A TRAMP ABROAD By Mark Twain

found out that fire was the life principle of a dragon;

put out the dragon’s fires and it could make steam

no longer, and must die. He could not put out a fire

with a spear, therefore he invented the extinguisher.

The dragon being dead, the emperor fell on the hero’s neck

and said:

“Deliverer, name your request,” at the same time beckoning

out behind with his heel for a detachment of his daughters

to form and advance. But the tramp gave them no observance.

He simply said:

“My request is, that upon me be conferred the monopoly

of the manufacture and sale of spectacles in Germany.”

The emperor sprang aside and exclaimed:

“This transcends all the impudence I ever heard! A

modest demand, by my halidome! Why didn’t you ask

for the imperial revenues at once, and be done with it?”

But the monarch had given his word, and he kept it.

To everybody’s surprise, the unselfish monopolist immediately

reduced the price of spectacles to such a degree that a

great and crushing burden was removed from the nation.

The emperor, to commemorate this generous act, and to

testify his appreciation of it, issued a decree commanding

everybody to buy this benefactor’s spectacles and wear them,

whether they needed them or not.

So originated the wide-spread custom of wearing

spectacles in Germany; and as a custom once established

in these old lands is imperishable, this one remains

universal in the empire to this day. Such is the legend

of the monopolist’s once stately and sumptuous castle,

now called the “Spectacular Ruin.”

On the right bank, two or three miles below the Spectacular

Ruin, we passed by a noble pile of castellated buildings

overlooking the water from the crest of a lofty elevation.

A stretch of two hundred yards of the high front wall

was heavily draped with ivy, and out of the mass of

buildings within rose three picturesque old towers.

The place was in fine order, and was inhabited by a

family of princely rank. This castle had its legend,

too, but I should not feel justified in repeating

it because I doubted the truth of some of its minor details.

Along in this region a multitude of Italian laborers

were blasting away the frontage of the hills to make

room for the new railway. They were fifty or a hundred

feet above the river. As we turned a sharp corner they

began to wave signals and shout warnings to us to look

out for the explosions. It was all very well to warn us,

but what could WE do? You can’t back a raft upstream,

you can’t hurry it downstream, you can’t scatter out

to one side when you haven’t any room to speak of,

you won’t take to the perpendicular cliffs on the other

shore when they appear to be blasting there, too.

Your resources are limited, you see. There is simply

nothing for it but to watch and pray.

For some hours we had been making three and a half or four

miles an hour and we were still making that. We had been

dancing right along until those men began to shout;

then for the next ten minutes it seemed to me that I had

never seen a raft go so slowly. When the first blast went

off we raised our sun-umbrellas and waited for the result.

No harm done; none of the stones fell in the water.

Another blast followed, and another and another.

Some of the rubbish fell in the water just astern

of us.

We ran that whole battery of nine blasts in a row, and it

was certainly one of the most exciting and uncomfortable

weeks I ever spent, either aship or ashore. Of course

we frequently manned the poles and shoved earnestly

for a second or so, but every time one of those spurts

of dust and debris shot aloft every man dropped his pole

and looked up to get the bearings of his share of it.

It was very busy times along there for a while.

It appeared certain that we must perish, but even that was

not the bitterest thought; no, the abjectly unheroic nature

of the death–that was the sting–that and the bizarre