Following the Equator by Mark Twain (mobile ebook reader TXT) đź“–
- Author: Mark Twain
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In the swirl and tumult of the hotel lobby I ran across Mr. Daly’s comedian, the late James Lewis, of beloved memory, and I casually mentioned that I was going to call upon Mr. Daly in the evening at 8. He looked surprised, and said he reckoned not. For answer I handed him Mr. Daly’s note. Its substance was: “Come to my private den, over the theater, where we cannot be interrupted. And come by the back way, not the front. No. 642 Sixth Avenue is a cigar shop; pass through it and you are in a paved court, with high buildings all around; enter the second door on the left, and come up stairs.”
“Is this all?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Well, you’ll never get in”
“Why?”
“Because you won’t. Or if you do you can draw on me for a hundred dollars; for you will be the first man that has accomplished it in twenty-five years. I can’t think what Mr. Daly can have been absorbed in. He has forgotten a most important detail, and he will feel humiliated in the morning when he finds that you tried to get in and couldn’t.”
“Why, what is the trouble?”
“I’ll tell you. You see——”
At that point we were swept apart by the crowd, somebody detained me with a moment’s talk, and we did not get together again. But it did not matter; I believed he was joking, anyway.
At eight in the evening I passed through the cigar shop and into the court and knocked at the second door.
“Come in!”
I entered. It was a small room, carpetless, dusty, with a naked deal table, and two cheap wooden chairs for furniture. A giant Irishman was standing there, with shirt collar and vest unbuttoned, and no coat on. I put my hat on the table, and was about to say something, when the Irishman took the innings himself. And not with marked courtesy of tone:
“Well, sor, what will you have?"
I was a little disconcerted, and my easy confidence suffered a shrinkage. The man stood as motionless as Gibraltar, and kept his unblinking eye upon me. It was very embarrassing, very humiliating. I stammered at a false start or two; then——
“I have just run down from——”
“Av ye plaze, ye’ll not smoke here, ye understand.”
I laid my cigar on the window-ledge; chased my flighty thoughts a moment, then said in a placating manner:
“I—I have come to see Mr. Daly.”
“Oh, ye have, have ye?”
“Yes”
“Well, ye’ll not see him.”
“But he asked me to come.”
“Oh, he did, did he?”
“Yes, he sent me this note, and——”
“Lemme see it.”
For a moment I fancied there would be a change in the atmosphere, now; but this idea was premature. The big man was examining the note searchingly under the gas-jet. A glance showed me that he had it upside down—disheartening evidence that he could not read.
“Is ut his own handwrite?”
“Yes—he wrote it himself.”
“He did, did he?”
“Yes.”
“H’m. Well, then, why ud he write it like that?”
“How do you mean?”
“I mane, why wudn’t he put his naime to ut?”
“His name is to it. That’s not it—you are looking at my name.”
I thought that that was a home shot, but he did not betray that he had been hit. He said:
“It’s not an aisy one to spell; how do you pronounce ut?”
“Mark Twain.”
“H’m. H’m. Mike Train. H’m. I don’t remember ut. What is it ye want to see him about?”
“It isn’t I that want to see him, he wants to see me.”
“Oh, he does, does he?”
“Yes.”
“What does he want to see ye about?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ye don’t know! And ye confess it, becod! Well, I can tell ye wan thing—ye’ll not see him. Are ye in the business?”
“What business?”
“The show business.”
A fatal question. I recognized that I was defeated. If I answered no, he would cut the matter short and wave me to the door without the grace of a word—I saw it in his uncompromising eye; if I said I was a lecturer, he would despise me, and dismiss me with opprobrious words; if I said I was a dramatist, he would throw me out of the window. I saw that my case was hopeless, so I chose the course which seemed least humiliating: I would pocket my shame and glide out without answering. The silence was growing lengthy.
“I’ll ask ye again. Are ye in the show business yerself?”
“Yes!”
I said it with splendid confidence; for in that moment the very twin of that grand New Haven dog loafed into the room, and I saw that Irishman’s eye light eloquently with pride and affection.
“Ye are? And what is it?”
“I’ve got a bench-show in New Haven.”
The weather did change then.
“You don’t say, sir! And that’s your show, sir! Oh, it’s a grand show, it’s a wonderful show, sir, and a proud man I am to see your honor this day. And ye’ll be an expert, sir, and ye’ll know all about dogs—more than ever they know theirselves, I’ll take me oath to ut."
I said, with modesty:
“I believe I have some reputation that way. In fact, my business requires it.”
“Ye have some reputation, your honor! Bedad I believe you! There’s not a jintleman in the worrld that can lay over ye in the judgmint of a dog, sir. Now I’ll vinture that your honor’ll know that dog’s dimensions there better than he knows them his own self, and just by the casting of your educated eye upon him. Would you mind giving a guess, if ye’ll be so good?”
I knew that upon my answer would depend my fate. If I made this dog bigger than the prize-dog, it would be bad diplomacy, and suspicious; if I fell too far short of the prizedog, that would be equally damaging. The dog was standing by the table, and I believed I knew the difference between him and the one whose picture I had seen in the newspaper to a shade. I spoke promptly up and said:
“It’s no trouble to guess this noble creature’s figures: height, three feet; length, four feet and three-quarters of an inch; weight, a hundred and forty-eight and a quarter.”
The man snatched his hat from its peg and danced on it with joy, shouting:
“Ye’ve hardly missed it the hair’s breadth, hardly the shade of a shade, your honor! Oh, it’s the miraculous eye ye’ve got, for the judgmint of a dog!”
And still pouring out his admiration of my capacities, he snatched off his vest and scoured off one of the wooden chairs with it, and scrubbed it and polished it, and said:
“There, sit down, your honor, I’m ashamed of meself that I forgot ye were standing all this time; and do put on your hat, ye mustn’t take cold, it’s a drafty place; and here is your cigar, sir, a getting cold, I’ll give ye a light. There. The place is all yours, sir, and if ye’ll just put your feet on the table and make yourself at home, I’ll stir around and get a candle and light ye up the ould crazy stairs and see that ye don’t come to anny harm, for be this time Mr. Daly’ll be that impatient to see your honor that he’ll be taking the roof off."
He conducted me cautiously and tenderly up the stairs, lighting the way and protecting me with friendly warnings, then pushed the door open and bowed me in and went his way, mumbling hearty things about my wonderful eye for points of a dog. Mr. Daly was writing and had his back to me. He glanced over his shoulder presently, then jumped up and said—
“Oh, dear me, I forgot all about giving instructions. I was just writing you to beg a thousand pardons. But how is it you are here? How did you get by that Irishman? You are the first man that’s done it in five and twenty years. You didn’t bribe him, I know that; there’s not money enough in New York to do it. And you didn’t persuade him; he is all ice and iron: there isn’t a soft place nor a warm one in him anywhere. What is your secret? Look here; you owe me a hundred dollars for unintentionally giving you a chance to perform a miracle—for it is a miracle that you’ve done.”
“That is all right,” I said, “collect it of Jimmy Lewis.”
That good dog not only did me that good turn in the time of my need, but he won for me the envious reputation among all the theatrical people from the Atlantic to the Pacific of being the only man in history who had ever run the blockade of Augustin Daly’s back door.
CHAPTER XLVI.
If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging.
—Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar.
On the Train. Fifty years ago, when I was a boy in the then remote and sparsely peopled Mississippi valley, vague tales and rumors of a mysterious body of professional murderers came wandering in from a country which was constructively as far from us as the constellations blinking in space—India; vague tales and rumors of a sect called Thugs, who waylaid travelers in lonely places and killed them for the contentment of a god whom they worshiped; tales which everybody liked to listen to and nobody believed, except with reservations. It was considered that the stories had gathered bulk on their travels. The matter died down and a lull followed. Then Eugene Sue’s “Wandering Jew” appeared, and made great talk for a while. One character in it was a chief of Thugs—“Feringhea”—a mysterious and terrible Indian who was as slippery and sly as a serpent, and as deadly; and he stirred up the Thug interest once more. But it did not last. It presently died again this time to stay dead.
At first glance it seems strange that this should have happened; but really it was not strange—on the contrary—it was natural; I mean on our side of the water. For the source whence the Thug tales mainly came was a Government Report, and without doubt was not republished in America; it was probably never even seen there. Government Reports have no general circulation. They are distributed to the few, and are not always read by those few. I heard of this Report for the first time a day or two ago, and borrowed it. It is full of fascinations; and it turns those dim, dark fairy tales of my boyhood days into realities.
The Report was made in 1839 by Major Sleeman, of the Indian Service, and was printed in Calcutta in 1840. It is a clumsy, great, fat, poor sample of the printer’s art, but good enough for a government printing-office in that old day and in that remote region, perhaps. To Major Sleeman was given the general superintendence of the giant task of ridding India of Thuggee, and he and his seventeen assistants accomplished it. It was the Augean Stables over again. Captain Vallancey, writing in a Madras journal in those old times, makes this remark:
“The day that sees this far-spread evil eradicated from India and known only in name, will greatly tend to immortalize British rule in the East.”
He did not overestimate the magnitude and difficulty of the work, nor the immensity of the credit which would justly be due to British rule in case it was accomplished.
Thuggee became known to the British authorities in India about 1810, but its wide prevalence was not suspected; it was not regarded as a serious matter, and no systematic measures were taken for its suppression until about 1830. About that time Major Sleeman captured Eugene Sue’s Thug-chief, “Feringhea,” and got him to turn King’s evidence. The revelations were so stupefying that Sleeman was not able to believe them. Sleeman thought he knew every criminal within his jurisdiction, and that the worst of them were merely thieves; but Feringhea told him that he
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