Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain [113]
“Less than six weeks, you’d better say!” said I, warming up and breaking in. “Unless he had that three thousand dollars in safe hands where he couldn’t touch it, he would no more last you six weeks than—”
“Of course he wouldn’t,” said Thompson; “I’ve edited books for that kind of people; and the moment they get their hands on the royalty—maybe it’s three thousand, maybe it’s two thousand—”
“What business has that shoemaker with two thousand dollars, I should like to know?” broke in Rogers, earnestly. “A man perhaps perfectly contented now, there in Mannheim, surrounded by his own class, eating his bread with the appetite which laborious industry alone can give, enjoying his humble life, honest, upright, pure in heart; and blessed!—yes, I say blessed! blessed above all the myriads that go in silk attire and walk the empty artificial round of social folly—but just you put that temptation before him once! Just you lay fifteen hundred dollars before a man like that, and say—”
“Fifteen hundred devils!” cried I, “five hundred would rot his principles, paralyze his industry, drag him to the rumshop, thence to the gutter, thence to the almshouse, thence to—”
“Why put upon ourselves this crime, gentlemen?” interrupted the poet earnestly and appealingly. “He is happy where he is, and as he is. Every sentiment of honor, every sentiment of charity, every sentiment of high and sacred benevolence warns us, beseeches us, commands us to leave him undisturbed. That is real friendship, that is true friendship. We could follow other courses that would be more showy; but none that would be so truly kind and wise, depend upon it.”
After some further talk it became evident that each of us, down in his heart, felt some misgivings over this settlement of the matter. It was manifest that we all felt that we ought to send the poor shoemaker something. There was long and thoughtful discussion of this point; and we finally decided to send him a chromo.
Well, now that everything seemed to be arranged satisfactorily to everybody concerned, a new trouble broke out: it transpired that these two men were expecting to share equally in the money with me. That was not my idea. I said that if they got half of it between them they might consider themselves lucky. Rogers said:
“Who would have had any if it hadn’t been for me? I flung out the first hint—but for that it would all have gone to the shoemaker.”
Thompson said that he was thinking of the thing himself at the very moment that Rogers had originally spoken.
I retorted that the idea would have occurred to me plenty soon enough, and without anybody’s help. I was slow about thinking, maybe, but I was sure.
This matter warmed up into a quarrel; then into a fight; and each man got pretty badly battered. As soon as I had got myself mended up after a fashion, I ascended to the hurricane deck in a pretty sour humor. I found Captain McCord there, and said, as pleasantly as my humor would permit:
“I have come to say good-bye, Captain. I wish to go ashore at Napoleon.”
“Go ashore where?”
“Napoleon.”
The captain laughed; but seeing that I was not in a jovial mood, stopped that and said—
“But are you serious?”
“Serious? I certainly am.”
The captain glanced up at the pilothouse and said—
“He wants to get off at Napoleon!”
“Napoleon?”
“That’s what he says.”
“Great Caesar’s ghost!”
Uncle Mumford approached along the deck. The captain said—
“Uncle, here’s a friend of yours wants to get off at Napoleon!”
“Well, by—!”
I said—
“Come, what is all this about? Can’t a man go ashore at Napoleon if he wants to?”
“Why, hang it, don’t you know? There isn’t any Napoleon anymore. Hasn’t been for years and years. The Arkansas River burst through it, tore it all to rags, and emptied it into the Mississippi!”
“Carried the whole town away?—banks,