The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson E-Book

Mark Twain

• Herausgeber: Andura Publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

An unforgettable classic from the legendary and beloved American author, Mark Twain.

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Leseprobe

The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson

by Mark Twain

Contents

           Pudd'nhead Wilson

Chapter         Chapter Title                  Page

        A Whisper to the Reader                  15

     I. Pudd'nhead Wins His Name                 17

    II. Driscoll Spares His Slaves               27

   III. Roxy Plays a Shrewd Trick                41

    IV. The Ways of the Changelings              52

     V. The Twins Thrill Dawson's Landing        67

    VI. Swimming in Glory                        77

   VII. The Unknown Nymph                        86

  VIII. Marse Tom Tramples His Chance            93

    IX. Tom Practises Sycophancy                111

     X. The Nymph Revealed                      121

    XI. Pudd'nhead's Startling Discovery        130

   XII. The Shame of Judge Driscoll             155

  XIII. Tom Stares at Ruin                      166

   XIV. Roxana Insists Upon Reform              179

    XV. The Robber Robbed                       197

   XVI. Sold Down the River                     214

  XVII. The Judge Utters Dire Prophecy          221

 XVIII. Roxana Commands                         225

   XIX. The Prophecy Realized                   246

    XX. The Murderer Chuckles                   263

   XXI. Doom                                    278

        Conclusion                              300

A Whisper

to the Reader.

There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed

by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance:

his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the

humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of

feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in

doubt.--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.

A person who is ignorant of legal matters is always liable to make

mistakes when he tries to photograph a court scene with his pen; and so

I was not willing to let the law chapters in this book go to press

without first subjecting them to rigid and exhausting revision and

correction by a trained barrister--if that is what they are called.

These chapters are right, now, in every detail, for they were rewritten

under the immediate eye of William Hicks, who studied law part of a

while in southwest Missouri thirty-five years ago and then came over

here to Florence for his health and is still helping for exercise and

board in Macaroni Vermicelli's horse-feed shed which is up the back

alley as you turn around the corner out of the Piazza del Duomo just

beyond the house where that stone that Dante used to sit on six hundred

years ago is let into the wall when he let on to be watching them build

Giotto's campanile and yet always got tired looking as soon as Beatrice

passed along on her way to get a chunk of chestnut cake to defend

herself with in case of a Ghibelline outbreak before she got to school,

at the same old stand where they sell the same old cake to this day and

it is just as light and good as it was then, too, and this is not

flattery, far from it. He was a little rusty on his law, but he rubbed

up for this book, and those two or three legal chapters are right and

straight, now. He told me so himself.

Given under my hand this second day of January, 1893, at the Villa

Viviani, village of Settignano, three miles back of Florence, on the

hills--the same certainly affording the most charming view to be found

on this planet, and with it the most dreamlike and enchanting sunsets to

be found in any planet or even in any solar system--and given, too, in

the swell room of the house, with the busts of Cerretani senators and

other grandees of this line looking approvingly down upon me as they

used to look down upon Dante, and mutely asking me to adopt them into my

family, which I do with pleasure, for my remotest ancestors are but

spring chickens compared with these robed and stately antiques, and it

will be a great and satisfying lift for me, that six hundred years will.

Mark Twain.

CHAPTER I.

Pudd'nhead Wins His Name.

Tell the truth or trump--but get the trick.--Pudd'nhead Wilson's

Calendar.

The scene of this chronicle is the town of Dawson's Landing, on the

Missouri side of the Mississippi, half a day's journey, per steamboat,

below St. Louis.

In 1830 it was a snug little collection of modest one- and two-story

frame dwellings whose whitewashed exteriors were almost concealed from

sight by climbing tangles of rose-vines, honeysuckles, and

morning-glories. Each of these pretty homes had a garden in front fenced

with white palings and opulently stocked with hollyhocks, marigolds,

touch-me-nots, prince's-feathers and other old-fashioned flowers; while

on the window-sills of the houses stood wooden boxes containing

moss-rose plants and terra-cotta pots in which grew a breed of geranium

whose spread of intensely red blossoms accented the prevailing pink tint

of the rose-clad house-front like an explosion of flame. When there was

room on the ledge outside of the pots and boxes for a cat, the cat was

there--in sunny weather--stretched at full length, asleep and blissful,

with her furry belly to the sun and a paw curved over her nose. Then

that house was complete, and its contentment and peace were made

manifest to the world by this symbol, whose testimony is infallible. A

home without a cat--and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered

cat--may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?

All along the streets, on both sides, at the outer edge of the brick

sidewalks, stood locust-trees with trunks protected by wooden boxing,

and these furnished shade for summer and a sweet fragrance in spring

when the clusters of buds came forth. The main street, one block back

from the river, and running parallel with it, was the sole business

street. It was six blocks long, and in each block two or three brick

stores three stories high towered above interjected bunches of little

frame shops. Swinging signs creaked in the wind, the street's whole

length. The candy-striped pole which indicates nobility proud and

ancient along the palace-bordered canals of Venice, indicated merely the

humble barber shop along the main street of Dawson's Landing. On a chief

corner stood a lofty unpainted pole wreathed from top to bottom with tin

pots and pans and cups, the chief tinmonger's noisy notice to the world

(when the wind blew) that his shop was on hand for business at that

corner.

The hamlet's front was washed by the clear waters of the great river;

its body stretched itself rearward up a gentle incline; its most

rearward border fringed itself out and scattered its houses about the

base-line of the hills; the hills rose high, inclosing the town in a

half-moon curve, clothed with forests from foot to summit.

Steamboats passed up and down every hour or so. Those belonging to the

little Cairo line and the little Memphis line always stopped; the big

Orleans liners stopped for hails only, or to land passengers or freight;

and this was the case also with the great flotilla of "transients."

These latter came out of a dozen rivers--the Illinois, the Missouri, the

Upper Mississippi, the Ohio, the Monongahela, the Tennessee, the Red

River, the White River, and so on; and were bound every whither and

stocked with every imaginable comfort or necessity which the

Mississippi's communities could want, from the frosty Falls of St.

Anthony down through nine climates to torrid New Orleans.

Dawson's Landing was a slaveholding town, with a rich slave-worked grain

and pork country back of it. The town was sleepy and comfortable and

contented. It was fifty years old, and was growing slowly--very slowly,

in fact, but still it was growing.

The chief citizen was York Leicester Driscoll, about forty years old,

judge of the county court. He was very proud of his old Virginian

ancestry, and in his hospitalities and his rather formal and stately

manners he kept up its traditions. He was fine and just and generous. To

be a gentleman--a gentleman without stain or blemish--was his only

religion, and to it he was always faithful. He was respected, esteemed

and beloved by all the community. He was well off, and was gradually

adding to his store. He and his wife were very nearly happy, but not

quite, for they had no children. The longing for the treasure of a child

had grown stronger and stronger as the years slipped away, but the

blessing never came--and was never to come.

With this pair lived the Judge's widowed sister, Mrs. Rachel Pratt, and

she also was childless--childless, and sorrowful for that reason, and

not to be comforted. The women were good and commonplace people, and did

their duty and had their reward in clear consciences and the community's

approbation. They were Presbyterians, the Judge was a free-thinker.

Pembroke Howard, lawyer and bachelor, aged about forty, was another old

Virginian grandee with proved descent from the First Families. He was a

fine, brave, majestic creature, a gentleman according to the nicest

requirements of the Virginia rule, a devoted Presbyterian, an authority

on the "code," and a man always courteously ready to stand up before you

in the field if any act or word of his had seemed doubtful or suspicious

to you, and explain it with any weapon you might prefer from brad-awls

to artillery. He was very popular with the people, and was the Judge's

dearest friend.

Then there was Colonel Cecil Burleigh Essex, another F. F. V. of

formidable caliber--however, with him we have no concern.

Percy Northumberland Driscoll, brother to the Judge, and younger than he

by five years, was a married man, and had had children around his

hearthstone; but they were attacked in detail by measles, croup and

scarlet fever, and this had given the doctor a chance with his effective

antediluvian methods; so the cradles were empty. He was a prosperous

man, with a good head for speculations, and his fortune was growing. On

the 1st of February, 1830, two boy babes were born in his house: one to

him, the other to one of his slave girls, Roxana by name. Roxana was

twenty years old. She was up and around the same day, with her hands

full, for she was tending both babies.

Mrs. Percy Driscoll died within the week. Roxy remained in charge of the

children. She had her own way, for Mr. Driscoll soon absorbed himself in

his speculations and left her to her own devices.

In that same month of February, Dawson's Landing gained a new citizen.

This was Mr. David Wilson, a young fellow of Scotch parentage. He had

wandered to this remote region from his birthplace in the interior of

the State of New York, to seek his fortune. He was twenty-five years

old, college-bred, and had finished a post-college course in an Eastern

law school a couple of years before.

He was a homely, freckled, sandy-haired young fellow, with an

intelligent blue eye that had frankness and comradeship in it and a

covert twinkle of a pleasant sort. But for an unfortunate remark of his,

he would no doubt have entered at once upon a successful career at

Dawson's Landing. But he made his fatal remark the first day he spent in

the village, and it "gaged" him. He had just made the acquaintance of a

group of citizens when an invisible dog began to yelp and snarl and howl

and make himself very comprehensively disagreeable, whereupon young

Wilson said, much as one who is thinking aloud--

"I wish I owned half of that dog."

"Why?" somebody asked.

"Because I would kill my half."

The group searched his face with curiosity, with anxiety even, but found

no light there, no expression that they could read. They fell away from

him as from something uncanny, and went into privacy to discuss him. One

said:

"'Pears to be a fool."

"'Pears?" said another. "Is, I reckon you better say."

"Said he wished he owned half of the dog, the idiot," said a third.

"What did he reckon would become of the other half if he killed his

half? Do you reckon he thought it would live?"

"Why, he must have thought it, unless he is the downrightest fool in the

world; because if he hadn't thought it, he would have wanted to own the

whole dog, knowing that if he killed his half and the other half died,

he would be responsible for that half just the same as if he had killed

that half instead of his own. Don't it look that way to you, gents?"

"Yes, it does. If he owned one half of the general dog, it would be so;

if he owned one end of the dog and another person owned the other end,

it would be so, just the same; particularly in the first case, because

if you kill one half of a general dog, there ain't any man that can tell

whose half it was, but if he owned one end of the dog, maybe he could

kill his end of it and--"

"No, he couldn't either; he couldn't and not be responsible if the other

end died, which it would. In my opinion that man ain't in his right

mind."

"In my opinion he hain't got any mind."

No. 3 said: "Well, he's a lummox, anyway."

"That's what he is," said No. 4, "he's a labrick--just a Simon-pure

labrick, if ever there was one."

"Yes, sir, he's a dam fool, that's the way I put him up," said No. 5.

"Anybody can think different that wants to, but those are my

sentiments."

"I'm with you, gentlemen," said No. 6. "Perfect jackass--yes, and it

ain't going too far to say he is a pudd'nhead. If he ain't a pudd'nhead,

I ain't no judge, that's all."

Mr. Wilson stood elected. The incident was told all over the town, and

gravely discussed by everybody. Within a week he had lost his first

name; Pudd'nhead took its place. In time he came to be liked, and well

liked too; but by that time the nickname had got well stuck on, and it

stayed. That first day's verdict made him a fool, and he was not able to

get it set aside, or even modified. The nickname soon ceased to carry

any harsh or unfriendly feeling with it, but it held its place, and was

to continue to hold its place for twenty long years.

CHAPTER II.

Driscoll Spares His Slaves.

Adam was but human--this explains it all. He did not want the apple for

the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The

mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the

serpent.--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.

Pudd'nhead Wilson had a trifle of money when he arrived, and he bought a

small house on the extreme western verge of the town. Between it and

Judge Driscoll's house there was only a grassy yard, with a paling fence

dividing the properties in the middle. He hired a small office down in

the town and hung out a tin sign with these words on it:

DAVID WILSON.

ATTORNEY AND COUNSELOR-AT-LAW.

SURVEYING, CONVEYANCING, ETC.

But his deadly remark had ruined his chance--at least in the law. No

clients came. He took down his sign, after a while, and put it up on his

own house with the law features knocked out of it. It offered his

services now in the humble capacities of land-surveyor and expert

accountant. Now and then he got a job of surveying to do, and now and

then a merchant got him to straighten out his books. With Scotch

patience and pluck he resolved to live down his reputation and work his

way into the legal field yet. Poor fellow, he could not foresee that it

was going to take him such a weary long time to do it.

He had a rich abundance of idle time, but it never hung heavy on his

hands, for he interested himself in every new thing that was born into

the universe of ideas, and studied it and experimented upon it at his

house. One of his pet fads was palmistry. To another one he gave no

name, neither would he explain to anybody what its purpose was, but

merely said it was an amusement. In fact he had found that his fads

added to his reputation as a pudd'nhead; therefore he was growing chary

of being too communicative about them. The fad without a name was one

which dealt with people's finger-marks. He carried in his coat pocket a

shallow box with grooves in it, and in the grooves strips of glass five

inches long and three inches wide. Along the lower edge of each strip

was pasted a slip of white paper. He asked people to pass their hands

through their hair (thus collecting upon them a thin coating of the

natural oil) and then make a thumb-mark on a glass strip, following it

with the mark of the ball of each finger in succession. Under this row

of faint grease-prints he would write a record on the strip of white

paper--thus:

John Smith, right hand--

and add the day of the month and the year, then take Smith's left hand

on another glass strip, and add name and date and the words "left hand."

The strips were now returned to the grooved box, and took their place

among what Wilson called his "records."

He often studied his records, examining and poring over them with

absorbing interest until far into the night; but what he found there--if

he found anything--he revealed to no one. Sometimes he copied on paper

the involved and delicate pattern left by the ball of a finger, and then

vastly enlarged it with a pantograph so that he could examine its web of

curving lines with ease and convenience.

One sweltering afternoon--it was the first day of July, 1830--he was at

work over a set of tangled account-books in his work-room, which looked

westward over a stretch of vacant lots, when a conversation outside

disturbed him. It was carried on in yells, which showed that the people

engaged in it were not close together:

"Say, Roxy, how does yo' baby come on?" This from the distant voice.

"Fust-rate; how does you come on, Jasper?" This yell was from close by.

"Oh, I's middlin'; hain't got noth'n' to complain of. I's gwine to come

a-court'n' you bimeby, Roxy."

"You is, you black mud-cat! Yah--yah--yah! I got somep'n' better to do

den 'sociat'n' wid niggers as black as you is. Is ole Miss Cooper's

Nancy done give you de mitten?" Roxy followed this sally with another

discharge of care-free laughter.

"You's jealous, Roxy, dat's what's de matter wid you, you

hussy--yah--yah--yah! Dat's de time I got you!"

"Oh, yes, you got me, hain't you. 'Clah to goodness if dat conceit o'

yo'n strikes in, Jasper, it gwine to kill you sho'. If you b'longed to

me I'd sell you down de river 'fo' you git too fur gone. Fust time I

runs acrost yo' marster, I's gwine to tell him so."

This idle and aimless jabber went on and on, both parties enjoying the

friendly duel and each well satisfied with his own share of the wit

exchanged--for wit they considered it.

Wilson stepped to the window to observe the combatants; he could not

work while their chatter continued. Over in the vacant lots was Jasper,

young, coal-black and of magnificent build, sitting on a wheelbarrow in

the pelting sun--at work, supposably, whereas he was in fact only

preparing for it by taking an hour's rest before beginning. In front of

Wilson's porch stood Roxy, with a local hand-made baby-wagon, in which

sat her two charges--one at each end and facing each other. From Roxy's

manner of speech, a stranger would have expected her to be black, but

she was not. Only one sixteenth of her was black, and that sixteenth did

not show. She was of majestic form and stature, her attitudes were

imposing and statuesque, and her gestures and movements distinguished by

a noble and stately grace. Her complexion was very fair, with the rosy

glow of vigorous health in the cheeks, her face was full of character

and expression, her eyes were brown and liquid, and she had a heavy suit

of fine soft hair which was also brown, but the fact was not apparent

because her head was bound about with a checkered handkerchief and the

hair was concealed under it. Her face was shapely, intelligent and

comely--even beautiful. She had an easy, independent carriage--when she

was among her own caste--and a high and "sassy" way, withal; but of

course she was meek and humble enough where white people were.

To all intents and purposes Roxy was as white as anybody, but the one

sixteenth of her which was black outvoted the other fifteen parts and

made her a negro. She was a slave, and salable as such. Her child was

thirty-one parts white, and he, too, was a slave, and by a fiction of

law and custom a negro. He had blue eyes and flaxen curls like his white

comrade, but even the father of the white child was able to tell the

children apart--little as he had commerce with them--by their clothes:

for the white babe wore ruffled soft muslin and a coral necklace, while

the other wore merely a coarse tow-linen shirt which barely reached to

its knees, and no jewelry.

The white child's name was Thomas à Becket Driscoll, the other's name

was Valet de Chambre: no surname--slaves hadn't the privilege. Roxana

had heard that phrase somewhere, the fine sound of it had pleased her

ear, and as she had supposed it was a name, she loaded it on to her

darling. It soon got shorted to "Chambers," of course.

Wilson knew Roxy by sight, and when the duel of wit began to play out,

he stepped outside to gather in a record or two. Jasper went to work

energetically, at once, perceiving that his leisure was observed. Wilson

inspected the children and asked--

"How old are they, Roxy?"

"Bofe de same age, sir--five months. Bawn de fust o' Feb'uary."

"They're handsome little chaps. One's just as handsome as the other,

too."

A delighted smile exposed the girl's white teeth, and she said:

"Bless yo' soul, Misto Wilson, it's pow'ful nice o' you to say dat,

'ca'se one of 'em ain't on'y a nigger. Mighty prime little nigger, I

al'ays says, but dat's 'ca'se it's mine, o' course."

"How do you tell them apart, Roxy, when they haven't any clothes on?"

Roxy laughed a laugh proportioned to her size, and said:

"Oh, I kin tell 'em 'part, Misto Wilson, but I bet Marse Percy couldn't,

not to save his life."

Wilson chatted along for awhile, and presently got Roxy's finger-prints

for his collection--right hand and left--on a couple of his glass

strips; then labeled and dated them, and took the "records" of both

children, and labeled and dated them also.

Two months later, on the 3d of September, he took this trio of

finger-marks again. He liked to have a "series," two or three "takings"

at intervals during the period of childhood, these to be followed by

others at intervals of several years.

The next day--that is to say, on the 4th of September--something

occurred which profoundly impressed Roxana. Mr. Driscoll missed another

small sum of money--which is a way of saying that this was not a new

thing, but had happened before. In truth it had happened three times

before. Driscoll's patience was exhausted. He was a fairly humane man

toward slaves and other animals; he was an exceedingly humane man toward

the erring of his own race. Theft he could not abide, and plainly there

was a thief in his house. Necessarily the thief must be one of his

negroes. Sharp measures must be taken. He called his servants before

him. There were three of these, besides Roxy: a man, a woman, and a boy

twelve years old. They were not related. Mr. Driscoll said:

"You have all been warned before. It has done no good. This time I will

teach you a lesson. I will sell the thief. Which of you is the guilty

one?"

They all shuddered at the threat, for here they had a good home, and a

new one was likely to be a change for the worse. The denial was general.

None had stolen anything--not money, anyway--a little sugar, or cake, or

honey, or something like that, that "Marse Percy wouldn't mind or miss,"

but not money--never a cent of money. They were eloquent in their

protestations, but Mr. Driscoll was not moved by them. He answered each

in turn with a stern "Name the thief!"

The truth was, all were guilty but Roxana; she suspected that the others

were guilty, but she did not know them to be so. She was horrified to

think how near she had come to being guilty herself; she had been saved

in the nick of time by a revival in the colored Methodist Church, a

fortnight before, at which time and place she "got religion." The very

next day after that gracious experience, while her change of style was

fresh upon her and she was vain of her purified condition, her master

left a couple dollars lying unprotected on his desk, and she happened

upon that temptation when she was polishing around with a dust-rag. She

looked at the money awhile with a steady rising resentment, then she

burst out with--

"Dad blame dat revival, I wisht it had 'a' be'n put off till to-morrow!"

Then she covered the tempter with a book, and another member of the

kitchen cabinet got it. She made this sacrifice as a matter of religious

etiquette; as a thing necessary just now, but by no means to be wrested

into a precedent; no, a week or two would limber up her piety, then she

would be rational again, and the next two dollars that got left out in

the cold would find a comforter--and she could name the comforter.

Was she bad? Was she worse than the general run of her race? No. They

had an unfair show in the battle of life, and they held it no sin to

take military advantage of the enemy--in a small way; in a small way,

but not in a large one. They would smouch provisions from the pantry

whenever they got a chance; or a brass thimble, or a cake of wax, or an

emery-bag, or a paper of needles, or a silver spoon, or a dollar bill,

or small articles of clothing, or any other property of light value; and

so far were they from considering such reprisals sinful, that they would

go to church and shout and pray the loudest and sincerest with their

plunder in their pockets. A farm smoke-house had to be kept heavily

padlocked, for even the colored deacon himself could not resist a ham

when Providence showed him in a dream, or otherwise, where such a thing

hung lonesome and longed for some one to love. But with a hundred

hanging before him the deacon would not take two--that is, on the same

night. On frosty nights the humane negro prowler would warm the end of a

plank and put it up under the cold claws of chickens roosting in a tree;

a drowsy hen would step on to the comfortable board, softly clucking her

gratitude, and the prowler would dump her into his bag, and later into

his stomach, perfectly sure that in taking this trifle from the man who

daily robbed him of an inestimable treasure--his liberty--he was not

committing any sin that God would remember against him in the Last Great

Day.

"Name the thief!"

For the fourth time Mr. Driscoll had said it, and always in the same

hard tone. And now he added these words of awful import:

"I give you one minute"--he took out his watch. "If at the end of that

time you have not confessed, I will not only sell all four of you,

but--I will sell you down the river!"

It was equivalent to condemning them to hell! No Missouri negro doubted

this. Roxy reeled in her tracks and the color vanished out of her face;

the others dropped to their knees as if they had been shot; tears gushed

from their eyes, their supplicating hands went up, and three answers

came in the one instant:

"I done it!"

"I done it!"

"I done it!--have mercy, marster--Lord have mercy on us po' niggers!"

"Very good," said the master, putting up his watch, "I will sell you

here though you don't deserve it. You ought to be sold down the river."

The culprits flung themselves prone, in an ecstasy of gratitude, and

kissed his feet, declaring that they would never forget his goodness and

never cease to pray for him as long as they lived. They were sincere,

for like a god he had stretched forth his mighty hand and closed the

gates of hell against them. He knew, himself, that he had done a noble

and gracious thing, and was privately well pleased with his magnanimity;

and that night he set the incident down in his diary, so that his son

might read it in after years, and be thereby moved to deeds of

gentleness and humanity himself.

CHAPTER III.

Roxy Plays a Shrewd Trick.

Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a

debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our

race. He brought death into the world.--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.

Percy Driscoll slept well the night he saved his house-minions from

going down the river, but no wink of sleep visited Roxy's eyes. A

profound terror had taken possession of her. Her child could grow up and

be sold down the river! The thought crazed her with horror. If she dozed

and lost herself for a moment, the next moment she was on her feet

flying to her child's cradle to see if it was still there. Then she

would gather it to her heart and pour out her love upon it in a frenzy

of kisses, moaning, crying, and saying, "Dey sha'n't, oh, dey

sha'n't!--yo' po' mammy will kill you fust!"

Once, when she was tucking it back in its cradle again, the other child

nestled in its sleep and attracted her attention. She went and stood

over it a long time communing with herself:

"What has my po' baby done, dat he couldn't have yo' luck? He hain't

done noth'n'. God was good to you; why warn't he good to him? Dey can't

sell you down de river. I hates yo' pappy; he hain't got no heart--for

niggers he hain't, anyways. I hates him, en I could kill him!" She

paused awhile, thinking; then she burst into wild sobbings again, and

turned away, saying, "Oh, I got to kill my chile, dey ain't no yuther

way,--killin' him wouldn't save de chile fum goin' down de river. Oh, I

got to do it, yo' po' mammy's got to kill you to save you, honey"--she

gathered her baby to her bosom, now, and began to smother it with

caresses--"Mammy's got to kill you--how kin I do it! But yo' mammy ain't

gwine to desert you--no, no; dah, don't cry--she gwine wid you, she

gwine to kill herself too. Come along, honey, come along wid mammy; we

gwine to jump in de river, den de troubles o' dis worl' is all over--dey

don't sell po' niggers down the river over yonder."

She started toward the door, crooning to the child and hushing it;

midway she stopped, suddenly. She had caught sight of her new Sunday

gown--a cheap curtain-calico thing, a conflagration of gaudy colors and

fantastic figures. She surveyed it wistfully, longingly.

"Hain't ever wore it yet," she said, "en it's jist lovely." Then she

nodded her head in response to a pleasant idea, and added, "No, I ain't

gwine to be fished out, wid everybody lookin' at me, in dis mis'able ole

linsey-woolsey."

She put down the child and made the change. She looked in the glass and

was astonished at her beauty. She resolved to make her death-toilet

perfect. She took off her handkerchief-turban and dressed her glossy

wealth of hair "like white folks"; she added some odds and ends of