by Mark Twain
General attention was thus drawn to the poor fellow, and a great many people came forward, and helped him toward reform with their countenance and encouragement. He did not drink a drop for two months, and meantime was the pet of the good. Then he fell—in the gutter; and there was general sorrow and lamentation. But the noble sisterhood rescued him again. They cleaned him up, they fed him, they listened to the mournful music of his repentances, they got him his situation again. An account of this, also, was published, and the town was drowned in happy tears over the re-restoration of the poor beast and struggling victim of the fatal bowl. A grand temperance revival was got up, and after some rousing speeches had been made the chairman said, impressively: “We are now about to call for signers; and I think there is a spectacle in store for you which not many in this house will be able to view with dry eyes.” There was an eloquent pause, and then George Benton, escorted by a red-sashed detachment of the Ladies of the Refuge, stepped forward upon the platform and signed the pledge. The air was rent with applause, and everybody cried for joy. Everybody wrung the hand of the new convert when the meeting was over; his salary was enlarged next day; he was the talk of the town, and its hero. An account of it was published.
George Benton fell, regularly, every three months, but was faithfully rescued and wrought with, every time, and good situations were found for him. Finally, he was taken around the country lecturing, as a reformed drunkard, and he had great houses and did an immense amount of good.
He was so popular at home, and so trusted—during his sober intervals—that he was enabled to use the name of a principal citizen, and get a large sum of money at the bank. A mighty pressure was brought to bear to save him from the consequences of his forgery, and it was partially successful—he was “sent up” for only two years. When, at the end of a year, the tireless efforts of the benevolent were crowned with success, and he emerged from the penitentiary with a pardon in his pocket, the Prisoner’s Friend Society met him at the door with a situation and a comfortable salary, and all the other benevolent people came forward and gave him advice, encouragement, and help. Edward Mills had once applied to the Prisoner’s Friend Society for a situation, when in dire need, but the question, “Have you been a prisoner?” made brief work of his case.
While all these things were going on, Edward Mills had been quietly making head against adversity. He was still poor, but was in receipt of a steady and sufficient salary, as the respected and trusted cashier of a bank. George Benton never came near him, and was never heard to inquire about him. George got to indulging in long absences from the town; there were ill reports about him, but nothing definite.
One winter’s night some masked burglars forced their way into the bank, and found Edward Mills there alone. They commanded him to reveal the “combination,” so that they could get into the safe. He refused. They threatened his life. He said his employers trusted him, and he could not be traitor to that trust. He could die, if he must, but while he lived he would be faithful; he would not yield up the “combination.” The burglars killed him.
The detectives hunted down the criminals; the chief one proved to be George Benton. A wide sympathy was felt for the widow and orphans of the dead man, and all the newspapers in the land begged that all the banks in the land would testify their appreciation of the fidelity and heroism of the murdered cashier by coming forward with a generous contribution of money in aid of his family, now bereft of support. The result was a mass of solid cash amounting to upward of five hundred dollars—an average of nearly three-eighths of a cent for each bank of the Union. The cashier’s own bank testified its gratitude by endeavoring to show (but humiliatingly failed in it) that the peerless servant’s accounts were not square, and that he himself had knocked his brains out with a bludgeon to escape detection and punishment.
George Benton was arraigned for trial. Then everybody seemed to forget the widow and orphans in their solicitude for poor George. Everything that money and influence could do was done to save him, but it all failed; he was sentenced to death. Straightway the Governor was besieged with petitions for commutation or pardon; they were brought by tearful young girls; by sorrowfal old maids; by deputations of pathetic widows; by shoals of impressive orphans. But no, the Governor—for once—would not yield.
Now George Benton experienced religion. The glad news flew all around. From that time forth his cell was always full of girls and women and fresh flowers; all the day long there was prayer, and hymn-singing, and thanksgivings, and homilies, and tears, with never an interruption, except an occasional five-minute intermission for refreshments.
This sort of thing continued up the very gallows, and George Benton went proudly home, in the black cap, before a wailing audience of the sweetest and best that the region could produce. His grave had fresh flowers on it every day, for a while, and the head-stone bore these words, under a hand pointing aloft: “He has fought the good fight.”
The brave cashier’s head-stone has this inscription: “Be pure, honest, sober, industrious, considerate, and you will never—”
Nobody knows who gave the order to leave it that way, but it was so given.
The cashier’s family are in stringent circumstances, now, it is said; but no matter; a lot of appreciative people, who were not willing that an act so brave and true as his should go unrewarded, have collected forty-two thousand dollars—and built a Memorial Church with it.
1880
THE MAN WHO PUT UP AT GADSBY’S
WHEN MY odd friend Riley and I were newspaper correspondents in Washington, in the winter of ’67, we were coming down Pennsylvania Avenue one night, near midnight, in a driving storm of snow, when the flash of a street-lamp fell upon a man who was eagerly tearing along in the opposite direction. This man instantly stopped and exclaimed:
“This is lucky! You are Mr. Riley, ain’t you?”
Riley was the most self-possessed and solemnly deliberate person in the republic. He stopped, looked his man over from head to foot, and finally said:
“I am Mr. Riley. Did you happen to be looking for me?”
“That’s just what I was doing,” said the man, joyously, “and it’s the biggest luck in the world that I’ve found you. My name is Lykins. I’m one of the teachers of the high school—San Francisco. As soon as I heard the San Francisco postmastership was vacant, I made up my mind to get it—and here I am.”
“Yes,” said Riley, slowly, “as you have remarked . . . Mr. Lykins . . . here you are. And have you got it?”
“Well, not exactly got it, but the next thing to it. I’ve brought a petition, signed by the Superintendent of Public Instruction, and all the teachers, and by more than two hundred other people. Now I want you, if you’ll be so good, to go around with me to the Pacific delegation, for I want to rush this thing through and get along home.”
“If the matter is so pressing, you will prefer that we visit the delegation to-night,” said Riley, in a voice which had nothing mocking in it—to an unaccustomed ear.
“Oh, to-night, by all means! I haven’t got any time to fool around. I want their promise before I go to bed—I ain’t the talking kind, I’m the doing kind!”
“Yes . . . you’ve come to the right place for that. When did you arrive?”
“Just an hour ago.”
“When are you intending to leave?”
“For New York to-morrow evening—for San Francisco next morning.”
“Just so. . . . What are you going to do to-morrow?”
“Do! Why, I’ve got to go to the President with the petition and the delegation, and get the appointment, haven’t I?”
“Yes . . . very true . . . that is correct. And then what?”
“Executive session of the Senate at 2 P.M.—got to get the appointment confirmed—I reckon you’ll grant that?”
“Yes . . . yes,” said Riley, meditatively, “you are right again. Then you take the train for New York in the evening, and the steamer for San Francisco next morning?”
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“That’s it—that’s the way I map it out!”
Riley considered a while, and then said:
“You couldn’t stay . . . a day . . . well, say two days longer?”
“Bless your soul, no! It’s not my style. I ain’t a man to go fooling around—I’m a man that does things, I tell you.”
The storm was raging, the thick snow blowing in gusts. Riley stood silent, apparently deep in a reverie, during a minute or more, then he looked up and said:
“Have you ever heard about that man who put up at Gadsby’s, once? . . . But I see you haven’t.”
He backed Mr. Lykins against an iron fence, buttonholed him, fastened him with his eye, like the Ancient Mariner, and proceeded to unfold his narrative as placidly and peacefully as if we were all stretched comfortably in a blossomy summer meadow instead of being persecuted by a wintry midnight tempest:
“I will tell you about that man. It was in Jackson’s time. Gadsby’s was the principal hotel, then. Well, this man arrived from Tennessee about nine o’clock, one morning, with a black coachman and a splendid four-horse carriage and an elegant dog, which he was evidently fond and proud of; he drove up before Gadsby’s, and the clerk and the landlord and everybody rushed out to take charge of him, but he said, ‘Never mind,’ and jumped out and told the coachman to wait—said he hadn’t time to take anything to eat, he only had a little claim against the government to collect, would run across the way, to the Treasury, and fetch the money, and then get right along back to Tennessee, for he was in considerable of a hurry.
“Well, about eleven o’clock that night he came back and ordered a bed and told them to put the horses up—said he would collect the claim in the morning. This was in January, you understand—January, 1834—the 3d of January—Wednesday.
“Well, on the 5th of February, he sold the fine carriage, and bought a cheap second-hand one—said it would answer just as well to take the money home in, and he didn’t care for style.
“On the llth of August he sold a pair of the fine horses—said he’d often thought a pair was better than four, to go over the rough mountain roads with where a body had to be careful about his driving—and there wasn’t so much of his claim but he could lug the money home with a pair easy enough.
“On the 13th of December he sold another horse—said two warn’t necessary to drag that old light vehicle with—in fact, one could snatch it along faster than was absolutely necessary, now that it was good solid winter weather and the roads in splendid condition.
“On the 17th of February, 1835, he sold the old carriage and bought a cheap second-hand buggy—said a buggy was just the trick to skim along mushy, slushy early spring roads with, and he had always wanted to try a buggy on those mountain roads, anyway.
“On the 1st of August he sold the buggy and bought the remains of an old sulky—said he just wanted to see those green Tennesseans stare and gawk when they saw him come a-ripping along in a sulky—didn’t believe they’d ever heard of a sulky in their lives.
“Well, on the 29th of August he sold his colored coachman—said he didn’t need a coachman for a sulky—wouldn’t be room enough for two in it anyway—and, besides, it wasn’t every day that Providence sent a man a fool who was willing to pay nine hundred dollars for such a third-rate negro as that—been wanting to get rid of the creature for years, but didn’t like to throw him away.
“Eighteen months later—that is to say, on the 15th of February, 1837—he sold the sulky and bought a saddle—said horseback-riding was what the doctor had always recommended him to take, and dog’d if he wanted to risk his neck going over those mountain roads on wheels in the dead of winter, not if he knew himself.
“On the 9th of April he sold the saddle—said he wasn’t going to risk his life with any perishable saddle-girth that ever was made, over a rainy, miry April road, while he could ride bareback and know and feel he was safe—always had despised to ride on a saddle, anyway.
“On the 24th of April he sold his horse—said ‘I’m just fifty-seven today, hale and hearty—it would be a pretty howdy-do for me to be wasting such a trip as that and such weather as this, on a horse, when there ain’t anything in the world so splendid as a tramp on foot through the fresh spring woods and over the cheery mountains, to a man that is a man—and I can make my dog carry my claim in a little bundle, anyway, when it’s collected. So to-morrow I’ll be up bright and early, make my little old collection, and mosey off to Tennessee, on my own hind legs, with a rousing good-by to Gadsby’s.’
“On the 22d of June he sold his dog—said ‘Dern a dog, anyway, where you’re just starting off on a rattling bully pleasure tramp through the summer woods and hills—perfect nuisance—chases the squirrels, barks at everything, goes a-capering and splattering around in the fords—man can’t get any chance to reflect and enjoy nature—and I’d a blamed sight ruther carry the claim myself, it’s a mighty sight safer; a dog’s mighty uncertain in a financial way—always noticed it—well, good-by boys—last call—I’m off for Tennessee with a good leg and a gay heart, early in the morning.’ ”
There was a pause and a silence—except the noise of the wind and the pelting snow. Mr. Lykins said, impatiently:
“Well?”
Riley said:
“Well—that was thirty years ago.”
“Very well, very well—what of it?”
“I’m great friends with that old patriarch. He comes every evening to tell me good-by. I saw him an hour ago—he’s off for Tennessee early to-morrow morning—as usual; said he calculated to get his claim through and be off before night-owls like me have turned out of bed. The tears were in his eyes, he was so glad he was going to see his old Tennessee and his friends once more.”
Another silent pause. The stranger broke it:
“Is that all?”
“That is all.”
“Well, for the time of night, and the kind of night, it seems to me the story was full long enough. But what’s it all for?”
“Oh, nothing in particular.”
“Well, where’s the point of it?”
“Oh, there isn’t any particular point to it. Only, if you are not in too much of a hurry to rush off to San Francisco with that post-office appointment, Mr. Lykins, I’d advise you to ‘put up at Gadsby’s’ for a spell, and take it easy. Good-by. God bless you!”
So saying, Riley blandly turned on his heel and left the astonished schoolteacher standing there, a musing and motionless snow image shining in the broad glow of the street-lamp.
He never got that post-office.
From A TRAMP ABROAD, 1880
MRS. MCWILLIAMS AND THE LIGHTNING
WELL, SIR—continued Mr. McWilliams, for this was not the beginning of his talk—the fear of lightning is one of the most distressing infirmities a human being can be afflicted with. It is mostly confined to women; but now and then you find it in a little dog, and sometimes in a man. It is a particularly distressing infirmity, for the reason that it takes the sand out of a person to an extent which no other fear can, and it can’t be reasoned with, and neither can it be shamed out of a person. A woman who could face the very devil himself—or a mouse—loses her grip and goes all to pieces in front of a flash of lightning. Her fright is something pitiful to see.
Well, as I was telling you, I woke up, with that smothered and unlocatable cry of “Mortimer! Mortimer!” wailing in my ears; and as soon as I could scrape my faculties together I reached over in the dark and then said:
“Evangeline, is that you calling? What is the matter? Where are you?”
“Shut up in the boot-closet. You ought to be ashamed to lie there and sleep so, and such an awful storm going on.”
“Why, how can one be ashamed when he is asleep? It is unreasonable; a man can’t be ashamed when he is asleep, Evangeline.”
“You never try, Mortimer—you know very well you never try.”
I caught the sound of muffled sobs.
That sound smote dead the sharp spee
ch that was on my lips, and I changed it to—
“I’m sorry, dear—I’m truly sorry. I never meant to act so. Come back and—”
“MORTIMER!”
“Heavens! what is the matter, my love?”
“Do you mean to say you are in that bed yet?”
“Why, of course.”
“Come out of it instantly. I should think you would take some little care of your life, for my sake and the children’s, if you will not for your own.”
“But, my love—”
“Don’t talk to me, Mortimer. You know there is no place so dangerous as a bed in such a thunder-storm as this—all the books say that; yet there you would lie, and deliberately throw away your life—for goodness knows what, unless for the sake of arguing, and arguing, and—”
“But, confound it, Evangeline, I’m not in the bed now. I’m—”
[Sentence interrupted by a sudden glare of lightning, followed by a terrified little scream from Mrs. McWilliams and a tremendous blast of thunder.]
“There! You see the result. Oh, Mortimer, how can you be so profligate as to swear at such a time as this?”
“I didn’t swear. And that wasn’t a result of it, anyway. It would have come, just the same, if I hadn’t said a word; and you know very well, Evangeline—at least, you ought to know—that when the atmosphere is charged with electricity—”
“Oh, yes; now argue it, and argue it, and argue it!—I don’t see how you can act so, when you know there is not a lightning-rod on the place, and your poor wife and children are absolutely at the mercy of Providence. What are you doing?—lighting a match at such a time as this! Are you stark mad?”
“Hang it, woman, where’s the harm? The place is as dark as the inside of an infidel, and—”
