Book: Sketches New and Old, Part 3.
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Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) >> Sketches New and Old, Part 3.
SKETCHES NEW AND OLD
by Mark Twain
Part 3.
DISGRACEFUL PERSECUTION OF A BOY
In San Francisco, the other day, "A well-dressed boy, on his way to
Sunday-school, was arrested and thrown into the city prison for stoning
Chinamen."
What a commentary is this upon human justice! What sad prominence it
gives to our human disposition to tyrannize over the weak! San Francisco
has little right to take credit to herself for her treatment of this poor
boy. What had the child's education been? How should he suppose it was
wrong to stone a Chinaman? Before we side against him, along with
outraged San Francisco, let us give him a chance--let us hear the
testimony for the defense.
He was a "well-dressed" boy, and a Sunday-school scholar, and therefore
the chances are that his parents were intelligent, well-to-do people,
with just enough natural villainy in their composition to make them yearn
after the daily papers, and enjoy them; and so this boy had opportunities
to learn all through the week how to do right, as well as on Sunday.
It was in this way that he found out that the great commonwealth of
California imposes an unlawful mining-tax upon John the foreigner, and
allows Patrick the foreigner to dig gold for nothing--probably because
the degraded Mongol is at no expense for whisky, and the refined Celt
cannot exist without it.
It was in this way that he found out that a respectable number of the
tax-gatherers--it would be unkind to say all of them--collect the tax
twice, instead of once; and that, inasmuch as they do it solely to
discourage Chinese immigration into the mines, it is a thing that is much
applauded, and likewise regarded as being singularly facetious.
It was in this way that he found out that when a white man robs a
sluice-box (by the term white man is meant Spaniards, Mexicans,
Portuguese, Irish, Hondurans, Peruvians, Chileans, etc., etc.), they make
him leave the camp; and when a Chinaman does that thing, they hang him.
It was in this way that he found out that in many districts of the vast
Pacific coast, so strong is the wild, free love of justice in the hearts
of the people, that whenever any secret and mysterious crime is
committed, they say, "Let justice be done, though the heavens fall," and
go straightway and swing a Chinaman.
It was in this way that he found out that by studying one half of each
day's "local items," it would appear that the police of San Francisco
were either asleep or dead, and by studying the other half it would seem
that the reporters were gone mad with admiration of the energy, the
virtue, the high effectiveness, and the dare-devil intrepidity of that
very police-making exultant mention of how "the Argus-eyed officer
So-and-so" captured a wretched knave of a Chinaman who was stealing
chickens, and brought him gloriously to the city prison; and how "the
gallant officer Such-and-such-a-one" quietly kept an eye on the movements
of an "unsuspecting, almond-eyed son of Confucius" (your reporter is
nothing if not facetious), following him around with that far-off look.
of vacancy and unconsciousness always so finely affected by that
inscrutable being, the forty-dollar policeman, during a waking interval,
and captured him at last in the very act of placing his hands in a
suspicious manner upon a paper of tacks, left by the owner in an exposed
situation; and how one officer performed this prodigious thing, and
another officer that, and another the other--and pretty much every one of
these performances having for a dazzling central incident a Chinaman
guilty of a shilling's worth of crime, an unfortunate, whose misdemeanor
must be hurrahed into something enormous in order to keep the public from
noticing how many really important rascals went uncaptured in the mean
time, and how overrated those glorified policemen actually are.
It was in this way that the boy found out that the legislature, being
aware that the Constitution has made America, an asylum for the poor and
the oppressed of all nations, and that, therefore, the poor and oppressed
who fly to our shelter must not be charged a disabling admission fee,
made a law that every Chinaman, upon landing, must be vaccinated upon the
wharf, and pay to the state's appointed officer ten dollars for the
service, when there are plenty of doctors in San Francisco who would be
glad enough to do it for him for fifty cents.
It was in this way that the boy found out that a Chinaman had no rights
that any man was bound to respect; that he had no sorrows that any man
was bound to pity; that neither his life nor his liberty was worth the
purchase of a penny when a white man needed a scapegoat; that nobody
loved Chinamen, nobody befriended them, nobody spared them suffering when
it was convenient to inflict it; everybody, individuals, communities, the
majesty of the state itself, joined in hating, abusing, and persecuting
these humble strangers.
And, therefore, what could have been more natural than for this
sunny-hearted-boy, tripping along to Sunday-school, with his mind teeming
with freshly learned incentives to high and virtuous action, to say to
himself:
"Ah, there goes a Chinaman! God will not love me if I do not stone him."
And for this he was arrested and put in the city jail.
Everything conspired to teach him that it was a high and holy thing to
stone a Chinaman, and yet he no sooner attempts to do his duty than he is
punished for it--he, poor chap, who has been aware all his life that one
of the principal recreations of the police, out toward the Gold Refinery,
is to look on with tranquil enjoyment while the butchers of Brannan
Street set their dogs on unoffending Chinamen, and make them flee for
their lives.
--[I have many such memories in my mind, but am thinking just at present
of one particular one, where the Brannan Street butchers set their dogs
on a Chinaman who was quietly passing with a basket of clothes on his
head; and while the dogs mutilated his flesh, a butcher increased the
hilarity of the occasion by knocking some of the Chinaman's teeth down
his throat with half a brick. This incident sticks in my memory with a
more malevolent tenacity, perhaps, on account of the fact that I was in
the employ of a San Francisco journal at the time, and was not allowed to
publish it because it might offend some of the peculiar element that
subscribed for the paper.]
Keeping in mind the tuition in the humanities which the entire "Pacific
coast" gives its youth, there is a very sublimity of incongruity in the
virtuous flourish with which the good city fathers of San Francisco
proclaim (as they have lately done) that "The police are positively
ordered to arrest all boys, of every description and wherever found, who
engage in assaulting Chinamen."
Still, let us be truly glad they have made the order, notwithstanding its
inconsistency; and let us rest perfectly confident the police are glad,
too. Because there is no personal peril in arresting boys, provided they
be of the small kind, and the reporters will have to laud their
performances just as loyally as ever, or go without items.
The new form for local items in San Francisco will now be: "The
ever-vigilant and efficient officer So-and-so succeeded, yesterday
afternoon, in arresting Master Tommy Jones, after a determined
resistance," etc., etc., followed by the customary statistics and final
hurrah, with its unconscious sarcasm: "We are happy in being able to
state that this is the forty-seventh boy arrested by this gallant officer
since the new ordinance went into effect. The most extraordinary
activity prevails in the police department. Nothing like it has been
seen since we can remember."
THE JUDGE'S "SPIRITED WOMAN"
"I was sitting here," said the judge, "in this old pulpit, holding court,
and we were trying a big, wicked-looking Spanish desperado for killing
the husband of a bright, pretty Mexican woman. It was a lazy summer day,
and an awfully long one, and the witnesses were tedious. None of us took
any interest in the trial except that nervous, uneasy devil of a Mexican
woman because you know how they love and how they hate, and this one had
loved her husband with all her might, and now she had boiled it all down
into hate, and stood here spitting it at that Spaniard with her eyes;
and I tell you she would stir me up, too, with a little of her summer
lightning, occasionally. Well, I had my coat off and my heels up,
lolling and sweating, and smoking one of those cabbage cigars the San
Francisco people used to think were good enough for us in those times;
and the lawyers they all had their coats off, and were smoking and
whittling, and the witnesses the same, and so was the prisoner. Well,
the fact is, there warn't any interest in a murder trial then, because
the fellow was always brought in 'not guilty,' the jury expecting him to
do as much for them some time; and, although the evidence was straight
and square against this Spaniard, we knew we could not convict him
without seeming to be rather high-handed and sort of reflecting on every
gentleman in the community; for there warn't any carriages and liveries
then, and so the only 'style' there was, was to keep your private
graveyard. But that woman seemed to have her heart set on hanging that
Spaniard; and you'd ought to have seen how she would glare on him a
minute, and then look up at me in her pleading way, and then turn and for
the next five minutes search the jury's faces, and by and by drop her
face in her hands for just a little while as if she was most ready to
give up; but out she'd come again directly, and be as live and anxious as
ever. But when the jury announced the verdict--Not Guilty--and I told
the prisoner he was acquitted and free to go, that woman rose up till she
appeared to be as tall and grand as a seventy-four-gun ship, and says
she:
"'Judge, do I understand you to say that this man is not guilty that
murdered my husband without any cause before my own eyes and my little
children's, and that all has been done to him that ever justice and the
law can do?'
"'The same,' says I.
"And then what do you reckon she did? Why, she turned on that smirking
Spanish fool like a wildcat, and out with a 'navy' and shot him dead in
open court!"
"That was spirited, I am willing to admit."
"Wasn't it, though?" said the judge admiringly.
"I wouldn't have missed it for anything. I adjourned court right on the
spot, and we put on our coats and went out and took up a collection for
her and her cubs, and sent them over the mountains to their friends.
Ah, she was a spirited wench!"
INFORMATION WANTED
"WASHINGTON, December 10, 1867.
"Could you give me any information respecting such islands, if any, as
the government is going to purchase?"
It is an uncle of mine that wants to know. He is an industrious man and
well disposed, and wants to make a living in an honest, humble way, but
more especially he wants to be quiet. He wishes to settle down, and be
quiet and unostentatious. He has been to the new island St. Thomas, but
he says he thinks things are unsettled there. He went there early with
an attache of the State Department, who was sent down with money to pay
for the island. My uncle had his money in the same box, and so when they
went ashore, getting a receipt, the sailors broke open the box and took
all the money, not making any distinction between government money, which
was legitimate money to be stolen, and my uncle's, which was his own
private property, and should have been respected. But he came home and
got some more and went back. And then he took the fever. There are
seven kinds of fever down there, you know; and, as his blood was out of
order by reason of loss of sleep and general wear and tear of mind, he
failed to cure the first fever, and then somehow he got the other six.
He is not a kind of man that enjoys fevers, though he is well meaning and
always does what he thinks is right, and so he was a good deal annoyed
when it appeared he was going to die.
But he worried through, and got well and started a farm. He fenced it
in, and the next day that great storm came on and washed the most of it
over to Gibraltar, or around there somewhere. He only said, in his
patient way, that it was gone, and he wouldn't bother about trying to
find out where it went to, though it was his opinion it went to
Gibraltar.
Then he invested in a mountain, and started a farm up there, so as to be
out of the way when the sea came ashore again. It was a good mountain,
and a good farm, but it wasn't any use; an earthquake came the next night
and shook it all down. It was all fragments, you know, and so mixed up
with another man's property that he could not tell which were his
fragments without going to law; and he would not do that, because his
main object in going to St. Thomas was to be quiet. All that he wanted
was to settle down and be quiet.
He thought it all over, and finally he concluded to try the low ground
again, especially as he wanted to start a brickyard this time. He bought
a flat, and put out a hundred thousand bricks to dry preparatory to
baking them. But luck appeared to be against him. A volcano shoved
itself through there that night, and elevated his brickyard about two
thousand feet in the air. It irritated him a good deal. He has been up
there, and he says the bricks are all baked right enough, but he can't
get them down. At first, he thought maybe the government would get the
bricks down for him, because since government bought the island, it ought
to protect the property where a man has invested in good faith; but all
he wants is quiet, and so he is not going to apply for the subsidy he was
thinking about.
He went back there last week in a couple of ships of war, to prospect
around the coast for a safe place for a farm where he could be quiet;
but a great "tidal wave" came, and hoisted both of the ships out into one
of the interior counties, and he came near losing his life. So he has
given up prospecting in a ship, and is discouraged.
Well, now he don't know what to do. He has tried Alaska; but the bears
kept after him so much, and kept him so much on the jump, as it were,
that he had to leave the country. He could not be quiet there with those
bears prancing after him all the time. That is how he came to go to the
new island we have bought--St. Thomas. But he is getting to think St.
Thomas is not quiet enough for a man of his turn of mind, and that is why
he wishes me to find out if government is likely to buy some more islands
shortly. He has heard that government is thinking about buying Porto
Rico. If that is true, he wishes to try Porto Rico, if it is a quiet
place. How is Porto Rico for his style of man? Do you think the
government will buy it?
SOME LEARNED FABLES, FOR GOOD OLD BOYS AND GIRLS
IN THREE PARTS
PART FIRST
HOW THE ANIMALS OF THE WOOD SENT OUT A SCIENTIFIC EXPEDITION
Once the creatures of the forest held a great convention and appointed a
commission consisting of the most illustrious scientists among them to go
forth, clear beyond the forest and out into the unknown and unexplored
world, to verify the truth of the matters already taught in their schools
and colleges and also to make discoveries. It was the most imposing
enterprise of the kind the nation had ever embarked in. True, the
government had once sent Dr. Bull Frog, with a picked crew, to hunt for a
northwesterly passage through the swamp to the right-hand corner of the
wood, and had since sent out many expeditions to hunt for Dr. Bull Frog;
but they never could find him, and so government finally gave him up and
ennobled his mother to show its gratitude for the services her son had
rendered to science. And once government sent Sir Grass Hopper to hunt
for the sources of the rill that emptied into the swamp; and afterward
sent out many expeditions to hunt for Sir Grass, and at last they were
successful--they found his body, but if he had discovered the sources
meantime, he did not let on. So government acted handsomely by deceased,
and many envied his funeral.
But these expeditions were trifles compared with the present one; for
this one comprised among its servants the very greatest among the
learned; and besides it was to go to the utterly unvisited regions
believed to lie beyond the mighty forest--as we have remarked before.
How the members were banqueted, and glorified, and talked about!
Everywhere that one of them showed himself, straightway there was a crowd
to gape and stare at him.
Finally they set off, and it was a sight to see the long procession of
dry-land Tortoises heavily laden with savants, scientific instruments,
Glow-Worms and Fire-Flies for signal service, provisions, Ants and
Tumble-Bugs to fetch and carry and delve, Spiders to carry the surveying
chain and do other engineering duty, and so forth and so on; and after
the Tortoises came another long train of ironclads--stately and spacious
Mud Turtles for marine transportation service; and from every Tortoise
and every Turtle flaunted a flaming gladiolus or other splendid banner;
at the head of the column a great band of Bumble-Bees, Mosquitoes,
Katy-Dids, and Crickets discoursed martial music; and the entire train
was under the escort and protection of twelve picked regiments of the
Army Worm.
At the end of three weeks the expedition emerged from the forest and
looked upon the great Unknown World. Their eyes were greeted with an
impressive spectacle. A vast level plain stretched before them, watered
by a sinuous stream; and beyond there towered up against the sky along
and lofty barrier of some kind, they did not know what. The Tumble-Bug
said he believed it was simply land tilted up on its edge, because he
knew he could see trees on it. But Professor Snail and the others said:
"You are hired to dig, sir--that is all. We need your muscle, not your
brains. When we want your opinion on scientific matters, we will hasten
to let you know. Your coolness is intolerable, too--loafing about here
meddling with august matters of learning, when the other laborers are
pitching camp. Go along and help handle the baggage."
The Tumble-Bug turned on his heel uncrushed, unabashed, observing to
himself, "If it isn't land tilted up, let me die the death of the
unrighteous."
Professor Bull Frog (nephew of the late explorer) said he believed the
ridge was the wall that inclosed the earth. He continued:
"Our fathers have left us much learning, but they had not traveled far,
and so we may count this a noble new discovery. We are safe for renown
now, even though our labors began and ended with this single achievement.
I wonder what this wall is built of? Can it be fungus? Fungus is an
honorable good thing to build a wall of."
Professor Snail adjusted his field-glass and examined the rampart
critically. Finally he said:
"'The fact that it is not diaphanous convinces me that it is a dense
vapor formed by the calorification of ascending moisture dephlogisticated
by refraction. A few endiometrical experiments would confirm this, but
it is not necessary. The thing is obvious."
So he shut up his glass and went into his shell to make a note of the
discovery of the world's end, and the nature of it.
"Profound mind!" said Professor Angle-Worm to Professor Field-Mouse;
"profound mind! nothing can long remain a mystery to that august brain."
Night drew on apace, the sentinel crickets were posted, the Glow-Worm and
Fire-Fly lamps were lighted, and the camp sank to silence and sleep.
After breakfast in the morning, the expedition moved on. About noon a
great avenue was reached, which had in it two endless parallel bars of
some kind of hard black substance, raised the height of the tallest Bull
Frog, above the general level. The scientists climbed up on these and
examined and tested them in various ways. They walked along them for a
great distance, but found no end and no break in them. They could arrive
at no decision. There was nothing in the records of science that
mentioned anything of this kind. But at last the bald and venerable
geographer, Professor Mud Turtle, a person who, born poor, and of a
drudging low family, had, by his own native force raised himself to the
headship of the geographers of his generation, said:
"'My friends, we have indeed made a discovery here. We have found in a
palpable, compact, and imperishable state what the wisest of our fathers
always regarded as a mere thing of the imagination. Humble yourselves,
my friends, for we stand in a majestic presence. These are parallels of
latitude!"
Every heart and every head was bowed, so awful, so sublime was the
magnitude of the discovery. Many shed tears.
The camp was pitched and the rest of the day given up to writing
voluminous accounts of the marvel, and correcting astronomical tables to
fit it. Toward midnight a demoniacal shriek was heard, then a clattering
and rumbling noise, and the next instant a vast terrific eye shot by,
with a long tail attached, and disappeared in the gloom, still uttering
triumphant shrieks.
The poor damp laborers were stricken to the heart with fright, and
stampeded for the high grass in a body. But not the scientists. They
had no superstitions. They calmly proceeded to exchange theories.
The ancient geographer's opinion was asked. He went into his shell and
deliberated long and profoundly. When he came out at last, they all knew
by his worshiping countenance that he brought light. Said he:
"Give thanks for this stupendous thing which we have been permitted to
witness. It is the Vernal Equinox!"
There were shoutings and great rejoicings.
"But," said the Angle-Worm, uncoiling after reflection, "this is dead
summer-time."
"Very well," said the Turtle, "we are far from our region; the season
differs with the difference of time between the two points."
"Ah, true: True enough. But it is night. How should the sun pass in
the night?"
"In these distant regions he doubtless passes always in the night at this
hour."
"Yes, doubtless that is true. But it being night, how is it that we
could see him?"
"It is a great mystery. I grant that. But I am persuaded that the
humidity of the atmosphere in these remote regions is such that particles
of daylight adhere to the disk and it was by aid of these that we were
enabled to see the sun in the dark."
This was deemed satisfactory, and due entry was made of the decision.
But about this moment those dreadful shriekings were heard again; again
the rumbling and thundering came speeding up out of the night; and once
more a flaming great eye flashed by and lost itself in gloom and
distance.
The camp laborers gave themselves up for lost. The savants were sorely
perplexed. Here was a marvel hard to account for. They thought and they
talked, they talked and they thought. Finally the learned and aged Lord
Grand-Daddy-Longlegs, who had been sitting in deep study, with his
slender limbs crossed and his stemmy arms folded, said:
"Deliver your opinions, brethren, and then I will tell my thought--for I
think I have solved this problem."
"So be it, good your lordship," piped the weak treble of the wrinkled and
withered Professor Woodlouse, "for we shall hear from your lordship's
lips naught but wisdom." [Here the speaker threw in a mess of trite,
threadbare, exasperating quotations from the ancient poets and
philosophers, delivering them with unction in the sounding grandeurs of
the original tongues, they being from the Mastodon, the Dodo, and other
dead languages.] "Perhaps I ought not to presume to meddle with matters
pertaining to astronomy at all, in such a presence as this, I who have
made it the business of my life to delve only among the riches of the
extinct languages and unearth the opulence of their ancient lore; but
still, as unacquainted as I am with the noble science of astronomy, I beg
with deference and humility to suggest that inasmuch as the last of these
wonderful apparitions proceeded in exactly the opposite direction from
that pursued by the first, which you decide to be the Vernal Equinox,
and greatly resembled it in all particulars, is it not possible, nay
certain, that this last is the Autumnal Equi--"
"O-o-o!" "O-o-o! go to bed! go to bed!" with annoyed derision from
everybody. So the poor old Woodlouse retreated out of sight, consumed
with shame.
Further discussion followed, and then the united voice of the commission
begged Lord Longlegs to speak. He said:
"Fellow-scientists, it is my belief that we have witnessed a thing which
has occurred in perfection but once before in the knowledge of created
beings. It is a phenomenon of inconceivable importance and interest,
view it as one may, but its interest to us is vastly heightened by an
added knowledge of its nature which no scholar has heretofore possessed
or even suspected. This great marvel which we have just witnessed,
fellow-savants (it almost takes my breath away), is nothing less than the
transit of Venus!"