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The American Claimant
THE AMERICAN CLAIMANT
by Mark Twain
1892
EXPLANATORY
The Colonel Mulberry Sellers here re-introduced to the public is the
same person who appeared as Eschol Sellers in the first edition of the
tale entitled "The Gilded Age," years ago, and as Beriah Sellers in
the subsequent editions of the same book, and finally as Mulberry
Sellers in the drama played afterward by John T. Raymond.
The name was changed from Eschol to Beriah to accommodate an Eschol
Sellers who rose up out of the vasty deeps of uncharted space and
preferred his request--backed by threat of a libel suit--then went his
way appeased, and came no more. In the play Beriah had to be dropped
to satisfy another member of the race, and Mulberry was substituted in
the hope that the objectors would be tired by that time and let it
pass unchallenged. So far it has occupied the field in peace;
therefore we chance it again, feeling reasonably safe, this time,
under shelter of the statute of limitations.
MARK TWAIN. Hartford, 1891.
THE WEATHER IN THIS BOOK.
No weather will be found in this book. This is an attempt to pull a
book through without weather. It being the first attempt of the kind
in fictitious literature, it may prove a failure, but it seemed worth
the while of some dare-devil person to try it, and the author was in
just the mood.
Many a reader who wanted to read a tale through was not able to do it
because of delays on account of the weather. Nothing breaks up an
author's progress like having to stop every few pages to fuss-up the
weather. Thus it is plain that persistent intrusions of weather are
bad for both reader and author.
Of course weather is necessary to a narrative of human experience.
That is conceded. But it ought to be put where it will not be in the
way; where it will not interrupt the flow of the narrative. And it
ought to be the ablest weather that can be had, not ignorant,
poor-quality, amateur weather. Weather is a literary specialty, and
no untrained hand can turn out a good article of it. The present
author can do only a few trifling ordinary kinds of weather, and he
cannot do those very good. So it has seemed wisest to borrow such
weather as is necessary for the book from qualified and recognized
experts--giving credit, of course. This weather will be found over in
the back part of the book, out of the way. See Appendix. The reader
is requested to turn over and help himself from time to time as he
goes along.
CHAPTER I.
It is a matchless morning in rural England. On a fair hill we see a
majestic pile, the ivied walls and towers of Cholmondeley Castle, huge
relic and witness of the baronial grandeurs of the Middle Ages. This
is one of the seats of the Earl of Rossmore, K. G. G. C. B. K. C. M.
G., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., who possesses twenty-two thousand
acres of English land, owns a parish in London with two thousand
houses on its lease-roll, and struggles comfortably along on an income
of two hundred thousand pounds a year. The father and founder of this
proud old line was William the Conqueror his very self; the mother of
it was not inventoried in history by name, she being merely a random
episode and inconsequential, like the tanner's daughter of Falaise.
In a breakfast room of the castle on this breezy fine morning there
are two persons and the cooling remains of a deserted meal. One of
these persons is the old lord, tall, erect, square-shouldered,
white-haired, stern-browed, a man who shows character in every
feature, attitude, and movement, and carries his seventy years as
easily as most men carry fifty. The other person is his only son and
heir, a dreamy-eyed young fellow, who looks about twenty-six but is
nearer thirty. Candor, kindliness, honesty, sincerity, simplicity,
modesty--it is easy to see that these are cardinal traits of his
character; and so when you have clothed him in the formidable
components of his name, you somehow seem to be contemplating a lamb in
armor: his name and style being the Honourable Kirkcudbright Llanover
Marjorihanks Sellers Viscount-Berkeley, of Cholmondeley Castle,
Warwickshire. (Pronounced K'koobry Thlanover Marshbanks Sellers
Vycount Barkly, of Chumly Castle, Warrikshr.) He is standing by a
great window, in an attitude suggestive of respectful attention to
what his father is saying and equally respectful dissent from the
positions and arguments offered. The father walks the floor as he
talks, and his talk shows that his temper is away up toward summer
heat.
"Soft-spirited as you are, Berkeley, I am quite aware that when you
have once made up your mind to do a thing which your ideas of honor
and justice require you to do, argument and reason are (for the time
being,) wasted upon you--yes, and ridicule; persuasion, supplication,
and command as well. To my mind--"
"Father, if you will look at it without prejudice, without passion,
you must concede that I am not doing a rash thing, a thoughtless,
wilful thing, with nothing substantial behind it to justify it. I did
not create the American claimant to the earldom of Rossmore; I did not
hunt for him, did not find him, did not obtrude him upon your notice.
He found himself, he injected himself into our lives--"
"And has made mine a purgatory for ten years with his tiresome
letters, his wordy reasonings, his acres of tedious evidence,--"
"Which you would never read, would never consent to read. Yet in
common fairness he was entitled to a hearing. That hearing would
either prove he was the rightful earl--in which case our course would
be plain--or it would prove that he wasn't--in which case our course
would be equally plain. I have read his evidences, my lord. I have
conned them well, studied them patiently and thoroughly. The chain
seems to be complete, no important link wanting. I believe he is the
rightful earl."
"And I a usurper--a--nameless pauper, a tramp! Consider what you are
saying, sir."
"Father, if he is the rightful earl, would you, could you--that fact
being established--consent to keep his titles and his properties from
him a day, an hour, a minute?"
"You are talking nonsense--nonsense--lurid idiotcy! Now, listen to
me. I will make a confession--if you wish to call it by that name. I
did not read those evidences because I had no occasion to--I was made
familiar with them in the time of this claimant's father and of my own
father forty years ago. This fellow's predecessors have kept mine
more or less familiar with them for close upon a hundred and fifty
years. The truth is, the rightful heir did go to America, with the
Fairfax heir or about the same time--but disappeared--somewhere in the
wilds of Virginia, got married, end began to breed savages for the
Claimant market; wrote no letters home; was supposed to be dead; his
younger brother softly took possession; presently the American did
die, and straightway his eldest product put in his claim--by
letter--letter still in existence--and died before the uncle
in-possession found time--or maybe inclination--to --answer. The
infant son of that eldest product grew up--long interval, you see--and
he took to writing letters and furnishing evidences. Well, successor
after successor has done the same, down to the present idiot. It was a
succession of paupers; not one of them was ever able to pay his
passage to England or institute suit. The Fairfaxes kept their
lordship alive, and so they have never lost it to this day, although
they live in Maryland; their friend lost his by his own neglect. You
perceive now, that the facts in this case bring us to precisely this
result: morally the American tramp is rightful earl of Rossmore;
legally he has no more right than his dog. There now--are you
satisfied?"
There was a pause, then the son glanced at the crest carved in the
great oaken mantel and said, with a regretful note in his voice:
"Since the introduction of heraldic symbols,--the motto of this house
has been 'Suum cuique'--to every man his own. By your own intrepidly
frank confession, my lord, it is become a sarcasm: If Simon Lathers--"
Keep that exasperating name to yourself! For ten years it has
pestered my eye--and tortured my ear; till at last my very footfalls
time themselves to the brain-racking rhythm of Simon Lathers!--Simon
Lathers! --Simon Lathers! And now, to make its presence in my soul
eternal, immortal, imperishable, you have resolved to--to--what is it
you have resolved to do?"
"To go to Simon Lathers, in America, and change places with him."
"What? Deliver the reversion of the earldom into his hands?"
"That is my purpose."
"Make this tremendous surrender without even trying the fantastic case
in the Lords?"
"Ye--s--" with hesitation and some embarrassment.
"By all that is amazing, I believe you are insane, my son. See here
--have you been training with that ass again--that radical, if you
prefer the term, though the words are synonymous--Lord Tanzy, of
Tollmache?"
The son did not reply, and the old lord continued:
"Yes, you confess. That puppy, that shame to his birth and caste, who
holds all hereditary lordships and privilege to be usurpation, all
nobility a tinsel sham, all aristocratic institutions a fraud, all
inequalities in rank a legalized crime and an infamy, and no bread
honest bread that a man doesn't earn by his own work--work, pah!"--and
the old patrician brushed imaginary labor-dirt from his white hands.
"You have come to hold just those opinions yourself, suppose,"--he
added with a sneer.
A faint flush in the younger man's cheek told that the shot had hit
and hurt; but he answered with dignity:
"I have. I say it without shame--I feel none. And now my reason for
resolving to renounce my heirship without resistance is explained. I
wish to retire from what to me is a false existence, a false position,
and begin my life over again--begin it right--begin it on the level of
mere manhood, unassisted by factitious aids, and succeed or fail by
pure merit or the want of it. I will go to America, where all men are
equal and all have an equal chance; I will live or die, sink or swim,
win or lose as just a man--that alone, and not a single helping gaud
or fiction back of it."
"Hear, hear!" The two men looked each other steadily in the eye a
moment or two, then the elder one added, musingly, "Ab-so-lutely
cra-zy-ab-solutely!" After another silence, he said, as one who, long
troubled by clouds, detects a ray of sunshine, "Well, there will be
one satisfaction--Simon Lathets will come here to enter into his own,
and I will drown him in the horsepond. That poor devil--always so
humble in his letters, so pitiful, so deferential; so steeped in
reverence for our great line and lofty-station; so anxious to placate
us, so prayerful for recognition as a relative, a bearer in his veins
of our sacred blood --and withal so poor, so needy, so threadbare and
pauper-shod as to raiment, so despised, so laughed at for his silly
claimantship by the lewd American scum around him--ah, the vulgar,
crawling, insufferable tramp! To read one of his cringing, nauseating
letters--well?"
This to a splendid flunkey, all in inflamed plush and buttons and
knee-breeches as to his trunk, and a glinting white frost-work of
ground-glass paste as to his head, who stood with his heels together
and the upper half of him bent forward, a salver in his hands:
"The letters, my lord."
My lord took them, and the servant disappeared.
"Among the rest, an American letter. From the tramp, of course.
Jove, but here's a change! No brown paper envelope this time, filched
from a shop, and carrying the shop's advertisement in the corner. Oh,
no, a proper enough envelope--with a most ostentatiously broad
mourning border--for his cat, perhaps, since he was a bachelor--and
fastened with red wax--a batch of it as big as a
half-crown--and--and--our crest for a seal!--motto and all. And the
ignorant, sprawling hand is gone; he sports a secretary, evidently--a
secretary with a most confident swing and flourish to his pen. Oh
indeed, our fortunes are improving over there--our meek tramp has
undergone a metamorphosis."
"Read it, my lord, please."
"Yes, this time I will. For the sake of the cat:
14,042 SIXTEENTH. STREET, WASHINGTON, May 2.
It is my painful duty to announce to you that the head of our
illustrious house is no more--The Right Honourable, The Most Noble,
The Most Puissant Simon Lathers Lord Rossmore having departed this
life ("Gone at last --this is unspeakably precious news, my son,") at
his seat in the environs of the hamlet of Duffy's Corners in the grand
old State of Arkansas, --and his twin brother with him, both being
crushed by a log at a smoke-house-raising, owing to carelessness on
the part of all present, referable to over-confidence and gaiety
induced by overplus of sour-mash--("Extolled be sour-mash, whatever
that may be, eh Berkeley?") five days ago, with no scion of our
ancient race present to close his eyes and inter him with the honors
due his historic name and lofty rank--in fact, he is on the ice yet,
him and his brother--friends took a collection for it. But I shall
take immediate occasion to have their noble remains shipped to you
("Great heavens!") for interment, with due ceremonies and solemnities,
in the family vault or mausoleum of our house. Meantime I shall put
up a pair of hatchments on my house-front, and you will of course do
the same at your several seats.
I have also to remind you that by this sad disaster I as sole heir,
inherit and become seized of all the titles, honors, lands, and goods
of our lamented relative, and must of necessity, painful as the duty
is, shortly require at the bar of the Lords restitution of these
dignities and properties, now illegally enjoyed by your titular
lordship.
With assurance of my distinguished consideration and warm cousinly
regard, I remain Your titular lordship's
Most obedient servant, Mulberry Sellers Earl Rossmore.
"Im-mense! Come, this one's interesting. Why, Berkeley, his breezy
impudence is--is--why, it's colossal, it's sublime."
"No, this one doesn't seem to cringe much."
"Cringe--why, he doesn't know the meaning of the word. Hatchments!
To commemorate that sniveling tramp and his, fraternal duplicate. And
he is going to send me the remains. The late Claimant was a fool, but
plainly this new one's a maniac. What a name! Mulberry
Sellers--there's music for you, Simon Lathers--Mulberry
Sellers--Mulberry Sellers--Simon Lathers. Sounds like machinery
working and churning. Simon Lathers, Mulberry Sel--Are you going?"
"If I have your leave, father."
The old gentleman stood musing some time, after his son was gone.
This was his thought:
"He is a good boy, and lovable. Let him take his own course--as it
would profit nothing to oppose him--make things worse, in fact. My
arguments and his aunt's persuasions have failed; let us see what
America can do for us. Let us see what equality and hard-times can
effect for the mental health of a brain-sick young British lord.
Going to renounce his lordship and be a man! Yas!"
CHAPTER II.
COLONEL MULBERRY SELLERS--this was some days before he wrote his
letter to Lord Rossmore--was seated in his "library," which was also
his "drawing-room" and was also his "picture gallery" and likewise his
"work-shop." Sometimes he called it by one of these names, sometimes
by another, according to occasion and circumstance. He was
constructing what seemed to be some kind of a frail mechanical toy;
and was apparently very much interested in his work. He was a
white-headed man, now, but otherwise he was as young, alert, buoyant,
visionary and enterprising as ever. His loving old wife sat near by,
contentedly knitting and thinking, with a cat asleep in her lap. The
room was large, light, and had a comfortable look, in fact a home-like
look, though the furniture was of a humble sort and not over abundant,
and the knickknacks and things that go to adorn a living-room not
plenty and not costly. But there were natural flowers, and there was
an abstract and unclassifiable something about the place which
betrayed the presence in the house of somebody with a happy taste and
an effective touch.
Even the deadly chromos on the walls were somehow without offence; in
fact they seemed to belong there and to add an attraction to the room
--a fascination, anyway; for whoever got his eye on one of them was
like to gaze and suffer till he died--you have seen that kind of
pictures. Some of these terrors were landscapes, some libeled the sea,
some were ostensible portraits, all were crimes. All the portraits
were recognizable as dead Americans of distinction, and yet, through
labeling added, by a daring hand, they were all doing duty here as
"Earls of Rossmore." The newest one had left the works as Andrew
Jackson, but was doing its best now, as "Simon Lathers Lord Rossmore,
Present Earl." On one wall was a cheap old railroad map of
Warwickshire. This had been newly labeled "The Rossmore Estates." On
the opposite wall was another map, and this was the most imposing
decoration of the establishment and the first to catch a stranger's
attention, because of its great size. It had once borne simply the
title SIBERIA; but now the word "FUTURE" had been written in front of
that word. There were other additions, in red ink--many cities, with
great populations set down, scattered over the vast-country at points
where neither cities nor populations exist to-day. One of these
cities, with population placed at 1,500,000, bore the name
"Libertyorloffskoizalinski," and there was a still more populous one,
centrally located and marked "Capital," which bore the name
"Freedomolovnaivanovich."
The "mansion"--the Colonel's usual name for the house--was a rickety
old two-story frame of considerable size, which had been painted, some
time or other, but had nearly forgotten it. It was away out in the
ragged edge of Washington and had once been somebody's country place.
It had a neglected yard around it, with a paling fence that needed
straightening up, in places, and a gate that would stay shut. By the
door-post were several modest tin signs. "Col. Mulberry Sellers,
Attorney at Law and Claim Agent," was the principal one. One learned
from the others that the Colonel was a Materializer, a Hypnotizer, a
Mind-Cure dabbler; and so on. For he was a man who could always find
things to do.
A white-headed negro man, with spectacles and damaged white cotton
gloves appeared in the presence, made a stately obeisance and
announced:
"Marse Washington Hawkins, suh."
"Great Scott! Show him in, Dan'l, show him in."
The Colonel and his wife were on their feet in a moment, and the next
moment were joyfully wringing the hands of a stoutish,
discouraged-looking man whose general aspect suggested that he was
fifty years old, but whose hair swore to a hundred.
"Well, well, well, Washington, my boy, it is good to look at you
again. Sit down, sit down, and make yourself at home. There,
now--why, you look perfectly natural; aging a little, just a little,
but you'd have known him anywhere, wouldn't you, Polly?"
"Oh, yes, Berry, he's just like his pa would have looked if he'd
lived. Dear, dear, where have you dropped from? Let me see, how long
is it since--"
I should say it's all of fifteen` years, Mrs. Sellers."
"Well, well, how time does get away with us. Yes, and oh, the changes
that--"
There was a sudden catch of her voice and a trembling of the lip, the
men waiting reverently for her to get command of herself and go on;
but after a little struggle she turned away, with her apron to her
eyes, and softly disappeared.
"Seeing you made her think of the children, poor thing--dear, dear,
they're all dead but the youngest.
"But banish care, it's no time for it now--on with the dance, let joy
be unconfined is my motto, whether there's any dance to dance; or any
joy to unconfine--you'll be the healthier for it every time,--every
time, Washington--it's my experience, and I've seen a good deal of
this world. Come--where have you disappeared to all these years, and
are you from there, now, or where are you from?"
"I don't quite think you would ever guess, Colonel. Cherokee Strip."
"My land!"
"Sure as you live."
"You can't mean it. Actually living out there?"
"Well, yes, if a body may call it that; though it's a pretty strong
term for 'dobies and jackass rabbits, boiled beans and slap-jacks,
depression, withered hopes, poverty in all its varieties--"
"Louise out there?"
"Yes, and the children."
"Out there now?"
"Yes, I couldn't afford to bring them with me."
"Oh, I see,--you had to come--claim against the government. Make
yourself perfectly easy--I'll take care of that."
"But it isn't a claim against the government."
"No? Want to be postmaster? That's all right. Leave it to me. I'll
fix it."
"But it isn't postmaster--you're all astray yet."
"Well, good gracious, Washington, why don't you come out and tell me
what it is? What, do you want to be so reserved and distrustful with
an old friend like me, for? Don't you reckon I can keep a se--"
"There's no secret about it--you merely don't give me a chance to--"
"Now look here, old friend, I know the human race; and I know that
when a man comes to Washington, I don't care if it's from heaven, let
alone Cherokee-Strip, it's because he wants something. And I know
that as a rule he's not going to get it; that he'll stay and try--for
another thing and won't get that; the same luck with the next and the
next and the next; and keeps on till he strikes bottom, and is too
poor and ashamed to go back, even to Cherokee Strip; and at last his
heart breaks--and they take up a collection and bury him.
There--don't interrupt me, I know what I'm talking about. Happy and
prosperous in the Far West wasn't I? You know that. Principal citizen
of Hawkeye, looked up to by everybody, kind of an autocrat, actually a
kind of an autocrat, Washington. Well, nothing would do but I must go
Minister to St. James, the Governor and everybody insisting, you know,
and so at last I consented--no getting out of it, had to do it, so
here I came. A day too late, Washington. Think of that--what little
things change the world's history--yes, sir, the place had been
filled. Well, there I was, you see. I offered to compromise and go
to Paris. The President was very sorry and all that, but that place,
you see, didn't belong to the West, so there I was again. There was no
help for it, so I had to stoop a little--we all reach the day some
time or other when we've got to do that, Washington, and it's not a
bad thing for us, either, take it by and large and all around --I had
to stoop a little and offer to take Constantinople. Washington,
consider this--for it's perfectly true--within a month I asked for
China; within another month I begged for Japan; one year later I was
away down, down, down, supplicating with tears and anguish for the
bottom office in the gift of the government of the United
States--Flint-Picker in the cellars of the War Department. And by
George I didn't get it."
"Flint-Picker?"
"Yes. Office established in the time of the Revolution, last century.
The musket-flints for the military posts were supplied from the
capitol. They do it yet; for although the flint-arm has gone out and
the forts have tumbled down, the decree hasn't been repealed--been
overlooked and forgotten, you see--and so the vacancies where old
Ticonderoga and others used to stand, still get their six quarts of
gun-flints a year just the same."
Washington said musingly after a pause:
"How strange it seems--to start for Minister to England at twenty
thousand a year and fail for flintpicker at--"
"Three dollars a week. It's human life, Washington--just an epitome
of human ambition, and struggle, and the outcome: you aim for the
palace and get drowned in the sewer."
There was another meditative silence. Then Washington said, with
earnest compassion in his voice--
"And so, after coming here, against your inclination, to satisfy your
sense of patriotic duty and appease a selfish public clamor, you get
absolutely nothing for it."
"Nothing?" The Colonel had to get up and stand, to get room for his
amazement to expand. "Nothing, Washington? I ask you this: to be a
perpetual Member and the only Perpetual Member of a Diplomatic Body
accredited to the greatest country on earth do you call that nothing?"
It was Washington's turn to be amazed. He was stricken dumb; but the
wide-eyed wonder, the reverent admiration expressed in his face were
more eloquent than any words could have been. The Colonel's wounded
spirit was healed and he resumed his seat pleased and content. He
leaned forward and said impressively:
"What was due to a man who had become forever conspicuous by an
experience without precedent in the history of the world?--a man made
permanently and diplomatically sacred, so to speak, by having been
connected, temporarily, through solicitation, with every single
diplomatic post in the roster of this government, from Envoy
Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James
all the way down to Consul to a guano rock in the Straits of
Sunda--salary payable in guano--which disappeared by volcanic
convulsion the day before they got down to my name in the list of
applicants. Certainly something august enough to be answerable to the
size of this unique and memorable experience was my due, and I got it.
By the common voice of this community, by acclamation of the people,
that mighty utterance which brushes aside laws and legislation, and
from whose decrees there is no appeal, I was named Perpetual Member of
the Diplomatic Body representing the multifarious sovereignties and
civilizations of the globe near the republican court of the United
States of America. And they brought me home with a torchlight
procession."
"It is wonderful, Colonel, simply wonderful."
"It's the loftiest official position in the whole earth."
"I should think so--and the most commanding."
"You have named the word. Think of it. I frown, and there is war; I
smile, and contending nations lay down their arms."
"It is awful. The responsibility, I mean."
"It is nothing. Responsibility is no burden to me; I am used to it;
have always been used to it."
"And the work--the work! Do you have to attend all the sittings?"
"Who, I? Does the Emperor of Russia attend the conclaves of the
governors of the provinces? He sits at home, and indicates his
pleasure."
Washington was silent a moment, then a deep sigh escaped him.
"How proud I was an hour ago; how paltry seems my little promotion
now! Colonel, the reason I came to Washington is,--I am Congressional
Delegate from Cherokee Strip!"
The Colonel sprang to his feet and broke out with prodigious
enthusiasm:
"Give me your hand, my boy--this is immense news! I congratulate you
with all my heart. My prophecies stand confirmed. I always said it
was in you. I always said you were born for high distinction and
would achieve it. You ask Polly if I didn't."
Washington was dazed by this most unexpected demonstration.
"Why, Colonel, there's nothing to it. That little narrow, desolate,
unpeopled, oblong streak of grass and gravel, lost in the remote
wastes of the vast continent--why, it's like representing a billiard
table--a discarded one."
"Tut-tut, it's a great, it's a staving preferment, and just opulent
with influence here."
"Shucks, Colonel, I haven't even a vote."
"That's nothing; you can make speeches."
"No, I can't. The population's only two hundred--"
"That's all right, that's all right--"
"And they hadn't any right to elect me; we're not even a territory,
there's no Organic Act, the government hasn't any official knowledge
of us whatever."
"Never mind about that; I'll fix that. I'll rush the thing through,
I'll get you organized in no time."
"Will you, Colonel?--it's too good of you; but it's just your old
sterling self, the same old ever-faithful friend," and the grateful
tears welled up in Washington's eyes.
"It's just as good as done, my boy, just as good as done. Shake
hands. We'll hitch teams together, you and I, and we'll make things
hum!"
CHAPTER III.
Mrs. Sellers returned, now, with her composure restored, and began to
ask after Hawkins's wife, and about his children, and the number of
them, and so on, and her examination of the witness resulted in a
circumstantial history of the family's ups and downs and driftings to
and fro in the far West during the previous fifteen years. There was
a message, now, from out back, and Colonel Sellers went out there in
answer to it. Hawkins took this opportunity to ask how the world had
been using the Colonel during the past half-generation.
"Oh, it's been using him just the same; it couldn't change its way of
using him if it wanted to, for he wouldn't let it."
"I can easily believe that, Mrs. Sellers."
"Yes, you see, he doesn't change, himself--not the least little bit in
the world--he's always Mulberry Sellers."
"I can see that plain enough."
"Just the same old scheming, generous, good-hearted, moonshiny,
hopeful, no-account failure he always was, and still everybody likes
him just as well as if he was the shiningest success."
"They always did: and it was natural, because he was so obliging and
accommodating, and had something about him that made it kind of easy
to ask help of him, or favors--you didn't feel shy, you know, or have
that wish--you--didn't--have--to--try feeling that you have with other
people."
"It's just so, yet; and a body wonders at it, too, because he's been
shamefully treated, many times, by people that had used him for a
ladder to climb up by, and then kicked him down when they didn't need
him any more. For a time you can see he's hurt, his pride's wounded,
because he shrinks away from that thing and don't want to talk about
it--and so I used to think now he's learned something and he'll be
more careful hereafter--but laws! in a couple of weeks he's forgotten
all about it, and any selfish tramp out of nobody knows where can come
and put up a poor mouth and walk right into his heart with his boots
on."
"It must try your patience pretty sharply sometimes."
"Oh, no, I'm used to it; and I'd rather have him so than the other
way. When I call him a failure, I mean to the world he's a failure; he
isn't to me. I don't know as I want him different much different,
anyway. I have to scold him some, snarl at him, you might even call
it, but I reckon I'd do that just the same, if he was different--it's
my make. But I'm a good deal less snarly and more contented when he's
a failure than I am when he isn't."
"Then he isn't always a failure," said Hawking, brightening.
"Him? Oh, bless you, no. He makes a strike, as he calls it, from
time to time. Then's my time to fret and fuss. For the money just
flies --first come first served. Straight off, he loads up the house
with cripples and idiots and stray cats and all the different kinds of
poor wrecks that other people don't want and he does, and then when
the poverty comes again I've got to clear the most of them out or we'd
starve; and that distresses him, and me the same, of course.
"Here's old Dan'l and old Jinny, that the sheriff sold south one of
the times that we got bankrupted before the war--they came wandering
back after the peace, worn out and used up on the cotton plantations,
helpless, and not another lick of work left in their old hides for the
rest of this earthly pilgrimage--and we so pinched, oh so pinched for
the very crumbs to keep life in us, and he just flung the door wide,
and the way he received them you'd have thought they had come straight
down from heaven in answer to prayer. I took him one side and said,
'Mulberry we can't have them--we've nothing for ourselves--we can't
feed them.' He looked at me kind of hurt, and said, 'Turn them
out?--and they've come to me just as confident and trusting
as--as--why Polly, I must have bought that confidence sometime or
other a long time ago, and given my note, so to speak--you don't get
such things as a gift--and how am I going to go back on a debt like
that? And you see, they're so poor, and old, and friendless, and--'
But I was ashamed by that time, and shut him off, and somehow felt a
new courage in me, and so I said, softly, 'We'll keep them--the Lord
will provide.' He was glad, and started to blurt out one of those
over-confident speeches of his, but checked himself in time, and said
humbly, 'I will, anyway.' It was years and years and years ago.
Well, you see those old wrecks are here yet."
"But don't they do your housework?"
"Laws! The idea. They would if they could, poor old things, and
perhaps they think they do do some of it. But it's a superstition.
Dan'l waits on the front door, and sometimes goes on an errand; and
sometimes you'll see one or both of them letting on to dust around in
here--but that's because there's something they want to hear about and
mix their gabble into. And they're always around at meals, for the
same reason. But the fact is, we have to keep a young negro girl just
to take care of them, and a negro woman to do the housework and help
take care of them."
"Well, they ought to be tolerably happy, I should think."
"It's no name for it. They quarrel together pretty much all the time
--most always about religion, because Dan'l's a Dunker Baptist and
Jinny's a shouting Methodist, and Jinny believes in special
Providences and Dan'l don't, because he thinks he's a kind of a
free-thinker--and they play and sing plantation hymns together, and
talk and chatter just eternally and forever, and are sincerely fond of
each other and think the world of Mulberry, and he puts up patiently
with all their spoiled ways and foolishness, and so--ah, well, they're
happy enough if it comes to that. And I don't mind--I've got used to
it. I can get used to anything, with Mulberry to help; and the fact
is, I don't much care what happens, so long as he's spared to me."
"Well, here's to him, and hoping he'll make another strike soon."
"And rake in the lame, the halt and the blind, and turn the house into
a hospital again? It's what he would do. I've seen aplenty of that
and more. No, Washington, I want his strikes to be mighty moderate
ones the rest of the way down the vale."
"Well, then, big strike or little strike, or no strike at all, here's
hoping he'll never lack for friends--and I don't reckon he ever will
while there's people around who know enough to--"
"Him lack for friends!" and she tilted her head up with a frank
pride-- "why, Washington, you can't name a man that's anybody that
isn't fond of him. I'll tell you privately, that I've had Satan's own
time to keep them from appointing him to some office or other. They
knew he'd no business with an office, just as well as I did, but he's
the hardest man to refuse anything to, a body ever saw. Mulberry
Sellers with an office! laws goodness, you know what that would be
like. Why, they'd come from the ends of the earth to see a circus
like that. I'd just as lieves be married to Niagara Falls, and done
with it." After a reflective pause she added--having wandered back,
in the interval, to the remark that had been her text: "Friends?--oh,
indeed, no man ever had more; and such friends: Grant, Sherman,
Sheridan, Johnston, Longstreet, Lee--many's the time they've sat in
that chair you're sitting in--" Hawkins was out of it instantly, and
contemplating it with a reverential surprise, and with the awed sense
of having trodden shod upon holy ground--
"They!" he said.
"Oh, indeed, yes, a many and a many a time."
He continued to gaze at the chair fascinated, magnetized; and for once
in his life that continental stretch of dry prairie which stood for
his imagination was afire, and across it was marching a slanting
flamefront that joined its wide horizons together and smothered the
skies with smoke. He was experiencing what one or another drowsing,
geographically ignorant alien experiences every day in the year when
he turns a dull and indifferent eye out of the car window and it falls
upon a certain station-sign which reads "Stratford-on-Avon!" Mrs.
Sellers went gossiping comfortably along:
"Oh, they like to hear him talk, especially if their load is getting
rather heavy on one shoulder and they want to shift it. He's all air,
you know,--breeze, you may say--and he freshens them up; it's a trip
to the country, they say. Many a time he's made General Grant
laugh--and that's a tidy job, I can tell you, and as for Sheridan, his
eye lights up and he listens to Mulberry Sellers the same as if he was
artillery. You see, the charm about Mulberry is, he is so catholic and
unprejudiced that he fits in anywhere and everywhere. It makes him
powerful good company, and as popular as scandal. You go to the White
House when the President's holding a general reception--sometime when
Mulberry's there. Why, dear me, you can't tell which of them it is
that's holding that reception."
"Well, he certainly is a remarkable man--and he always was. Is he
religious?"
"Clear to his marrow--does more thinking and reading on that subject
than any other except Russia and Siberia: thrashes around over the
whole field, too; nothing bigoted about him."
"What is his religion?"
"He--" She stopped, and was lost for a moment or two in thinking, then
she said, with simplicity, "I think he was a Mohammedan or something
last week."
Washington started down town, now, to bring his trunk, for the
hospitable Sellerses would listen to no excuses; their house must be
his home during the session. The Colonel returned presently and
resumed work upon his plaything. It was finished when Washington got
back.
"There it is," said the Colonel, "all finished."
"What is it for, Colonel?"
"Oh, it's just a trifle. Toy to amuse the children."
Washington examined it.
"It seems to be a puzzle."
"Yes, that's what it is. I call it Pigs in the Clover. Put them
in--see if you can put them in the pen."
After many failures Washington succeeded, and was as pleased as a
child.
"It's wonderfully ingenious, Colonel, it's ever so clever and
interesting--why, I could play with it all day. What are you going to
do with it?"
"Oh, nothing. Patent it and throw it aside."
"Don't you do anything of the kind. There's money in that thing."
A compassionate look traveled over the Colonel's countenance, and he
said:
"Money--yes; pin money: a couple of hundred thousand, perhaps. Not
more."
Washington's eyes blazed.
"A couple of hundred thousand dollars! do you call that pin money?"
The colonel rose and tip-toed his way across the room, closed a door
that was slightly ajar, tip-toed his way to his seat again, and said,
under his breath:
"You can keep a secret?"
Washington nodded his affirmative, he was too awed to speak.
"You have heard of materialization--materialization of departed
spirits?"
Washington had heard of it.
"And probably didn't believe in it; and quite right, too. The thing
as practised by ignorant charlatans is unworthy of attention or
respect-- where there's a dim light and a dark cabinet, and a parcel
of sentimental gulls gathered together, with their faith and their
shudders and their tears all ready, and one and the same fatty
degeneration of protoplasm and humbug comes out and materializes
himself into anybody you want, grandmother, grandchild,
brother-in-law, Witch of Endor, John Milton, Siamese twins, Peter the
Great, and all such frantic nonsense--no, that is all foolish and
pitiful. But when a man that is competent brings the vast powers of
science to bear, it's a different matter, a totally different matter,
you see. The spectre that answers that call has come to stay. Do you
note the commercial value of that detail?"
"Well, I--the--the truth is, that I don't quite know that I do. Do
you mean that such, being permanent, not transitory, would give more
general satisfaction, and so enhance the price--of tickets to the
show--"
"Show? Folly--listen to me; and get a good grip on your breath, for
you are going to need it. Within three days I shall have completed my
method, and then--let the world stand aghast, for it shall see
marvels. Washington, within three days--ten at the outside--you shall
see me call the dead of any century, and they will arise and walk.
Walk?--they shall walk forever, and never die again. Walk with all
the muscle and spring of their pristine vigor."
"Colonel! Indeed it does take one's breath away."
"Now do you see the money that's in it?"
"I'm--well, I'm--not really sure that I do."
Great Scott, look here. I shall have a monopoly; they'll all belong
to me, won't they? Two thousand policemen in the city of New York.
Wages, four dollars a day. I'll replace them with dead ones at half
the money.
"Oh, prodigious! I never thought of that. F-o-u-r thousand dollars a
day. Now I do begin to see! But will dead policemen answer?"
"Haven't they--up to this time?"
"Well, if you put it that way--"
"Put it any way you want to. Modify it to suit yourself, and my lads
shall still be superior. They won't eat, they won't drink--don't need
those things; they won't wink for cash at gambling dens and unlicensed
rum-holes, they won't spark the scullery maids; and moreover the bands
of toughs that ambuscade them on lonely beats, and cowardly shoot and
knife them will only damage the uniforms and not live long enough to
get more than a momentary satisfaction out of that."
"Why, Colonel, if you can furnish policemen, then of course--"
"Certainly--I can furnish any line of goods that's wanted. Take the
army, for instance--now twenty-five thousand men; expense, twenty-two
millions a year. I will dig up the Romans, I will resurrect the
Greeks, I will furnish the government, for ten millions a year, ten
thousand veterans drawn from the victorious legions of all the
ages--soldiers that will chase Indians year in and year out on
materialized horses, and cost never a cent for rations or repairs.
The armies of Europe cost two billions a year now--I will replace them
all for a billion. I will dig up the trained statesmen of all ages
and all climes, and furnish this country with a Congress that knows
enough to come in out of the rain-- a thing that's never happened yet,
since the Declaration of Independence, and never will happen till
these practically dead people are replaced with the genuine article.
I will restock the thrones of Europe with the best brains and the best
morals that all the royal sepulchres of all the centuries can
furnish--which isn't promising very much--and I'll divide the wages
and the civil list, fair and square, merely taking my half and--"
"Colonel, if the half of this is true, there's millions in
it--millions."
"Billions in it--billions; that's what you mean. Why, look here; the
thing is so close at hand, so imminent, so absolutely immediate, that
if a man were to come to me now and say, Colonel, I am a little short,
and if you could lend me a couple of billion dollars for--come in!"
This in answer to a knock. An energetic looking man bustled in with a
big pocket-book in his hand, took a paper from it and presented it,
with the curt remark:
"Seventeenth and last call--you want to out with that three dollars
and forty cents this time without fail, Colonel Mulberry Sellers."
The Colonel began to slap this pocket and that one, and feel here and
there and everywhere, muttering:
"What have I done with that wallet?--let me see--um--not here, not
there --Oh, I must have left it in the kitchen; I'll just run and--"
"No you won't--you'll stay right where you are. And you're going to
disgorge, too--this time."
Washington innocently offered to go and look. When he was gone the
Colonel said:
"The fact is, I've got to throw myself on your indulgence just this
once more, Suggs; you see the remittances I was expecting--"
"Hang the remittances--it's too stale--it won't answer. Come!"
The Colonel glanced about him in despair. Then his face lighted; he
ran to the wall and began to dust off a peculiarly atrocious chromo
with his handkerchief. Then he brought it reverently, offered it to
the collector, averted his face and said:
"Take it, but don't let me see it go. It's the sole remaining
Rembrandt that--"
"Rembrandt be damned, it's a chromo."
"Oh, don't speak of it so, I beg you. It's the only really great
original, the only supreme example of that mighty school of art
which--"
"Art! It's the sickest looking thing I--"
The colonel was already bringing another horror and tenderly dusting
it.
"Take this one too--the gem of my collection--the only genuine Fra
Angelico that--"
"Illuminated liver-pad, that's what it is. Give it here--good day--
people will think I've robbed a' nigger barber-shop."
As he slammed the door behind him the Colonel shouted with an
anguished accent--
"Do please cover them up--don't let the damp get at them. The
delicate tints in the Angelico--"
But the man was gone.
Washington re-appeared and said he had looked everywhere, and so had
Mrs. Sellers and the servants, but in vain; and went on to say he
wished he could get his eye on a certain man about this time--no need
to hunt up that pocket-book then. The Colonel's interest was awake at
once.
"What man?"
"One-armed Pete they call him out there--out in the Cherokee country I
mean. Robbed the bank in Tahlequah."
"Do they have banks in Tahlequah?"
"Yes--a bank, anyway. He was suspected of robbing it. Whoever did it
got away with more than twenty thousand dollars. They offered a
reward of five thousand. I believe I saw that very man, on my way
east."
"No--is that so?
"I certainly saw a man on the train, the first day I struck the
railroad, that answered the description pretty exactly--at least as to
clothes and a lacking arm."
"Why don't you get him arrested and claim the reward?"
"I couldn't. I had to get a requisition, of course. But I meant to
stay by him till I got my chance."
"Well?"
"Well, he left the train during the night some time."
"Oh, hang it, that's too bad."
"Not so very bad, either."
"Why?"
"Because he came down to Baltimore in the very train I was in, though
I didn't know it in time. As we moved out of the station I saw him
going toward the iron gate with a satchel in his hand."
"Good; we'll catch him. Let's lay a plan."
"Send description to the Baltimore police?"
"Why, what are you talking about? No. Do you want them to get the
reward?"
"What shall we do, then?"
The Colonel reflected.
"I'll tell you. Put a personal in the Baltimore Sun. Word it like
this:
"A. DROP ME A LINE, PETE."
"Hold on. Which arm has he lost?"
"The right."
"Good. Now then--
"A. DROP ME A LINE, PETE, EVEN IF YOU HAVE to write with your left
hand. Address X. Y. Z., General Postoffice, Washington. From YOU KNOW
WHO."
"There--that'll fetch him."
"But he won't know who--will he?"
"No, but he'll want to know, won't he?"
"Why, certainly--I didn't think of that. What made you think of it?"
"Knowledge of human curiosity. Strong trait, very strong trait."
"Now I'll go to my room and write it out and enclose a dollar and tell
them to print it to the worth of that."