Who Is Mark Twain? (14 page)

E
DS. N
EWS
L
ETTER
: Is it not possible that your journal, which is usually more mathematically accurate in its statements than even I am, has made a mistake for once? A paragraph in your last issue suggests this. I append it:

I do not remember sending you a communication. I have been too busy of late to write communications to anyone but the person a curl from whose chignon I wear next my heart. Someone has been trying to write himself rich over my signature, and I am glad that his foolish idea that because Twain means two it was good grammar for him to call himself We, wrought his downfall and brought failure upon his imposture. I would not have mentioned this matter but for the fact that I am just now smarting under a thing which makes me particularly bitter against all forms of misstatement whatsoever. Friends of mine are attributing to me a remark which I solemnly protest I never made. It was made by a comrade of mine in the Holy Land. If you will permit me, I will tell the circumstances precisely as they occurred, and thus free myself from any blame in the matter, if there
is
really anything to be blamed for in it. One of my comrades, “Jack,” was a boy of eighteen, and just as good a boy as ever was. He was an innocent cub, and was always floundering into mistakes that brought him trouble. He was always dropping absurd and ill-timed remarks without ever meaning any harm, and so he was always being scolded and harried and lectured by the pilgrims in the party. They liked him, and knew he meant well, and they did this for his own good, and never in an unkind spirit. In their fervent apostrophes to noted localities, the pilgrims often let fall startling statements that Jack had never heard before, or else had forgotten, and therefore, they surprised him into saying many things whose absurdity he could see when it was too late. Jack always listened attentively, and with a desire to learn. This is the circumstance:

One day when we were camped at Jericho, near the Jordan, a pilgrim said: “Those mountains yonder on the opposite side of the valley, are the Mountains of Moab, where Moses lies secretly buried.”

“Moses who?”

“Jack, if you were not so astonishingly innocent, I would rebuke you for asking such a question. Moses was the great leader of the children of Israel.”

“Oh, I know, now—I recollect. He was a good man—they called him the Meek. Well, what did he do?”

“He led the children of Israel up out of the wilderness.”

“That was good. Go on, please.”

“On the other side of those mountains, Jack, is a desert. It is three hundred miles across it from here to the land of Egypt. The children of Israel entered Canaan at this place where we are when they came out of that desert. That great chief, Moses, staid with them, all through that weary march of forty years, and his wisdom, more than any other human aid, guided them safely and wonderfully to the Promised Land. It was a great task, but splendidly did Moses perform it.”

“What, forty years? Only three hundred miles? Why, Ben Holladay would have fetched them through in thirty-six hours!”

We did not laugh, because Jack was very sensitive about his blunders. He was merely given to understand that he must not make damaging comparisons between Moses and Ben Holladay, and there the matter dropped. But here, all of a sudden, this anecdote, all garbled and mutilated, turns up in San Francisco, and
I
am accused of making that remark. I did
not
make it, and never thought of making it. I get enough abuse, without having to suffer for the acts of others. I acknowledge that I have written irreverently, but I did it heedlessly, or when out of temper—never in cold blood. I
did
fail somewhat in reverence for Jacob, whose character all the bookmakers praise so highly, but that was honest. I revered the
really
holy places, and deliberately and intentionally derided only the manifest shams. The bookmakers all deride them in private conversation, themselves, but weep over them in their books. I am acquainted with some of those people, and I speak by the card. A missionary in Constantinople, a personal friend of the Rev. Mr. Prime, told me that that favorite Palestine authority used to read his lugubrious chapters aloud, after he had written them, and then laugh at the fine humor of flooding them with tears which came wholly from his inkstand. Any unprejudiced person who reads his
Tent Life in the Holy Land
will not doubt that statement. That sentimental fire-plug would have gone entirely dry if he had actually shed half the tears there are in his book. Deceived by that book, our passengers really felt that they were lacking in depth of feeling because they could not cry. They went about trying to cry, they sincerely wanted to cry, they often hoped, and promised and threatened to cry, but they always failed to connect. They were members of the church, and had a genuine reverence for sacred things, but they found at last, that it is possible for sound veneration to exist below the water level.

If the Rev. Dr. Thomas, who gave me such a terrific setting-up in his sermon last Sunday night—and in very good grammar, too, for a minister of the gospel—had only traveled with me in the Holy Land, I could have shown him how much real harm is done to religion by the wholesale veneration lavished upon things that are mere excrescences upon it; which mar it; and which should be torn from it by reasoning or carved from it by ridicule. They provoke the sinner to scoff, when he ought to be considering the things about him that are really holy. It is all very well to respect the devotee’s feelings, but let us have a thought for the sinner’s failings, in the meantime—he has a soul to be saved, as well as the devotee. Remove the things that seduce his attention from objects that are truly holy. Increase his chances for salvation, even though the means resorted to to do it may cause the devotee a pang. The devotee being safe, had better in charity suffer a little, than that the sinner be damned. The devotee learns his unreasoning, uncriticising veneration in unthinking infancy; and that he possesses it, is no merit of his; but the matured sinner can only learn to reverence such things as his thinking and reasoning faculties teach him are worthy of it. If I could, I would make such havoc among the shams of Palestine that I would leave little there for men to feast their eyes and feed their fancies upon save the Hill of Calvary, and the lesson it carries to the most careless heart that pulses in its presence. I would leave it to tell of Him who suffered there, and to suggest the picture of the Crucifixion more vividly than the multitude of its surroundings, which are at best of questionable holiness, can ever do. All things must pass away but that one Figure, and when they do, the world will be none the loser for it.

The day shall come when the families of Shechem, whose genealogical trees were hoary with age when Christ talked with their ancestor at the well of Samaria, shall have passed from earth and been forgotten; when the Oaks of Mamre shall mark no more the grave of Jacob, and the tomb of his Rebekah shall arrest no curious wayfarer from Bethlehem to the City of David; when the awful march of Joshua from the Waters of Merom to Baal-Gad shall be a vague tradition, and the shepherds of Anti-Lebanon no longer see his shadowy armies sweep by in the mists of the night; when Jerusalem shall have crumbled to dust and the place of the Manger passed from the knowledge of men; when the history of all Israel shall be as the secret sepulchre the Mountains of Moab hide in their solitudes—yet still, serenely above the waste and ruin of the ages, the Teacher of Nazareth, standing upon the height of Calvary—sacred because the theatre of the noblest self-sacrifice man has yet conceived—shall say to them that mourn this desolation, “Peace!
I
am the Resurrection and the Life!”

In that day, reverence will be offered where it of right belongs.

But excuse me. I have wandered a little from my subject. It is sound parliamentary human nature, though. There was never a legislator yet who could rise to a question of privilege and stick to the matter of it.

M
ARK
T
WAIN

I
t was in the time of the Indian war, a quarter of a century ago. Company C, 7
^th
Cavalry, 45 strong, had been headed off by a body of well armed Indians numbering 600 seasoned warriors, and had taken sanctuary in a small island in the South Platte a hundred miles from the nearest army post. Their situation was critical, and from day to day it grew worse; for their supply of provisions was slender, and a couple of attempts to get word to the fort had failed. This during the first twelve days. The Indians appeared in force every morning at a judicious distance beyond the river in the plain, and for hours kept up a long-range rifle practice upon the camp. The sharp-shooters of Company C wasted no ammunition—it was too scarce and too precious for that; they only fired when they were nearly sure of their man; the intervals between their shots were wide, but the shots were deadly. In the course of a day’s work they bagged many Indians, while the reckless storm of Indian bullets harvested but a small crop of casualties by comparison. Yet the general result was against the soldiers, for to them the loss of a man was a serious matter, whereas to the enemy the loss of a dozen was of no considerable consequence.

Sometimes the Indians, driven to fury by the stubborn resistance of the handful of whites cast their native caution aside for a moment and dashed through the shallow stream and tried to storm the camp—but in broad day always; so the whites were ready for them, and flung them back defeated, each time.

At the end of three weeks the soldiers were in sorry case. Their commander was lying in the protection of a pit hollowed in the sand, helpless, with both legs broken by balls; eight of his men were dead, twelve were wounded, five of them to disablement; of the twenty-nine still ranking as effectives one was departing under cover of the night to try and carry word to the fort, and the rest were weak from insufficient nourishment and from want of due rest and sleep; the horses were all dead and were serving as breast works and food.

Now came a lull. The plains were silent, the enemy had vanished. This continued all day. In some breasts it raised a hope—perhaps the Indians had seen smoke-signals warning them of the approach of white reinforcements and had given up and taken themselves off. It was a fair surmise, but some of the old hands said it could mean something of a different sort. Jack Burdick said—

“They can be hatching something outside of their own usages. There’s a couple of white renegades with them.”

The remark made an impression. “It’s so,” said several: “we can’t prophesy what Indians will do when they’ve that kind of cattle on hand to help invent projects.”

There was silence for a while and much reflection. Then Phil Cassidy began—

“If Captain Johnson would let one of us slip over there to-night and—”

“Well, he won’t,” said Jack Burdick with decision, “so you can drop that notion.”

It was dropped, and there was another silence. A hundred yards away, down among a growth of young cottonwoods the barking of a dog broke out of the stillness, in a series of strange, sharp, broken notes.

“At it again,” said Tom Hackett.

“Yes,” said another; “time-keeper of the camp; when he begins, you know it’s sundown.”

“Practicing his voice—been an opera dog, Sandy says; expects to get an engagement again when the war’s over.”

“Not in the way of singing, I reckon,” said Hackett; “it’s too jerky and broken-up; the most undoglike racket I’ve ever heard out of a dog’s mouth.”

“Sandy calls it staccato—says that’s its scientific name.”

“It’s a bright little chap, anyway; Sandy talks to him the same as if he was a human.”

“Yes, and what’s more, he understands—understands every word. He can say to him, ‘Now Billy, you go and snoop around in the bushes at the head of the island, and if you don’t smell Injuns over on the shore, speak up and say so;’ and the dog will trot right off, and by and by you’ll hear him bark, sure enough, showing that he got the whole idea and is furnishing the facts.”

A doubter laughed, and said—“You idiot,
that
don’t prove anything. How’d you know whether he was telling the truth or not.”

The rest laughed, and the witness “schwieg,” as the Germans say, and seemed sorry he had said anything.

“Say—the sun’s down and he’s at it yet……There, he’s stopped, but it’s too late. Poor little doggy. It’s an awful pity.”

“By George, it just is! Why, hang it, we
can’t
get along without the little cuss—he’s just a dear, and the friendliest little thing—”

“Just the life of the camp. Right you are, Jack Burdick. Blamed if I couldn’t ’most cry.”

“What in the nation has possessed Sandy, to let the poor little fellow break the orders?”

“Oh, you can bet on it he ain’t with him, or he wouldn’t.”

“Well, maybe the captain—just this once—”

“No—you needn’t imagine it,” said Jack Burdick sorrowfully, “he loves the little dog, and it’ll hurt him in his heart, but that don’t matter; duty is duty, discipline is discipline, and if his own brother broke an order he’d have to take the proceeds.”

The men sighed, and said—“It’s so. Poor little chap! He
was
so friendly and sociable.”

“And is so brave, too. On hand in every scrimmage, like a little man, and fetching things for Sandy, and just as active and satisfied as if it was play.”

“Yes, and didn’t give a dern for bullets, poor little rat—let them whiz all around him and just ’tended to business, and helped the best he could,” said Jake Foster, in an unsteady voice, for he was only a youth.

Meantime, down in the cottonwood growth Sandy was saying to the dog—

“Now you’ve got your instructions, Billy. Do everything the way I told you. The camp’s life is in your hands—in your paws, you understand. Keep me posted, that’s a good dog. They’re coming! Kiss me good-bye, and away you go!”

Footsteps came grinding through the sand, and a soldier said—

“I’m to kill him, Sandy—it’s the captain’s orders. I wish it was somebody else.”

“Too late, ’Rastus, he’s gone.”

“Gone where?”

“Gone over to the Indians. Deserted.”

“Deserted? Him? Billy? It’s a lie; he wouldn’t. Sandy, you
made
him.”

“Well, it’s true. I did. It was to save him. He disobeyed orders.”

“I reckon you’ll be sent for, corporal—just as well come along now.”

Which he did; and reported to the captain, who said—“I am disabled, and in pain—make quick talk—explain this matter.”

The corporal’s explanation was not over-clear, and contained traces of lying. The captain degraded him to the ranks, and ordered him on outpost duty; and added, sharply—

“If I have to use a spy, I’ll risk
your
person in place of a better man.”

“Let me try it to-night, sir.”

“What?”

“To-night, sir.”

“Do you mean it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why, this is—is handsome. I’d give anything to know—to know what this tranquillity means. Come—try it, man, try it! But look sharp, don’t get yourself caught; we can’t spare a man.”

The men soon knew of the dog’s escape and were glad; and of the corporal’s reduction, and were sorry.

Three hours later, Billy’s distant bark was heard from beyond the river, and it rejoiced the hearts of the men to know he was alive and out of reach of the executioner. His clack went on during a stretch of fifteen minutes; then Sandy emerged from an ambush among the undergrowth on the head of the island and went groping his way in the dark to the captain’s pit, answering the challenges of the sentinels as he came. His report was important:

“The renegades have persuaded them to a night attack, sir.”

“Oh, impossible!”

“I heard the renegades talking it over, sir, and it will begin at two in the morning.”

“Do you mean that you have been—”

“I have been in their camp, sir.” This was not true. “It is in a deep swale in the plain, two miles up to the right, beyond where the big cottonwoods are, in the bend.”

“You have done admirably, I must say—and bravely.”

“They are coming in their full strength, sir; half will cross the river at the ford half a mile up, and slip down behind us; and at the signal they are going to spring their surprise in the dark, front and rear.”

“It is hardly believable—for Indians—but no matter, we’ll prepare.”

Half of the effectives took position on one side of the island, under lieutenant Burr, the other half on the other side under lieutenant Taylor; a man crossed the river, on each side, and stole out in the gloom and crouched in the grass—no more than these could be spared for picket duty. The two repelling detachments lay on their arms and waited in profound silence. Toward two o’clock the pickets stole in and reported the advance of the Indians. After what seemed a long interval, and was a trying and tedious one to the watchers, a multitude of dim forms appeared upon either bank, and crept noiselessly down to the water, and came gliding across like spirits. Nearer and nearer they approached the prone watchers; nearer and still nearer, until the front rank of each mass was within thirty feet of their fate; then Burr gave the signal, two sheets of fire glared out upon the night from the repeating rifles, and glare followed glare, crash followed crash, and the Indians fell by winrows.

The survivors broke away whooping and yelling and disappeared in the darkness. The camp was saved. The ex-corporal was reinstated in his rank.

No Indians came the next day. They were busy at home, wailing for their dead. The renegades were busy, too. They were smoothing down the anger of the chiefs and trying to explain the miscarriage of their scheme.

“There is a traitor in the camp,” they said.

“Then find him,” said the unpleasant chiefs, with rude brevity, “or pay with your scalps.”

They found the man they believed to be the right one. He suffered death, and the chiefs were satisfied. With the traitor out of the way, another surprise could be ventured with safety, and it was decided upon.

At night fall Sandy asked Captain Johnson’s leave to go spying again, and got it with grateful promptness. He went to his lair at the head of the island and waited. About ten o’clock his dog’s distant note came down to him on the faint wind, from over the plain, and presently he rose and crept back to camp and reported to the captain.

“I have been in their midst, sir,” he said, with economy of truth, “and have heard them talk. They are wild with rage over their disaster. The renegades have told them we know Indians too well to believe they will try another night surprise—at least any time
soon;
that we shall be all asleep to-night, and not dreaming of attack; therefore to-night, of all nights, is the time to try again. The chiefs are persuaded, sir, and game is called for one o’clock.”

His words were true, and at the named hour there was another double slaughter of savages and a complete victory. When the matter was finished, Captain Johnson sent for Sandy. There the wounded officer lay in his pit, worn and haggard and pale, but there was almost the vigor of health in his voice when he said—

“I have sent for you to thank you. The medicine chest is by me here, if you can see it—it will answer for a seat. Sit down, sir.”

“In your presence, sir?”

“Certainly, sir. I have promoted you. You are a captain, now.”

The next day the whites had another ominously quiet day, but not so the Indians. Their rage was such that they were almost beyond control. Dark looks were cast upon the renegades, and for a time, near the close of the day, their lives were in danger; but they had a grisly repute as necromancers, and they invoked the evil spirits with awful and spectacular ceremonies and got information which saved them. The spirits said there was still another traitor in the camp, and pointed him out—he was a dead man in five minutes; and they devised a trick upon the whites, and commanded its execution. The chiefs listened to its sombre details, found them to their taste, and promised humble obedience.

About this time or a little later, Captain McGregor, by permission of Captain Johnson, was starting out spying again. He hid himself in his usual lair, and at ten Billy’s crackling bark began once more to rise upon his listening ear out of the murky remotenesses of the prairie. By and by it ceased, and Captain McGregor betook himself to Captain Johnson’s pit, sat down on the medicine case, and reported.

“I have just come from their camp, sir, and they have contrived a fresh trick. They will try it, and they are our meat, to a certainty. At noon tomorrow all the six chiefs and thirty-five picked braves will come disguised as decrepit old squaws, under a truce-flag, and beg for leave to wail for their dead and bury them. They will have knives, tomahawks and revolvers under their ragged robes. They will offer to place half of their number in our hands on the island, to remain while the rest wail and do the burying. When the hostages have reached the island they will pull their weapons and begin the rush, and the others will raise the war-whoop and follow.”

“It ends the campaign; triumph is sure, and the merit is yours, sir. Tomorrow I shall know how to reward you to your full deserving if all goes as we now expect. For the present I will limit myself to thanking you for to-day’s high service,
Colonel
McGregor.”

Toward ten, next morning, the glasses showed a slow-moving and apparently bent and rickety body of ancient squaws approaching across the plain. They were expected, and their intended request would be granted. They plodded on. Some distance to their right the two renegades walked slowly along watching them, and talking, the dog Billy at their heels. One of them presently said—

“Suppose they fail?”

“But they won’t; there aren’t any spies to give it away this time, that is sure.”

“Still, I say it again: suppose they fail?”