Mark Twain - The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain (Illustrated)

Now all this comes of being good-hearted. If I had been as unaccommodating and unsympathetic as some people, I would have told Johnny Skae that I wouldn't receive his communication at such a late hour, and to go to blazes with it; but no, his snuffing distress touched my heart, and I jumped at the chance of doing something to modify his misery. I never read his item to see whether there was anything wrong about it, but hastily wrote the few lines which preceded it, and sent it to the printers. And what has my kindness done for me? It has done nothing but bring down upon me a storm of abuse and ornamental blasphemy.

Now I will just read that item myself, and see if there is any foundation for all this fuss. And if there is, the author of it shall hear from me.

I have read it, and I am bound to admit that it seems a little mixed at a first glance. However, I will peruse it once more.

I have read it again, and it does really seem a good deal more mixed than ever.

I have read it over five times, but if I can get at the meaning of it, I wish I may get my just deserts. It wont hear analysis. There are things about it which I cannot understand at all. It don't say whatever became of William Schuyler. It just says enough about him to get one interested in his career, and then drops him. Who is William Schuyler, anyhow, and what part of South Park did he live in, and if he started down town at six o'clock, did he ever get there, and if he did, did anything happen to him? Is he the individual that met with the "distressing accident"? Considering the elaborate circumstantiality of detail observable in the item, it seems to me that it ought to contain more information than it does. On the contrary, it is obscure—and not only obscure, but utterly incomprehensible. Was the breaking of Mr. Schuyler's leg, fifteen years ago, the "distressing accident" that plunged Mr. Skae into unspeakable grief, and caused him to come up here at dead of night and stop our press to acquaint the world with the unfortunate circumstance? Or did the "distressing accident" consist in the destruction of Schuyler's mother-in-law's property in early times? Or did it consist in the death of that person herself three years ago? (albeit it does not appear that she died by accident.) In a word, what did that "distressing accident" consist in? What did that drivelling ass of a Schuyler stand in the wake of a runaway horse for, with his shouting and gesticulating, if he wanted to stop him? And how the mischief could he get run over by a horse that had already passed beyond him? And what are we to take "warning" by? and how is this extraordinary chapter of incomprehensibilities going to be a " lesson" to us? And above all, what has the "intoxicating bowl" got to do with it, anyhow? It is not stated that Schuyler drank, or that his wife drank, or that his mother-in-law drank, or that the horse drank— wherefore, then, the reference to the intoxicating bowl ? It does seem to me that, if Mr. Skae had let the intoxicating bowl alone himself, he never would have got into so much trouble about this infernal imaginary distressing accident. I have read his absurd item over and over again, with all its insinuating plausibility, until my head swims; but I can make neither head nor tail of it. There certainly seems to have been an accident of some kind or other, but it is impossible to determine what the nature of it was, or who was the sufferer by it. I do not like to do it, but I feel compelled to request that the next time anything happens to one of Mr. Skae's friends, he will append such explanatory notes to his account of it as will enable me to find out what sort of an accident it was and whom it happened to. I had rather all his friends should die than that I should be driven to the verge of lunacy again in trying to cipher out the meaning of another such production as the above.

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There was a seance in town a few nights since. As I was making for it, in company with the reporter of an evening paper, he said he had seen a gambler named Gus Graham shot down in a town in Illinois years ago by a mob, and as he was probably the only person in San Francisco who knew of the circumstance, he thought he would "give the spirits Graham to chaw on awhile." (N.B.—"This young creature is a Democrat, and speaks with the native strength and inelegance of his tribe.) In the course of the show he wrote his old pal's name on a slip of paper, and folded it up tightly and put it in a hat which was passed around, and which already had about five hundred similar documents in it. The pile was dumped on the table, and the medium began to take them up one by one and lay them aside, asking, "Is this spirit present? or this? or this?" About one in fifty would rap, and the person who sent up the name would rise in his place and question the defunct. At last a spirit seized the medium's hand and wrote "Gus Graham" backward. Then, the medium went skirmishing through the papers for the corresponding name. And that old sport knew his card by the back. When the medium came to it, after picking up fifty others, he rapped! A committeeman unfolded the paper, and it was the right one. I sent for it and got it. It was all right. However, I suppose all Democrats are on sociable terms with the devil. The young man got up and asked:

"Did you die in '51 ? '52? '53? '54?——"

Ghost—"Rap, rap, rap."

"Did you die of cholera? diarrhoea? dysentery? dog-bite? small-pox? violent death?——"

"Rap, rap, rap."

"Were you hanged? drowned? stabbed? shot?——"

"Rap, rap, rap."

"Did you die in Mississippi? Kentucky? New York? Sandwich Islands? Texas? Illinois?——"

"Rap, rap, rap."

"In Adams county? Madison? Randolph?——"

"Rap, rap, rap."

It was no use trying to catch the departed gambler. He knew his hand, and played it like a major.

About this time a couple of Germans stepped forward, an elderly man and a spry young fellow, cocked and primed for a sensation. They wrote some names. Then young Ollendorff said something which sounded like—

"Ist ein geist hieraus?" (Bursts of laughter from the audience.)

Three raps—signifying that there was a geist hieraus.

"Vollen sie schriehen?" (More laughter.)

Three raps.

"Finzig stollen, linsowfterowlickterbairowfter frowleineruhackfolderol?"

Incredible as it may seem, the spirit cheerfully answered Yes to that astonishing proposition.

The audience grew more and more boisterously mirthful with every fresh question, and they were informed that the performance could not go on in the midst of so much levity. They became quiet.

The German ghost didn't appear to know anything at all—couldn't answer the simplest questions. Young Ollendorff finally stated some numbers, and tried to get at the time of the spirit's death; it appeared to be considerably mixed as to whether it died in 1811 or 1812, which was reasonable enough, as it had been so long ago. At last it wrote "12."

Tableau! Young Ollendorff sprang to his feet in a state of consuming excitement. He exclaimed:

"Laties und shentlemen! I write de name fon a man vot lifs! Speerit-rabbing dells me he ties in yahr eighteen hoondred und dwelf, but he yoos as live und helty as——"

The Medium—" Sit down, sir!"

Ollendorff—"But I vant to——"

Medium—"You are not here to make speeches, sir—sit down!" (Mr. O. had squared himself for an oration.)

Mr. 0.—"But de speerit cheat!—dere is no such speerit "(All this time applause and laughter by turns from the audience.)

Medium—"Take your seat, sir, and I will explain this matter."

And she explained. And in that explanation she let off a blast which was so terrific that I half expected to see young Ollendorff shot up through the roof. She said he had come up there with fraud and deceit and cheating in his heart, and a kindred spirit had come from the land of shadows to commune with him! She was terribly bitter. She said in substance, though not in words, that perdition was full of just such fellows as Ollendorff, and they were ready on the slightest pretext to rush in and assume anybody's name, and rap and write and lie and swindle with a perfect looseness whenever they could rope in a living affinity like poor Ollendorff to communicate with! (Great applause and laughter.)