Who Is Mark Twain? (11 page)

And so, with bended heads and streaming eyes, they moved slow and sadly toward the door. Marlow waved his hand and said—

“Farewell, a long farewell! My house is well rid—”

“Hold!” I shouted. “Stay where you are!”

Everybody stared with inquiring astonishment. Old Marlow grew red with rage.

“What means this?” he cried.

“It means this!” said I. “Samson is no more! old Mrs. Hale is at peace! Philip Martin has fallen with apoplexy! William Thompson is drowned! George Simpson has had a relapse and the rattle is in his throat! And hark ye, wretch, the cholera is at our very doors and in its most malignant form!”

With a wild joy Mr. Cadaver threw his arms around my neck and murmured—

“O, precious, precious tidings!—blest be the tongue that has uttered them!”

Joseph and Gracie embraced with tears of gratitude, and then astounded me by embracing me, too. In an instant misery was gone and tumultuous happiness had taken its place. I turned upon old Marlow and said—

“There, sir, is the door, be gone! You will be paid, never fear. And if you should want to borrow any money,” I said, with bitter sarcasm, “do not hesitate to say so, for we can procure all we want, with our present business prospects.”

He went away raging, and we went gaily to work dusting stock and getting ready for the most lucrative day’s work our little shop had ever known.

Little remains to be told. Our prosperity moved straight along without a halt. Everything seemed to conspire to help us. No village in all the region was so ravaged by the pestilence as was ours, the doctors were the first to go, and those who supplied their places passed through our hands and Joseph’s without halt or delay. The graveyard grew in grace and beauty day by day till there was not a grass-patch visible in it, not a level spot to trouble the eye.

All in good time Joseph and Gracie were married, and there was a great and costly wedding. As if to make everything complete and leave nothing to be desired, the commerce of the wedding day paid the entire expense of the occasion, and Mr. Marlow himself headed the procession in a sixty-dollar casket.

M
ARK
T
WAIN

I
t was in Geneva that I got my music box. Everybody orders a watch, in Geneva, and a music box. Neither of these things was a necessity to me, but I ordered both, because I did not like to seem eccentric. The watch is perfectly satisfactory, and I shall not part with it, but as soon as I shall have decided which of my enemies I hate most, and most wish to afflict, I am going to give him my music box. When I asked after the best music-box establishment, I was told to go to that of Monsieur Samuel Troll,
fils,
in the rue Bonivard. So I went there, and found a young Englishman on duty, to whom I stated my business. He had probably been bothered a good deal with tourists who came merely to sample his goods for curiosity’s sake, without any intention of buying; for he exhibited a most composed indifference concerning the matter in hand. He was not rude—very far from it; indeed he was endowed with an enviable stock of polite graces and affable superiorities—he was indifferent to matters of commerce, that was all; he was not indifferent to other things, such as the weather, the war-news, the opera, and so on; in fact he showed a cheery and vivacious interest in these. Consequently, while we progressed well enough, socially, we did not get along very fast, commercially. Whenever he started a music box to grinding a tune, he immediately began to hum that tune himself, and tap the time on the table, nodding his head from side to side in unison with the measure. He was at his best and happiest and gracefulest, then, and seemed born to accompany a music box. It is true that while the humming was artistic, and carefully and conscientiously done, and compelled one to observe and admire how intimately the performer knew the tune, it was in some sense an obstruction since it allured one’s attention away from the music-box’s efforts, and even made him forget that there was any music box around. It also had the effect of making one suspect that a music box bought in these circumstances might prove a disappointment when it reached home—it might have but a poor and inadequate sound, since of course it would have no hummer attached. It seemed to me wisest to quietly persist in having box after box tried, in the hope that in the end we might run across one with a hummer to it. But no, the hope was vain. We tried fifty boxes, but they were all the wretched old-fashioned tinkling kind, with here and there one freighted with a nerve-wrenching accumulation of aggravating devices—such as little bells, and gongs, and drums, and castanets, and wing-flopping, beak-stretching singing-birds—a most maddening and inhuman invention. Not even a hummer could make this sort endurable.

But at last I was reluctantly shown—in a back room, the holy of holies of the establishment,—a trunk-like box which was altogether satisfactory. It occupied that place in solitary state, and I was told it was of a sort not kept in stock, but only made to order. It had none of the customary deviltries in its composition, but simply produced the soft, long-drawn strains and richly blended chords of flutes and violins playing in concert. Moreover, it needed no hummer; the humming seemed to even mar and mutilate its gentle and tranquilizing music.

I ordered a box like that one—and it was my own fault that I never got it. I thought I had ten favorite tunes, but easily found I had only four. It took me eight months to furnish the other six. Meantime I suppose that that young man had forgotten what kind of a box I had ordered. At any rate when I at last opened the blessed thing in America, the first turn of the crank brought forth an agonizing jingle and squawk and clatter of bells, gongs, drums, and castanets, with never a solitary strain of flute or fiddle! It was like ordering a serenade of angels, and getting a shivaree in place of it. The biggest box, of this sort, in Mr. Troll’s establishment, had loosened half of my teeth with one of its mildest efforts—now here was one full four times as big, gifted with eleven times the destructive power—a machine capable of producing almost instant death. With duties, freights, and so on, it had cost me six hundred and fifty dollars—a pure waste, for I could have got a guillotine for half the money.

I did not know what to do with it. It did not seem safe to have it about the house where innocent and unsuspecting persons might meddle with it and I be held for damages on the inquest; neither would it be right to ask any storage-house to take charge of it without explaining its dangerous nature; I could not keep a policeman to watch it, for I could not afford to pay for that policeman in case he came to grief; I would not trust it in the cellar, for there was a good deal of machinery about it which nobody understood, and there was no sure thing that it would not go off of its own accord, and of course I could not collect any insurance on the damage it would do the house, for a fire-risk does not cover destruction wrought by a music box; I thought of burying it, but the sexton did not like to handle it. There was really no way out of the scrape. One neighbor took it home, at last, and put some wires to it, and started in to use it for a burglar alarm; but the first time it went off, (it was doing the Anvil Chorus,) this man, instead of rising up and killing the burglars, went quaking to them and offered them all his wealth to kill the music box. But they fled.

She is on my hands yet. I am willing to trade her for an elephant, and give boot. Or, I will agree to fight her with an elephant, the victor to yield up his champion to the vanquished.

She is not the box I ordered. Mr. Troll says she is; but as I was present and he was not, perhaps I ought to know better than he. He frankly offers to take her back if I will ship her to Geneva, and says he will give me the other kind of box. That is creditable, and is all he could be expected to do; but as my life and limbs are valuable to me I am not going to try to pack that thing in these times when accident policies are so high.

The moral of this little tale is, when you order a music box in Geneva, furnish your tunes at once, then no mistake will be made, and you will get what you order. But if you delay as I did, Mr. Troll’s young man’s memory may become uncertain and cause a disappointment to be inflicted upon you. No intentional wrong will be done you, for it is an honorable and trustworthy house, but no matter, if you delay too much you may have the bitterness of seeing that the charming instrument you have so long been waiting for is not that enchanting instrument at all, but a Gatling gun in disguise.

T
he Grand Prix is the great race of the year in France; so the knowing all tell me; and they also tell me that it is to the Parisian fashionable season what the benediction is to a church service—it ends it. After the Grand Prix is run, the fashionables who can afford to go away to the summer resorts do so, and the fashionables who cannot, pretend to do it.

Everybody goes to the great race. It is in the spacious Park, the Bois de Boulogne. All the cabs and carriages are secured beforehand for that day, and by two in the afternoon Paris is a silent wilderness of empty and unpeopled streets. Men, women and children who may not ride, walk; for the distance is only three or four miles, and after one has left the Arch of Triumph a short way behind, the rest of his road lies through the cool and shady lanes of the great forest.

We went as guests of a friend, resident in Paris. We started at one o’clock in the afternoon, and found that wonderful avenue, the Champs Elysee already crowded from end to end with a rushing tornado of vehicles, about eight abreast. It was a dry, sunny summer’s day, yet there was no dust. After we got out of the city and entered the forest, we found the main roads crowded in the same way. These roads were fringed on both sides with policemen. I think I never saw so many policemen in one day before. If a horse grew restive, three or four of them were at his head in a moment; if anything occurred to block the procession, they swarmed into the road and started the forward movement again; they were at hand, always, to
prevent
disturbances as well as to put a stop to them. Without this active vigilance the innumerable caravan would have been in constant confusion, and consequently would have been hours making its short journey; a section of it could not stop and the rest go on—no, the checking of one section dammed the whole prodigious stream of four solid miles of vehicles. Through the watchfulness of the police the stream was enabled to flow swiftly on, with hardly ever an interruption.

It was a marvelous journey. It was as if the world was emigrating.

We reached the race course. Vast detachments of vehicles broke away from the procession and drove into the ample enclosure, but we went on with the main body. We passed several gates and ticket offices, and stopped at the gate nearest to the grand stand. Then the brilliant sun was suddenly eclipsed and the rain poured down in flooding torrents. One would naturally say, What of that?—a summer shower is nothing. But in the present circumstances it was a good deal; for the French ladies dress as for a dinner or a state ball when they go to this great national race. Hardly any of the carriages had been closed, so suddenly had the shower come. I saw scores of open carriages whirl by, whose occupants sat with heads bowed to the drenching cataract, while their gorgeous plumage wilted down and clung to their bodies in tripy corrugations like the wrinkles in a washer-woman’s hand. In a twinkling the hard smooth road had an inch depth of mud and water on it. Into this mess those armies of richly dressed ladies had to insert their slippered feet. One pretty girl of twenty or thereabouts, clothed in a shining splendor of costly raiment, looked ruefully out of her carriage, then disclosed a shapely foot and ancle, and pointed the same toward the step—and halted a moment to gather the necessary courage to proceed. The ancle was enclosed in a cream-tinted stocking of so thin a texture that the flesh showed through, and the small foot was sandaled in the daintiest of silken cream-tinted slippers, propped on the tallest of tapering heels. She made up her mind, she accepted the woeful necessity. She advanced that graceful extremity further forth from the sheltering drapery and rested it upon the carriage step; she stood upright and gathered the drapery about her person and out of harm’s reach; then she stepped down and the yellow mud and the stained water swelled up and overflowed the gunwale of the delicate slipper, and I helped her do the shuddering. She waded off with her escort, carrying the most of her clothes on her left arm, and looking like an airy creation of sea-foam and snow which would have seemed to float on the breeze if the tapering cream-tinted calves had been out of sight.

Meantime, while I was enjoying all this scenery, our friend was buying the four tickets. We left the carriage, now, and were admitted; but the moment we were fairly past the ticket-examiner and safe in the grounds, a man in plain clothes halted us and asked in French to be allowed to see our tickets. They were shown to him.

“How much did you pay for these?”

“Twenty francs apiece.”

“Where did you buy them?”

“At the office just outside this gate.”

“Let me have them, if you please. Wait here a moment.” He disappeared in the crowd with our property before any of us thought to inquire what he wanted with it and by what authority he interested himself in our affairs. We stood under the umbrellas and discussed this pirate in a pretty vicious way. We also discussed ourselves and our points of resemblance to other kinds of fools. But presently our host said,—

“Nobody was in fault but me. Perhaps the lesson is worth what it has cost. Wait here a moment and I will go out and buy some more tickets, and this time we will see if we can’t take care of them.”

I remained with the two ladies, and he started off; but at that moment we saw our pirate shouldering his way toward us through the crowd. He gave us two red tickets, two pale yellow ones, and a gold twenty-franc piece, and said,—

“Your road is this way, messieurs,—to the right. Ladies pay only half price.”

Then he bowed politely and immediately turned on his heel and collared another party of green foreigners who were trying to get their ladies in on twenty-franc tickets when ten-franc ones would answer just as well. I have encountered many government officers in Christian lands, whose business it was to see that the sojourner did not swindle the government; but I had never even heard of a government before which appointed officers to keep a lookout and see that the sojourner did not swindle himself.

We moved on, among the trees and the grass plats, and found the grand stand. It was already packed with ladies; there were a thousand or more, and the long ranks rose tier above tier backward to the rear wall of the building. The costumes were so gay and so splendid that this mass of color was like a hillside bedded in flowers. The roof of the building was packed, also—with both sexes. There were several other grand stands like this one, and they were crowded, too. In front of them all, extended a wide fenced space which sloped from the stands to the race track, and this unsheltered ground was furnished with some thousands of splint-bottomed chairs, free to anybody who had a ticket.

After the first race the people deserted the roof of the stand, and we went up there and got front seats and kept them the rest of the day. We could look out over the vast green level, now, which was enclosed by the race-track. It was thronged with carriages, cabs and drags,—a multitudinous host, massed into a compact body—a body to be reckoned rather by acre than by count. The sky was cloudless by this time; therefore the vehicles were without covers, and there was nothing to hide the acres of brilliant costumes or mar the effect of the sun upon them.

The fence-line for nearly half a mile enclosed a deep belt of men, women and children—I don’t know how deep—it was a matter of acres again. When your eye followed the flying horses around, you observed that that entire great field was walled with people. It was a wonderful thing to see. Yes, coming out it had seemed to me that the world was emigrating; the emigration was finished, the world was here assembled together.

It was all beautiful, too; wherever the ground was visible it was carpeted with green grass; the dense green woods surrounded us and shut us into our verdant plain; above the woods rose two or three dim spires and towers of Paris, and in the blue sky floated the gray bubble of a distant balloon, whose passengers probably saw in our assembled world only a something which resembled a pretty extensive gathering of black ants.

Every race was awaited with interest and observed with considerable eagerness—but both the interest and the eagerness were well bred and never boisterous. There was a change, though, when the event of the day approached—the grand twenty-thousand-dollar race. The hosts gathered silently, but steadily and continuously, everywhere. There had been many vacant seats on our roof before, but there were none, now. The world in the green plain had had fringed edges before, and outlying detachments of stragglers, but it was solid, now. Solid and still. There was something very impressive about the waiting hush of this mighty sea of life. Twelve clean-limbed, glossy racers filed out upon the track, bearing riders clothed in all shades of new and glittering satin. They scampered down the track over the first quarter to limber themselves up, then marched, single file, by the stand, at a walk, in the order of their numbers upon the bulletin, and took their places for the start, a quarter of a mile to our right. There was a still pause of some minutes, then a low inarticulate murmur all about us, and we knew they were coming. With a common impulse the seated world rose to its feet. I heard a cleaving rush of sound, there was a lightning flash of brilliant hues,—then a vacancy, for a second, while the eye threw off its surprise and hurried to catch up with the flying cluster of meteors. They streamed away into the distance, closely pressed together; the colors became indistinguishable; they turned the half mile and disappeared for a few seconds behind an island of trees; then came in sight again beyond, and flew along past the belt of people banked together there; this belt instantly dissolved and flowed like a vast broken wave across the field to see the finish; the racers turned the corner, all in a close body and came booming down the home stretch under furious whip and spur, the riders leaning far forward and lashing with might and main; people began to ejaculate: “Red will win!” “Red’s got it, sure!” A grand huzza was already rising for the red jacket, when all of a sudden, at the last possible moment, the orange rider threw in one supreme effort and shot by the red man like a thunderbolt. That stroke captured the $20,000, and the huzza already begun for red finished in a thunder-crash for orange.

Something followed, now, which was grand to see. The crowd overflowed into the race-course and packed it full—there was no longer a fence-line visible; people poured, in a thousand streams from over the field and everywhere and joined this throng; they even seemed to spring up out of the ground; the mass grew and grew, there below us, and became more and more compact, till at last it was like a solid black island of humanity in a level green sea of grass; it was said that there were 50,000 persons aggregated there; they stood closer together than the bristles in a brush, for they touched shoulders; their faces were all visible, for one half of the multitude were pressing to the left and the other to the right, all trying to reach the same point, the gateway under our stand—they wanted a good look at the winning horse. A narrow crack was left in this vast multitude, and through this the racers moved in a walk, in single file—it was as if the half hidden horses were swimming through it. A cheer rolled continuously along abreast the winner, and only ceased when he passed under the grand stand and disappeared. I came curiously near winning four pairs of gloves on this memorable race; twelve horses ran, and if they had dashed up to the winning-post from the opposite direction the horse I betted on would have been in the lead.

The island of humanity began to crumble away at the edges; it melted off in grains, driblets, cakes and blocks, and floated across the plain toward a wide, yellow, empty gap in the forest; little by little the scattered wreck thickened and compacted itself into a broad raft, more than half a mile long, one of whose extremities filled up and hid the yellow gap in the woods, while the other end was joined to the still steadily crumbling and still mighty mass in the field. The wide gap had been yellow, before, it was black, now—an almost motionless black stream, for the distance was so great that it had the still look of inert matter, unless one watched it sharply and intently a while—then one detected that it was dimly alive all over with minute writing movements, much as if it were a bed of worms. It was hard to believe, after watching that place for an hour, and detecting no change in it, that it was not stationary matter, but matter which had been changed and renewed every second, during all that time; it seemed odd and unbelievable that swiftly moving carriages should make so steadfast and motionless a spectacle.

At the end of an hour the mass was still crumbling, the debris was still stretching unbroken across the plain, and the gap was as full and black as ever. We descended, then, and joined the monster caravan.

Some of the “turn-outs” were peculiar. I saw a family of four or five persons wedged neck-deep in a two-wheeled square box, like bottles in a basket, and this ugly and ridiculous cart was drawn by a pony the size of the average Newfoundland dog. There was one long vehicle, with seats running fore and aft, omnibus fashion, which was evidently a fine and costly affair, and it was filled with a very aristocratic company of ladies and gentlemen, if appearances go for anything; the horses were six in number, large and fine and glossy, and they bore outriders who wore a sort of Italian brigand costume, with a deal of fiery red and yellow in the elaborate trimmings. There were hundreds of private liveries, of course, but they were very subdued in tone—simple brown, or blue, or black, with metal buttons; even a “bug” on the coachman’s hat was rather a rarity. Central Park, on a field day, makes a much gaudier show, in the matter of liveries. I saw only one set of carriage servants with plush knee-breeches and powdered hair. Imagine all this sombre simplicity in a land where dukes and such still exist. Imagine it in a city where great nobles used to parade down street with trains of satin-clad servants reaching into the hundreds only a century or so ago.

One species of scenery was very common in our great procession, but not tiresome to the eye on that account. This was the solitary female. She was painted and powdered, she was upholstered regardless of expense—sometimes modestly, but usually the other way. She had her coachman and footman on the box, and another lackey behind her; she lolled back among her cushions in an almost reclining attitude, with her exposed satin-slippered foot resting on a silken pillow, and a complacent simper on her inane face; and from top-knot to toe she was looking what she was,—the true French Goddess of Liberty, hallowed by a thousand years of the nation’s respectful recognition. She was out in very numerous force indeed. The case could not well be otherwise, when one reflects that by the last census it appears that every Frenchman over 16 years old and under 116 has at least one wife to whom he has not been married. This occasions a good deal of what we call crime and the French call sociability.