure in making the correction. John W. Blossom Esquire, the able editor of the Higginsville Thunderbolt and Battlecry of Freedom, arrived in the city yesterday. He is stopping at the Van Buren House. We observe that our contemporary of the Mud Springs Morning Howl has fallen into the error of supposing that the election of Van Werter is not an established fact, but he will have discovered his mistake before this reminder reaches him no doubt. He was doubtless misled by incomplete election returns. It is pleasant to note that the city of Blathersville is endeavoring to contract with some New York gentleman to pave its well-nigh impassable streets with the Nicholson Pavement. The daily hurrah urges the measure with ability and seems confident of ultimate success. I passed my manuscript over to the chief editor for acceptance, alteration, or destruction. He glanced at it, and his face clouded. He ran his eye down the pages, and his countenance grew portentious. It was easy to see that something was wrong. Presently he sprang up and said, Thunder and lightning! Do you suppose I am going to speak of those cattle that way? Do you suppose my subscribers are going to stand such gruel as that? Give me the pen." I never saw a pen scrape and scratch its way so viciously or plow through another man's verbs and adjectives so relentlessly. While he was in the midst of his work, somebody shot at him through the open window and marred the symmetry of my ear. Ah! said he. That is, that scoundrel Smith of the moral volcano. He was due yesterday. And he snatched a navy revolver from his belt and fired. Smith dropped, shot in the thigh. The shot spoiled Smith's aim, who was just taking a second chance, and he crippled a stranger. It was me. Merely a finger shot off. Then the chief editor went on with his eraser and inter-lineations. Just as he finished them a hand-grenade came down the stove-pipe and the explosion shivered the stove into a thousand fragments. However it did no further damage except that a vagrant piece knocked a couple of my teeth out. "'That stove is utterly ruined,' said the chief editor. I said I believed it was. "'Well, no matter. Don't want it this kind of weather. I know the man that did it. I'll get him. Now, here is the way this stuff ought to be written.' I took the manuscript. It was scarred with erasers and inter-lineations till its mother wouldn't have known it, if it had one. It now read as follows. Spirit of the Tennessee Press. The inveterate liars of the semi-weekly earthquake are evidently endeavouring to palm off upon a noble and chivalrous people another of their vile and brutal falsehoods with regard to that most glorious conception of the nineteenth century, the Ballyhack Railroad. The idea that Buzzardville was to be left off at one side originated in their own fulsome brains, or rather in the settlings which they regard as brains. They had better swallow this lie if they want to save their abandoned reptile carcasses the cow-hiding they so richly deserve. That ass blossom of the Higginsville Thunderbolt and battle cry of freedom is down here again sponging at the Van Buren. We observe that the besotted black guard of the Mud Springs Morning Howell is giving out, with his usual propensity for lying, that Van Werter is not elected. The heaven-born mission of journalism is to disseminate truth, to eradicate error, to educate, refine, and elevate the tone of public morals and manners, and make all men more gentle, more virtuous, more charitable, and in all ways better and holier and happier. And yet this black-hearted scoundrel degrades his great office persistently to the dissemination of falsehood, columny, vituperation, and vulgarity. Blathersville wants a Nicholson pavement. It wants a jail and a poor house more. The idea of a pavement in a one-horse town composed of two ginmills, the blacksmith's shop, and that mustard plaster of a newspaper, the Daily Hurrah, the crawling insect Buckner, who edits the hurrah, is braying about his business with his customary imbecility and imagining that he is talking sense. Now that is the way to write peppery, and to the point. Mush and milk journalism gives me the phantods. About this time a brick came through the window with a splintering crash and gave me a considerable of a jolt in the back. I moved out of range. I began to feel in the way. The chief said, "'That was the Colonel, likely. I've been expecting him for two days. He will be up now right away.' He was correct. The Colonel appeared in the door a moment afterward with a dragoon revolver in his hand. He said, "'Sir, have I the honour of addressing the poultroon who edits this mangy sheet?' "'You have? Be seated, sir. Be careful of the chair. One of its legs is gone. I believe I have the honour of addressing the putrid liar Colonel Blather-Skyte to come, sir.' "'Right, sir. I have a little account to settle with you. If you are at leisure, we will begin. I have an article on the encouraging progress of moral and intellectual development in America, to finish, but there is no hurry. Begin.' Both pistols rang out their fierce clamour at the same instant. The chief lost a lock of his hair, and the Colonel's bullet ended its career in the fleshy part of my thigh. The Colonel's left shoulder was clipped a little. They fired again. Both missed their men this time. But I got my share, a shot in the arm. At the third fire both gentlemen were wounded slightly, and I had a knuckle chipped. I then said I believed I would go out and take a walk, as this was a private matter, and I had a delicacy about participating in it further. But both gentlemen begged me to keep my seat, and assured me that I was not in the way. They then talked about the elections and the crops while they reloaded, and I fell to tying up my wounds. But presently they opened fire again with animation, and every shot took effect. But it is proper to remark that five out of the six fell to my share. The sixth one mortally wounded the Colonel, who remarked with fine humor, that he would have to say good morning now, as he had business uptown. He then inquired the way to the undertakers, and left. The Chief turned to me and said, I am expecting company to dinner, and shall have to get ready. It will be a favour to me if you will read proof and attend to the customers. I winced a little at the idea of attending to the customers, but I was too bewildered by the fuselad that was still ringing in my ears to think of anything to say. He continued, Jones will be here at three. Cowhide him. Gillespie will call earlier, perhaps. Throw him out of the window. Ferguson will be along about four. Kill him. That is all for today, I believe. If you have any odd time you may write a blistering article on the police. Give the Chief Inspector rats. The cowhides are under the table. Weapons in the drawer. Ammunition there in the corner. Lint and bandages up there in the pigeonholes. In case of accident, go to Lancet, the surgeon, downstairs. He advertises we take it out in trade. He was gone. I shuddered. At the end of the next three hours I had been through peril so awful that all peace of mind and all cheerfulness were gone from me. Gillespie had called and thrown me out of the window. Jones arrived promptly, and when I got ready to do the cowhiding he took the job off my hands. In an encounter with a stranger and not in the bill of fair, I had lost my scalp. Another stranger by the name of Thompson left me a mere wreck and ruin of chaotic rags. And at last, at bay in the corner, and beset by an infuriated mob of editors, black-legs, politicians, and desperados who raved and swore and flourished their weapons about my head till the air shimmered with glancing flashes of steel, I was in the act of resigning my birth on the paper when the chief arrived, and with him a rabble of charmed and enthusiastic friends. Then ensued a scene of riot and carnage such as no human pen or steel one either could describe. People were shot, probed, dismembered, blown up, thrown out of the window. There was a brief tornado of murky blasphemy, with a confused and frantic war dance glimmering through it, and then all was over. In five minutes there was silence, and the gory chief and I sat alone, and surveyed the sanguinary ruin that strewed the floor around us. He said, You'll like this place when you get used to it. I said, I'll have to get you to excuse me. I think maybe I might write to suit you after a while, as soon as I had some practice and learned the language I am confident I could. But to speak the plain truth that sort of energy of expression has its inconveniences, and a man is liable to interruption. You see that yourself, vigorous writing, is calculated to elevate the public, no doubt, but then I do not like to attract so much attention as it calls forth. I can't write with comfort when I am interrupted so much as I have been today. I like this berth well enough, but I don't like to be left here to wait on the customers. The experiences are novel, I grant you, and entertaining, too, after a fashion, but they are not judiciously distributed. A gentleman shoots at you through the window and cripples me. A bombshell comes down the stovepipe for your gratification, and sends the stove door down my throat. A friend drops in to swap compliments with you, and freckles me with bullet holes till my skin won't hold my principles. You go to dinner, and Jones comes with his cowl hide, Gillespie throws me out of the window, Thompson tears all my clothes off, and an entire stranger takes my scalp with the easy freedom of an old acquaintance. And in less than five minutes all the black guards in the country arrive in their war-paint, and proceed to scare the rest of me to death with their tomahawks. Take it all together. I never had such a spirited time in all my life as I have had today. No, I like you, and I like your calm, unruffled way of explaining things to the customers. But you see, I am not used to it. The southern heart is too impulsive. Southern hospitality is too lavish with a stranger. The paragraphs which I have written today, and into whose cold sentences your masterly hand has infused the fervent spirit of Tennesseean journalism, will wake up another nest of hornets. All that mob of editors will come, and they will come hungry too, and want somebody for breakfast. I shall have to bid you adieu. I declined to be present at these festivities. I came south for my health. I will go back on the same errand, and suddenly Tennesseean journalism is too stirring for me, after which we parted with mutual regret, and I took apartments at the hospital. CHAPTER V Once there was a bad little boy whose name was Jim, though if you will notice you will find that bad little boys are nearly always called James in your Sunday school books. It was strange, but still it was true, that this one was called Jim. He didn't have any sick mother either, a sick mother who was pious and had the consumption, and would be glad to lie down in the grave and be at rest but for the strong love she bore her boy, and the anxiety she felt that the world might be harsh and cold toward him when she was gone. Most bad boys in these Sunday books are named James, and have sick mothers who teach them to say, Now, lay me down, et cetera, and sing them to sleep with sweet plaintive voices, and then kiss them good night, and kneel down by the bedside and weep. But it was different with this fellow. He was named Jim, and there wasn't anything to matter with his mother, no consumption or anything of that kind. She was rather stout than otherwise, and she was not pious. Moreover, she was not anxious on Jim's account. She said if he were to break his neck it wouldn't be much loss. She always spanked Jim to sleep, and she never kissed him good night. On the contrary, she boxed his ears when she was ready to leave him. Once this little bad boy stole the key of the pantry, and slipped in there and helped himself to some jam, and filled up the vessel with tar so that his mother would never know the difference. But all at once a terrible feeling didn't come over him, and something didn't seem to whisper to him. Is it right to disobey my mother? Isn't it sinful to do this? Where do bad little boys go who gobble up their good kind mother's jam? And then he didn't kneel down all alone and promise never to be wicked any more, and rise up with a light, happy heart, and go and tell his mother all about it, and beg her forgiveness, and be blessed by her with tears of pride and thankfulness in her eyes. You know, that is the way with all other bad boys in the books. But it happened otherwise with this Jim, strangely enough. He ate that jam, and said it was bully in his sinful, vulgar way, and he put in the tar, and said that was bully also, and laughed, and observed that the old woman would get up and snort when she found it out, and when she did find it out he denied knowing anything about it, and she whipped him severely, and he did the crying himself. Everything about this boy was curious, everything turned out differently with him from the way it does to the bad James's in the books. Once he climbed up in Farmer Acorn's apple-tree to steal apples, and the limb didn't break, and he didn't fall and break his arm, and get torn by the farmer's great dog, and then languish on a sick bed for weeks, and repent and become good. Oh, no! He stole as many apples as he wanted, and came down all right, and he was all ready for the dog, too, and knocked him end ways with a brick when he came to tear him. It was very strange. Nothing like it ever happened in those mild little books with marbled backs, and with pictures in them of men with swallow-tailed coats and bell-crowned hats, and pantaloons that are short in the legs, and women with the wastes of their dresses under their arms, and no hoops on—nothing like it in any of the Sunday school books. Once he stole the teacher's pen-knife, and when he was afraid it would be found out, and he would get whipped, he slipped it into George Wilson's cap, poor widow Wilson's son, the moral boy, the good little boy of the village, who always obeyed his mother, and never told an untruth, and was fond of his lessons, and infatuated with Sunday school. And when the knife dropped from the cap and poor George hung his head and blushed, as if in conscious guilt, and the grieve teacher charged the theft upon him, and was just in the very act of bringing the switch down upon his trembling shoulders, a white-haired, improbable justice of the peace did not suddenly appear in their midst, and strike an attitude and say, Spare this noble boy! There stands the cowering culprit! I was passing the school door at recess, and, unseen myself, I saw the theft committed. And then Jim didn't get wailed, and the venerable justice didn't read the tearful school a homily, and take George by the hand and say such a boy deserved to be exalted, and then tell him to come and make his home with him, and sweep out the office, and make fires, and run errands, and chop wood, and study law, and help his wife do household labours, and have all the balance of the time to play and get forty cents a month, and be happy. No, it would have happened that way in the books, but didn't happen that way to Jim. No meddling old clam of a justice dropped in to make trouble, and so the model-boy George got thrashed, and Jim was glad of it, because, you know, Jim hated moral boys. Jim said he was down on them milk-sops. Such was the coarse language of this bad, neglected boy. But the strangest thing that ever happened to Jim was the time he went boating on Sunday, and didn't get drowned, and that other time that he got caught out in the storm when he was fishing on Sunday, and didn't get struck by lightning. Why, you might look and look all through the Sunday school books from now until next Christmas, and you would never come across anything like this. Oh, no! You would find that all the bad boys who go boating on Sunday invariably get drowned, and all the bad boys who get caught out in storms when they are fishing on Sunday infallibly get struck by lightning. Boats with bad boys in them all was upset on Sunday, and it all was storms when bad boys go fishing on the Sabbath. How this Jim ever escaped is a mystery to me. This Jim bore a charmed life. That must have been the way of it. Nothing could hurt him. He even gave the elephant in the menagerie a plug of tobacco, and the elephant didn't knock the top of his head off with his trunk. He browsed around the cupboard, after essence of peppermint, and didn't make a mistake and drink aquafortis. He stole his father's gun, and went hunting on the Sabbath, and didn't shoot three or four of his fingers off. He struck his little sister on the temple with his fist when he was angry, and she didn't linger in pain through long summer days, and die with sweet words of forgiveness upon her lips that redoubled the anguish of his breaking heart. No! She got over it. He ran off and went to see it last, and didn't come back, and find himself sad and alone in the world, his loved one sleeping in the quiet churchyard, and the vine-embowered home of his boyhood tumbled down and gone to decay. Ah, no! He came home as drunk as a piper, and got into the station-house the first thing. And he grew up and married, and raised a large family, and brained them all with an axe one night, and got wealthy by all manner of cheating and rascality. And now he is the infernalist wicked escoundrel in his native village, and is universally respected, and belongs to the legislature. So you see, there never was a bad James in the Sunday school books that had such a streak of luck as this sinful gym with a charmed life. CHAPTER VI Once there was a good little boy by the name of Jacob Blivins. He always obeyed his parents, no matter how absurd and unreasonable their demands were, and he always learned his book, and never was laid at Sabbath school. He would not play hooky, even when his sober judgment told him it was the most profitable thing he could do. None of the other boys could ever make that boy out, he acted so strangely. He wouldn't lie, no matter how convenient it was. He just said it was wrong to lie, and that was sufficient for him. And he was so honest that he was simply ridiculous. The curious ways that that Jacob had surpassed everything. He wouldn't play marbles on Sunday. He wouldn't rob birds' nests. He wouldn't give hot pennies to organ-grinders' monkeys. He didn't seem to take any interest in any kind of rational amusement. So the other boys used to try to reason it out and come to an understanding of him, but they couldn't arrive at any satisfactory conclusion. As I said before, they could only figure out a sort of vague idea that he was afflicted, and so they took him under their protection, never allowed any harm to come to him. This good little boy read all the Sunday school books. They were his greatest delight. This was the whole secret of it. He believed in the good little boys they put in the Sunday school books. He had every confidence in them. He longed to come across one of them alive once, but he never did. They all died before his time, maybe. Whenever he read about a particularly good one, he turned over quickly to the end to see what became of him, because he wanted to travel thousands of miles and gaze on him. But it wasn't any use. That good little boy always died in the last chapter, and there was a picture of the funeral, with all his relations and the Sunday school children standing around the grave in pantaloons that were too short and bonnets that were too large, and everybody crying into handkerchiefs that had had as much as a yard and a half of stuff in them. He was always headed off in this way. He never could see one of those good little boys on account of his always dying in the last chapter. Jacob had a noble ambition to be put in a Sunday school book. He wanted to be put in, with pictures representing him gloriously declining to lie to his mother, and her weeping for joy about it, and pictures representing him standing on the doorstep, giving a penny to a poor beggar woman with six children, and telling her to spend it freely, but not to be extravagant, because extravagance is a sin. And pictures of him magnanimously refusing to tell on the bad boy who always lay in wait for him around the corner as he came from school, and then chased him home saying, Hi! Hi! as he proceeded. That was the ambition of young Jacob Livans. He wished to be put in a Sunday school book. It made him feel a little uncomfortable sometimes when he reflected that the good little boys always died. He loved to live, you know, and this was the most unpleasant feature about being a Sunday school book boy. He knew it was not healthy to be good. He knew it was more fatal than consumption to be so supernaturally good as the boys in the books were. He knew that none of them had ever been able to stand it long, and it pained him to think that if they put him in a book he wouldn't ever see it, or even if they did get the book out before he died they wouldn't be popular without any picture of his funeral in the back part of it. It couldn't be much of a Sunday school book that couldn't tell about the advice he gave to the community when he was dying. So at last, of course, he had to make up his mind to do the best he could under the circumstances, to live right and hang on as long as he could and have his dying speech already when his time came. But somehow nothing ever went right with the good little boy. Nothing ever turned out with him the way it turned out with the good little boys in the books. They always had a good time, and the bad boys had the broken legs. But in his case there was a screw loose somewhere, and it all happened just the other way. When he found Jim Blake stealing apples and went under the tree to read to him about the bad little boy who fell out of the neighbor's apple tree and broke his arm, Jim fell out of the tree, too, but he fell on him and broke his arm, and Jim wasn't hurt at all. Jacob couldn't understand that. There wasn't anything in the books like it. And once, when some bad boys pushed a blind man over in the mud, and Jacob ran to help him up and receive his blessing, the blind man did not give him any blessing at all, but whacked him over the head with his stick and said he would like to catch him shoving him again, and then pretending to help him up. This was not in accordance with any of the books. Jacob looked them all over to see. One thing that Jacob wanted to do was to find a lame dog that hadn't any place to stay and was hungry and persecuted, and bring him home and pet him, and have that dog's imperishable gratitude. And at last he found one and was happy. And he brought him home and fed him. But when he was going to pet him the dog flew at him and tore all the clothes off him except those that were in front and made a spectacle of him that was astonishing. He examined authorities, but he could not understand the matter. It was of the same breed of dogs that was in the books, but it acted very differently. Whatever this boy did, he got into trouble. The very things the boys in the books got rewarded for turned out to be about the most unprofitable things he could invest in. Once when he was on his way to Sunday school he saw some bad boys starting off pleasuring in a sailboat. He was filled with consternation, because he knew from his reading that boys who went sailing on Sunday invariably got drowned. So he ran out on a raft to warn them, but a log turned with him and slid him into the river. A man got him out pretty soon, and the doctor pumped the water out of him and gave him a fresh start with his bellows, but he caught cold and lay sick a bed nine weeks. But the most unaccountable thing about it was that the bad boys in the boat had a good time all day, and then reached home alive and well in the most surprising manner. Jacob Bliven said there was nothing like these things in the books. He was perfectly dumbfounded. When he got well he was a little discouraged, but he resolved to keep on trying anyhow. He knew that so far his experiences wouldn't do to go in a book, but he hadn't yet reached the allotted term of life for good little boys, and he hoped to be able to make a record yet if he could hold on till his time was fully up. If everything else failed he had his dying speech to fall back on. He examined his authorities and found that it was now time for him to go to see as a cabin boy. He called on a ship captain and made his application, and when the captain asked for his recommendations he proudly drew out a tract and pointed to the word, to Jacob Blivens, from his affectionate teacher. But the captain was a coarse vulgar man, and he said, oh, that be blowed! that wasn't any proof that he knew how to wash dishes or handle the slush bucket, and he guessed he didn't want him. This was altogether the most extraordinary thing that ever happened to Jacob in all his life. A compliment from a teacher, on a tract, had never failed to move the tenderest emotions of ship captains and opened the way to all offices of honor and profit and their gift. It never had in any book that ever he had read. He could hardly believe his senses. This boy always had a hard time of it. Nothing ever came out according to the authorities with him. At last, one day, when he was around hunting up bad little boys to admonish, he found a lot of them in the old iron foundry fixing up a little joke on fourteen or fifteen dogs, which they had tied together in long procession, and were going to an ornament with empty nitroglycerin cans made fast to their tails. Jacob's heart was touched. He sat down on one of those cans, for he never minded grease when duty was before him, and he took hold of the foremost dog by the collar and turned his reproving eye upon wicked Tom Jones. But just at that moment Alderman McWelter, full of wrath, stepped in. All the bad boys ran away, but Jacob Blivins rose in conscious innocence and began one of those stately little Sunday school book speeches which always commenced with, oh sir, in dead opposition to the fact that no boy, good or bad, ever starts a remark with, oh sir. But the Alderman never waited to hear the rest. He took Jacob Blivins by the ear, and turned him around, and hit him and whack in the rear with a flat of his hand, and in an instant that good little boy shot out through the roof and soared away toward the sun with the fragments of those fifteen dogs stringing after him like the tale of a kite. And there wasn't a sign of that, Alderman, or that old iron foundry left on the face of the earth. And as for young Jacob Blivins, he never got a chance to make his last dying speech after all his trouble fixing it up, unless he made it to the birds, because although the bulk of him came down all right in a treetop in an adjoining county, the rest of him was apportioned around among four townships, and so they had to hold five inquests on him to find out whether he was dead or not, and how it occurred. You never saw a boy scattered so. This glycerin catastrophe is borrowed from a floating newspaper item whose author's name I would give if I knew it—M.T. Thus perished the good little boy, who did the best he could, but didn't come out according to the books. Every boy, who ever did as he did, prospered, except him. This case is truly remarkable. It will probably never be accounted for. CHAPTER VII. THOSE EVENING BELLS. THOSE EVENING BELLS. How many a tale their music tells of youth and home and that sweet time when last I heard their soothing chime. Those joyous hours are passed away, and many a heart that then was gay within the tomb now darkly dwells, and here's no more those evening bells, and so it will be when I am gone that tuneful peal will still ring on, while other bards shall walk these dells and sing your praise, sweet evening bells. THOSE ANNUAL BILLS. By Mark Twain. THESE ANNUAL BILLS. THESE ANNUAL BILLS. How many a song their discord trills of truck consumed enjoyed forgot, since I was skinned by last year's lot. THOSE JOYOUS BEANS ARE PASSED AWAY, THOSE ONIONS BLYTH, OH WHERE ARE THEY? ONCE LOVED, LOST, MORNED, NOW VEXING ILLS YOUR SHADES TROOP BACK IN ANNUAL BILLS, AND SO IT WILL BE WHEN I'M A GROUND, THESE YEARLY DUNS WILL STILL GO ROUND, WHILE OTHER BARDS, WITH FRANTIC QUILLS, SHALL DAMN AND DAMN THESE ANNUAL BILLS. CHAPTER VIII. Niagara Falls is a most enjoyable place of resort. The hotels are excellent, and the prices not at all exorbitant. The opportunities for fishing are not surpassed in the country. In fact, they are not even equal to elsewhere. Because in other localities certain places in the streams are much better than others. But at Niagara one place is just as good as another, for the reason that the fish do not bite anywhere. And so there is no use in your walking five miles to fish when you can depend on being just as unsuccessful nearer home. The advantages of this state of things have never here to fore been properly placed before the public. The weather is cool in summer, and the walks and drives are all pleasant and none of them fatiguing. When you start out to do the falls you first drive down about a mile and pay a small sum for the privilege of looking down from a precipice into the narrowest part of the Niagara River. A railway cut through a hill would be as comely if it had the angry river tumbling and foaming through its bottom. You can descend a staircase here, a hundred and fifty feet down, and stand at the edge of the water. After you've done it you will wonder why you did it, but you will then be too late. The guide will explain to you, in his blood-curdling way, how he saw the little steamer made of the mist descend the fearful rapids, how first one paddle-box was out of sight behind the raging billows and then the other, and at what point it was that her smokestack toppled overboard and where her planking began to break and partis under, and how she did finally live through the trip after accomplishing the incredible feat of traveling seventeen miles in six minutes or six miles in seventeen minutes I have really forgotten which, but it was very extraordinary anyhow. It is worth the price of admission to hear the guide tell the story nine times in succession to different parties and never miss a word or alter a sentence or a gesture. Then you drive over to Suspension Bridge and divide your misery between the chances of smashing down two hundred feet into the river below and the chances of having the railway train overhead smashing down onto you. Either possibility is discomforting taken by itself, but mixed together, they amount in the aggregate to positive unhappiness. On the Canada side you drive along the chasm between long ranks of photographers standing guard behind their cameras ready to make an ostentatious frontispiece of you and your decaying ambulance and your solemn crate with a hide on it, which you are expected to regard in the light of a horse, and a diminished and unimportant background of sublime Niagara, and a great many people have the incredible effrontery or the native depravity to aid and abet this sort of crime. Any day in the hands of these photographers you may see stately pictures of Papa and Mama, Johnny and Bub and Sis, or a couple of country cousins, all smiling vacantly and all disposed in studied and uncomfortable attitudes in their carriage, and all looming up in their awe-inspiring imbecility before the snubbed and diminished presentment of that majestic presence whose ministering spirits are the rainbows, whose voice is the thunder, whose awful front is veiled in clouds, who was monarch here dead and forgotten ages before this sackful of small reptiles was deemed temporarily necessary to fill a crack in the world's unnoted myriads, and will still be monarch here ages and decades of ages after they shall have gathered themselves to their blood relations, the other worms, and been mingled with the unremembering dust. There is no actual harm in making Niagara a background whereon to display one's marvelous insignificance in a good strong light, but it requires a sort of superhuman self- complacency to enable one to do it. When you have examined these dependous horseshoe fall till you are satisfied you cannot improve on it, you return to America by the new suspension bridge and follow up the bank to where they exhibit the cave of the winds. Here I followed instructions, and divested myself of all my clothing, and put on a waterproof jacket and overalls. This costume is picturesque, but not beautiful. A guide, similarly dressed, led the way down a flight of winding stairs, which wound and wound, and still kept on winding long after the thing ceased to be a novelty, and then terminated long before it had begun to be a pleasure. We were then well down under the precipice, but still considerably above the level of the river. We now began to creep along flimsy bridges of a single plank, our persons shielded from destruction by a crazy wooden railing, to which I clung with both hands, not because I was afraid, but because I wanted to. Presently the descent became steeper and the bridge flimsier, and sprays from the American fall began to rain down on us in fast-increasing sheets that soon became blinding, and after that our progress was mostly in the nature of groping. Now a furious wind began to rush out from behind the waterfall, which seemed determined to sweep us from the bridge, and scatter us on the rocks and among the torrents below. I remarked that I wanted to go home, but it was too late. We were almost under the monstrous wall of water thundering down from above, and speech was in vain in the midst of such a pitiless crash of sound. In another moment the guide disappeared behind the deluge, and bewildered by the thunder, driven helplessly by the wind, and smitten by the arowy tempest of rain, I followed. All was darkness. Such a mad storming, roaring, and bellowing of warring winds and water never crazed my ears before. I bent my head, and seemed to receive the Atlantic on my back. The world seemed going to destruction. I could not see anything. The flood poured down savagely. I raised my head with open mouth, and the most of the American cataract went down my throat. If I had sprung a leak now I had been lost. And at this moment I discovered that the bridge had ceased, and we must trust for a foothold to the slippery and precipitous rocks. I never was so scared before, and survived it. But we got through at last, and emerged into the open day, where we could stand in front of the laced and frothy and seething world of descending water, and look at it. When I saw how much of it there was, and how fearfully in earnest it was, I was sorry I had gone behind it. The noble red man has always been a friend and darling of mine. I love to read about him in tales and legends and romances. I love to read of his inspired sagacity, and his love of the wild free life of mountain and forest, and his general nobility of character, and his stately metaphorical manner of speech, and his chivalrous love for the dusky maiden, and the picturesque pomp of his dress and accoutrements, especially the picturesque pomp of his dress and accoutrements. When I found the shops at Niagara Falls full of dainty Indian beadwork and stunning moccasins, and equally stunning toy figures representing human beings who carried their weapons in holes bored through their arms and bodies, and had feet shaped like a pie, I was filled with emotion. I knew that now, at last, I was going to come face to face with the noble red man. A lady clerk in a shop told me, indeed, that all her grand array of curiosities were made by the Indians, and that they were plenty about the Falls, and that they were friendly, and it would not be dangerous to speak to them. And sure enough, as I approached the bridge leading over to Luna Island, I came upon a noble son of the forest sitting under a tree diligently at work on a bead reticule. He wore a slouch hat and brogues, and had a short black pipe in his mouth. Thus does the baneful contact with our effeminate civilization dilute the picturesque pomp which is so natural to the Indian when far removed from us in his native haunts. I addressed the relic as follows. Is the wawu wang wang of the wakwawak happy? Does the great speckle thunder sigh for the warpath? Or is his heart contented with dreaming of the dusky maiden, the pride of the forest? Does the mighty sachem yearn to drink the blood of his enemies? Or is he satisfied to make bead reticules for the papooses of the pale face? Speak, sublime relic of bygone grandeur. Venerable ruin, speak! The relic said, And is it myself, Dennis Hooligan, that you'd be taken for a dirty engine, you drall and lantern-jawed spider-league devil, by the piper that played before Moses, I'll eat ya! By and by, in the neighborhood of the Terrapin Tower, I came upon a gentle daughter of the Aborigines, infringed and beaded buckskin moccasins and leggings seated on a bench with her pretty wares about her. She had just carved out a wooden chief that had a strong family resemblance to a clothespin, and was now boring a hole through his abdomen to put his bow through. I hesitated a moment, and then addressed her. Is the heart of the forest maiden heavy? Is the laughing tadpole lonely? Does she mourn over the extinguished council fires of her race and the vanished glory of her ancestors? Or does her sad spirit wander afar toward the hunting grounds with her brave gobbler of the lightnings as gone? Why is my daughter silent? Has she awed against the pale-faced stranger? The maiden said, Fakes! And is it bitty Malone you dear to be calling names? Lave this, or I'll shy your lean carcass over the Cadillac, you sniveling blaggard! I adjourned from there also. Con found these Indians, I said. They told me they were tame. But if appearances go for anything I should say they were all on the war-path. I made one more attempt to fraternize with them, and only one. I came upon a camp of them gathered in the shade of a great tree, making wampum and moccasins, and addressed them in the language of friendship. Noble red men, braves, grand sachums, war-chiefs, squaws, and high muckamucks, the pale face from the land of the setting sun greets you. You beneficent pole-cat, you devourer of mountains, you roaring thunder-gust, you bully-boy with a glass eye. The pale face from beyond the great waters greets you all. War and pestilence have thinned your ranks and destroyed your once-proud nation, poker and seven-up, and a vain modern expense for soap, unknown to your glorious ancestors, have depleted your purses. Appropriating in your simplicity the property of others has gotten you into trouble. Misrepresenting facts in your simple innocence has damaged your reputation with the soulless usurper. Trading for a forty-rod whiskey to enable you to get drunk and happy and tomahawk your families has played the everlasting mischief with the picturesque pomp of your dress, and here you are, in the broad light of the nineteenth century, gotten up like the ragtag and bobtail of the purlers of New York. For shame, remember your ancestors, recall their mighty deeds, remember Uncus and Red Jacket and Hole in the Day and Wooptie Doodle-Doo, emulate their achievements, unfurl yourselves under my banner, noble savages, illustrious gutter snipes, down with him, scoop the blighted, burn him, hang him, drown him. It was the quickest operation that ever was. I simply saw a sudden flash in the air of clubs, brickbats, fists, bead baskets and moccasins, a single flash, and they all appeared to hit me at once, and no two of them in the same place. In the next instant the entire tribe was upon me. They tore half the clothes off me, they broke my arms and legs, they gave me a thump that dented the top of my head till it would hold coffee like a saucer, and to crown their disgraceful proceedings and add insult to injury they threw me over the Niagara Falls, and I got wet. About ninety or a hundred feet from the top the remains of my vest caught on a projecting rock, and I was almost drowned before I could get loose. I finally fell and brought up in a world of white foam at the foot of the Fall, whose celled and bubbly masses towered up several inches above my head. Of course I got into the eddy. I sailed round and round in it forty-four times, chasing a chip and gaining on it, each round trip a half mile, reaching for the same bush on the bank forty-four times, and just exactly missing it by a hair's breadth every time. At last a man walked down and sat down close to that bush, and put a pipe in his mouth and lit a match, and followed me with one eye and kept the other on the match while he sheltered it in his hands from the wind. Presently a puff of wind blew it out. The next time I swept round he said, Got a match? Yes, in my other vest. Help me out, please. Not for Joe. When I came round again I said, Excuse the seemingly impertinent curiosity of a drowning man, but will you explain the singular conduct of yours? With pleasure. I am the coroner. Don't hurry on my account. I can wait for you. But I wish I had a match. I said, Take my place. I'll go and get you one. He declined. This lack of confidence on his part created a coldness between us, and from that time forward I avoided him. It was my idea, in case anything happened to me, to sow time to the occurrence as to throw my custom into the hands of the opposition coroner on the American side. At last a policeman came along and arrested me for disturbing the peace by yelling at people on shore for help. The judge find me, but I had the advantage of him. My money was with my pantaloons, and my pantaloons were with the Indians. Thus I escaped. I am now lying in a very critical condition. At least I am lying anyway, critical or not critical. I am hurt all over, but I cannot tell the full extent yet because the doctor is not done taking inventory. He will make out my manifest this evening. However, thus far he thinks only sixteen of my wounds are fatal. I don't mind the others. Upon regaining my right mind, I said, It is an awful savage tribe of Indians that do the beadwork in moccasins for Niagara Falls, doctor. Where are they from? Limerick, my son. End of chapter 8