(The end thereof is not yet, of course, for Charley Langdon is West and will arrive ignorant of all these things, today.)The supper-room had been kept locked and imposingly secret and mysterious until Lewis should arrive; but around that part of the house were gathered Lewis's wife and child, Chocklate, Josie, Aunty Cord and our Rosa, canvassing things and waiting impatiently.They were all on hand when the curtain rose.
Now, Aunty Cord is a violent Methodist and Lewis an implacable Dunker--Baptist.Those two are inveterate religious disputants.The revealments having been made Aunty Cord said with effusion--"Now, let folks go on saying there ain't no God! Lewis, the Lord sent you there to stop that horse."Says Lewis:
"Then who sent the horse there in sich a shape?"But I want to call your attention to one thing.When Lewis arrived the other evening, after saving those lives by a feat which I think is the most marvelous of any I can call to mind--when he arrived, hunched up on his manure wagon and as grotesquely picturesque as usual, everybody wanted to go and see how he looked.They came back and said he was beautiful.It was so, too--and yet he would have photographed exactly as he would have done any day these past 7 years that he has occupied this farm.
Aug.27.
P.S.Our little romance in real life is happily and satisfactorily completed.Charley has come, listened, acted--and now John T.Lewis has ceased to consider himself as belonging to that class called "the poor."It has been known, during some years, that it was Lewis's purpose to buy a thirty dollar silver watch some day, if he ever got where he could afford it.Today Ida has given him a new, sumptuous gold Swiss stem-winding stop-watch; and if any scoffer shall say, "Behold this thing is out of character," there is an inscription within, which will silence him; for it will teach him that this wearer aggrandizes the watch, not the watch the wearer.
I was asked beforehand, if this would be a wise gift, and I said "Yes, the very wisest of all; I know the colored race, and I know that in Lewis's eyes this fine toy will throw the other more valuable testimonials far away into the shade.If he lived in England the Humane Society would give him a gold medal as costly as this watch, and nobody would say: "It is out of character." If Lewis chose to wear a town clock, who would become it better?
Lewis has sound common sense, and is not going to be spoiled.The instant he found himself possessed of money, he forgot himself in a plan to make his old father comfortable, who is wretchedly poor and lives down in Maryland.His next act, on the spot, was the proffer to the Cranes of the $300 of his remaining indebtedness to them.This was put off by them to the indefinite future, for he is not going to be allowed to pay that at all, though he doesn't know it.
A letter of acknowledgment from Lewis contains a sentence which raises it to the dignity of literature:
"But I beg to say, humbly, that inasmuch as divine providence saw fit to use me as a instrument for the saving of those presshious lives, the honner conferd upon me was greater than the feat performed."That is well said.
Yrs ever MARK.
Howells was moved to use the story in the."Contributors' Club,"and warned Clemens against letting it get into the newspapers.He declared he thought it one of the most impressive things he had ever read.But Clemens seems never to have allowed it to be used in any form.In its entirety, therefore, it is quite new matter.
To W.D.Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Sept.19, 1877.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,-- I don't really see how the story of the runaway horse could read well with the little details of names and places and things left out.They are the true life of all narrative.It wouldn't quite do to print them at this time.We'll talk about it when you come.
Delicacy--a sad, sad false delicacy--robs literature of the best two things among its belongings.Family-circle narrative and obscene stories.But no matter; in that better world which I trust we are all going to I have the hope and belief that they will not be denied us.
Say--Twichell and I had an adventure at sea, 4 months ago, which I did not put in my Bermuda articles, because there was not enough to it.But the press dispatches bring the sequel today, and now there's plenty to it.A sailless, wasteless, chartless, compassless, grubless old condemned tub that has been drifting helpless about the ocean for 4months and a half, begging bread and water like any other tramp, flying a signal of distress permanently, and with 13 innocent, marveling chuckleheaded Bermuda niggers on board, taking a Pleasure Excursion! Our ship fed the poor devils on the 25th of last May, far out at sea and left them to bullyrag their way to New York--and now they ain't as near New York as they were then by 250 miles! They have drifted 750 miles and are still drifting in the relentless Gulf Stream! What a delicious magazine chapter it would make--but I had to deny myself.I had to come right out in the papers at once, with my details, so as to try to raise the government's sympathy sufficiently to have better succor sent them than the cutter Colfax, which went a little way in search of them the other day and then struck a fog and gave it up.
If the President were in Washington I would telegraph him.
When I hear that the "Jonas Smith" has been found again, I mean to send for one of those darkies, to come to Hartford and give me his adventures for an Atlantic article.
Likely you will see my today's article in the newspapers.
Yrs ever, MARK.
The revenue cutter Colfax went after the Jonas Smith, thinking there was mutiny or other crime on board.It occurs to me now that, since there is only mere suffering and misery and nobody to punish, it ceases to be a matter which (a republican form of) government will feel authorized to interfere in further.Dam a republican form of government.
