Pale? I was that pale that if why, you just compare it with this laprobe. Then the next thing I said was, Mary Taylor, tell the hired man to rig up the team-well go to the rescue. And she said, Mother, dont you know you told him he could drive to see his people, and stay over Sunday? And it was just so. I declare for it, I had forgotten it. Then, said I, well go afoot. And go we did. And found Sarah Enderby on the road.
And we all went together, said Mrs. Enderby. And found the cabin set fire to and burnt down by the crazy one, and the poor old things so old and feeble that they couldnt go afoot. And we got them to a shady place and made them as comfortable as we could, and began to wonder which way to turn to find some way to get them conveyed to Nancy Taylors house. And I spoke up and said now what did I say? Didnt I say, Providence will provide?
Why sure as you live, so you did! I had forgotten it.
So had I, said Mrs. Glossop and Mrs. Taylor; but you certainly said it. Now wasnt that remarkable?
Yes, I said it. And then we went to Mr. Moseleys, two miles, and all of them were gone to the camp meeting over on Stony Fork; and then we came all the way back, two miles, and then here, another mile and Providence has provided. You see it yourselves.
They gazed at each other awe-struck, and lifted their hands and said in unison:
Its per-fectly wonderful.
And then, said Mrs. Glossop, what do you think we had better do-let Mr. Brown drive the Old People to Nancy Taylors one at a time, or put both of them in the buggy, and him lead the horse?
Brown gasped.
Now, then, thats a question, said Mrs. Enderby. You see, we are all tired out, and any way we fix it its going to be difficult. For if Mr. Brown takes both of them, at least one of us must, go back to help him, for he cant load them into the buggy by himself, and they so helpless.
That is so, said Mrs. Taylor. It doesnt look-oh, how would this do? one of us drive there with Mr. Brown, and the rest of you go along to my house and get things ready. Ill go with him. He and I together can lift one of the Old People into the buggy; then drive her to my house and
But who will take care of the other one? said Mrs. Enderby. We musnt leave her there in the woods alone, you know especially the crazy one. There and back is eight miles, you see.
They had all been sitting on the grass beside the buggy for a while, now, trying to rest their weary bodies. They fell silent a moment or two, and struggled in thought over the baffling situation; then Mrs. Enderby brightened and said:
I think Ive got the idea, now. You see, we cant walk any more. Think what weve done: four miles there, two to Moseleys, is six, then back to here nine miles since noon, and not a bite to eat; I declare I dont see how weve done it; and as for me, I am just famishing. Now, somebodys got to go back, to help Mr. Brown theres no getting around that; but whoever goes has got to ride, not walk. So my idea is this: one of us to ride back with Mr. Brown, then ride to Nancy Taylors house with one of the Old People, leaving Mr. Brown to keep the other old one company, you all to go now to Nancys and rest and wait; then one of you drive back and get the other one and drive her to Nancys, and Mr. Brown walk.
Splendid! they all cried. Oh, that will do that will answer perfectly. And they all said that Mrs. Enderby had the best head for planning, in the company; and they said that they wondered that they hadnt thought of this simple plan themselves. They hadnt meant to take back the compliment, good simple souls, and didnt know they had done it. After a consultation it was decided that Mrs. Enderby should drive back with Brown, she being entitled to the distinction because she had invented the plan. Everything now being satisfactorily arranged and settled, the ladies rose, relieved and happy, and brushed down their gowns, and three of them started homeward; Mrs. Enderby set her foot on the buggy-step and was about to climb in, when Brown found a remnant of his voice and gasped out
Please Mrs. Enderby, call them back I am very weak; I cant walk, I cant, indeed.
Why, dear Mr. Brown! You do look pale; I am ashamed of myself that I didnt notice it sooner. Come back-all of you! Mr. Brown is not well. Is there anything I can do for you, Mr. Brown? Im real sorry. Are you in pain?
No, madam, only weak; I am not sick, but only just weak lately; not long, but just lately.
The others came back, and poured out their sympathies and commiserations, and were full of self-reproaches for not having noticed how pale he was.
And they at once struck out a new plan, and soon agreed that it was by far the best of all. They would all go to Nancy Taylors house and see to Browns needs first. He could lie on the sofa in the parlor, and while Mrs. Taylor and Mary took care of him the other two ladies would take the buggy and go and get one of the Old People, and leave one of themselves with the other one, and
By this time, without any solicitation, they were at the horses head and were beginning to turn him around. The danger was imminent, but Brown found his voice again and saved himself. He said
But ladies, you are overlooking something which makes the plan impracticable. You see, if you bring one of them home, and one remains behind with the other, there will be three persons there when one of you comes back for that other, for some one must drive the buggy back, and three cant come home in it.
They all exclaimed, Why, sure-ly, that is so! and they were, all perplexed again.
Dear, dear, what can we do? said Mrs. Glossop; it is the most mixed-up thing that ever was. The fox and the goose and the corn and things oh, dear, they are nothing to it.
They sat wearily down once more, to further torture their tormented heads for a plan that would work. Presently Mary offered a plan; it was her first effort. She said:
I am young and strong, and am refreshed, now. Take Mr. Brown to our house, and give him help you see how plainly he needs it. I will go back and take care of the Old People; I can be there in twenty minutes. You can go on and do what you first started to do wait on the main road at our house until somebody comes along with a wagon; then send and bring away the three of us. You wont have to wait long; the farmers will soon be coming back from town, now. I will keep old Polly patient and cheered up the crazy one doesnt need it.
This plan was discussed and accepted; it seemed the best that could be done, in the circumstances, and the Old People must be getting discouraged by this time.
Brown felt relieved, and was deeply thankful. Let him once get to the main road and he would find a way to escape.
Then Mrs. Taylor said:
The evening chill will be coming on, pretty soon, and those poor old burnt-out things will need some kind of covering. Take the lap-robe with you, dear.
Very well, Mother, I will.
She stepped to the buggy and put out her hand to take it
That was the end of the tale. The passenger who told it said that when he read the story twenty-five years ago in a train he was interrupted at that point the train jumped off a bridge.
At first we thought we could finish the story quite easily, and we set to work with confidence; but it soon began to appear that it was not a simple thing, but difficult and baffling. This was on account of Browns character great generosity and kindliness, but complicated with unusual shyness and diffidence, particularly in the presence of ladies. There was his love for Mary, in a hopeful state but not yet secure just in a condition, indeed, where its affair must be handled with great tact, and no mistakes made, no offense given. And there was the mother wavering, half willing-by adroit and flawless diplomacy to be won over, now, or perhaps never at all. Also, there were the helpless Old People yonder in the woods waiting-their fate and Browns happiness to be determined by what Brown should do within the next two seconds. Mary was reaching for the lap-robe; Brown must decide-there was no time to be lost.
Of course none but a happy ending of the story would be accepted by the jury; the finish must find Brown in high credit with the ladies, his behavior without blemish, his modesty unwounded, his character for self sacrifice maintained, the Old People rescued through him, their benefactor, all the party proud of him, happy in him, his praises on all their tongues.
We tried to arrange this, but it was beset with persistent and irreconcilable difficulties. We saw that Browns shyness would not allow him to give up the lap-robe. This would offend Mary and her mother; and it would surprise the other ladies, partly because this stinginess toward the suffering Old People would be out of character with Brown, and partly because he was a special Providence and could not properly act so. If asked to explain his conduct, his shyness would not allow him to tell the truth, and lack of invention and practice would find him incapable of contriving a lie that would wash. We worked at the troublesome problem until three in the morning.
Meantime Mary was still reaching for the lap-robe. We gave it up, and decided to let her continue to reach. It is the readers privilege to determine for himself how the thing came out.
CHAPTER III
It is more trouble to make a maxim than it is to do right.
Puddnhead Wilsons New Calendar.
On the seventh day out we saw a dim vast bulk standing up out of the wastes of the Pacific and knew that that spectral promontory was Diamond Head, a piece of this world which I had not seen before for twenty-nine years. So we were nearing Honolulu, the capital city of the Sandwich Islands those islands which to me were Paradise; a Paradise which I had been longing all those years to see again. Not any other thing in the world could have stirred me as the sight of that great rock did.
In the night we anchored a mile from shore. Through my port I could see the twinkling lights of Honolulu and the dark bulk of the mountain-range that stretched away right and left. I could not make out the beautiful Nuuana valley, but I knew where it lay, and remembered how it used to look in the old times. We used to ride up it on horseback in those days we young people and branch off and gather bones in a sandy region where one of the first Kamehamehas battles was fought. He was a remarkable man, for a king; and he was also a remarkable man for a savage. He was a mere kinglet and of little or no consequence at the time of Captain Cooks arrival in 1788; but about four years afterward he conceived the idea of enlarging his sphere of influence. That is a courteous modern phrase which means robbing your neighbor for your neighbors benefit; and the great theater of its benevolences is Africa. Kamehameha went to war, and in the course of ten years he whipped out all the other kings and made himself master of every one of the nine or ten islands that form the group. But he did more than that. He bought ships, freighted them with sandal wood and other native products, and sent them as far as South America and China; he sold to his savages the foreign stuffs and tools and utensils which came back in these ships, and started the march of civilization. It is doubtful if the match to this extraordinary thing is to be found in the history of any other savage. Savages are eager to learn from the white man any new way to kill each other, but it is not their habit to seize with avidity and apply with energy the larger and nobler ideas which he offers them. The details of Kamehamehas history show that he was always hospitably ready to examine the white mans ideas, and that he exercised a tidy discrimination in making his selections from the samples placed on view.
A shrewder discrimination than was exhibited by his son and successor, Liholiho, I think. Liholiho could have qualified as a reformer, perhaps, but as a king he was a mistake. A mistake because he tried to be both king and reformer. This is mixing fire and gunpowder together. A king has no proper business with reforming. His best policy is to keep things as they are; and if he cant do that, he ought to try to make them worse than they are. This is not guesswork; I have thought over this matter a good deal, so that if I should ever have a chance to become a king I would know how to conduct the business in the best way.
When Liholiho succeeded his father he found himself possessed of an equipment of royal tools and safeguards which a wiser king would have known how to husband, and judiciously employ, and make profitable. The entire country was under the one scepter, and his was that scepter. There was an Established Church, and he was the head of it. There was a Standing Army, and he was the head of that; an Army of 114 privates under command of 27 Generals and a Field Marshal. There was a proud and ancient Hereditary Nobility. There was still one other asset. This was the tabu an agent endowed with a mysterious and stupendous power, an agent not found among the properties of any European monarch, a tool of inestimable value in the business. Liholiho was headmaster of the tabu. The tabu was the most ingenious and effective of all the inventions that has ever been devised for keeping a peoples privileges satisfactorily restricted.
It required the sexes to live in separate houses. It did not allow people to eat in either house; they must eat in another place. It did not allow a mans woman-folk to enter his house. It did not allow the sexes to eat together; the men must eat first, and the women must wait on them. Then the women could eat what was left if anything was left and wait on themselves. I mean, if anything of a coarse or unpalatable sort was left, the women could have it. But not the good things, the fine things, the choice things, such as pork, poultry, bananas, cocoanuts, the choicer varieties of fish, and so on. By the tabu, all these were sacred to the men; the women spent their lives longing for them and wondering what they might taste like; and they died without finding out.
These rules, as you see, were quite simple and clear. It was easy to remember them; and useful. For the penalty for infringing any rule in the whole list was death. Those women easily learned to put up with shark and taro and dog for a diet when the other things were so expensive.
It was death for any one to walk upon tabud ground; or defile a tabud thing with his touch; or fail in due servility to a chief; or step upon the kings shadow. The nobles and the King and the priests were always suspending little rags here and there and yonder, to give notice to the people that the decorated spot or thing was tabu, and death lurking near. The struggle for life was difficult and chancy in the islands in those days.
Thus advantageously was the new king situated. Will it be believed that the first thing he did was to destroy his Established Church, root and branch? He did indeed do that. To state the case figuratively, he was a prosperous sailor who burnt his ship and took to a raft. This Church was a horrid thing. It heavily oppressed the people; it kept them always trembling in the gloom of mysterious threatenings; it slaughtered them in sacrifice before its grotesque idols of wood and stone; it cowed them, it terrorized them, it made them slaves to its priests, and through the priests to the king. It was the best friend a king could have, and the most dependable. To a professional reformer who should annihilate so frightful and so devastating a power as this Church, reverence and praise would be due; but to a king who should do it, could properly be due nothing but reproach; reproach softened by sorrow; sorrow for his unfitness for his position.
He destroyed his Established Church, and his kingdom is a republic today, in consequence of that act.