one hand and the school report in the other, haranguing a gang of
“corned” miners on, the iniquity of squandering the public money on
education “when hundreds and hundreds of honest, hard-working men were
literally starving for whiskey.”
He had been assisting in a regal spree with those parties for hours.
We dragged him away, and put him into bed.
Of course there was no school report in the Union, and Boggs held me
accountable, though I was innocent of any intention or desire to compass
its absence from that paper, and was as sorry as any one that the
misfortune had occurred. But we were perfectly friendly.
The day the next school report was due the proprietor of the Tennessee
Mine furnished us a buggy, and asked us to go down and write something
about the property–a very common request, and one always gladly acceded
to when people furnished buggies, for we were as fond of pleasure
excursions as other people.
The “mine” was a hole in the ground ninety feet deep, and no way of
getting down into it but by holding on to a rope and being lowered with a
windlass.
The workmen had just gone off somewhere to dinner.
I was not strong enough to lower Boggs’s bulk, so I took an unlighted
candle in my teeth, made a loop for my foot in the end of the rope,
implored Boggs not to go to sleep or let the windlass get the start of
him, and then swung out over the shaft.
I reached the bottom muddy and bruised about the elbows, but safe.
I lit the candle, made an examination of the rock, selected some
specimens, and shouted to Boggs to hoist away.
No answer.
Presently a head appeared in the circle of daylight away aloft, and a
voice came down:
“Are you all set?”
“All set-hoist away!”
“Are you comfortable?”
“Perfectly.”
“Could you wait a little?”
“Oh, certainly-no particular hurry.”
“Well-good-bye.”
“Why, where are you going?”
“After the school report!”
And he did.
I stayed down there an hour, and surprised the workmen when they hauled
up and found a man on the rope instead of a bucket of rock.
I walked home, too–five miles-up-hill.
We had no school report next morning–but the Union had.
AN IDEAL FRENCH ADDRESS
EXTRACT FROM “PARIS NOTES,” IN “TOM SAWYER ABROAD,” ETC.
I am told that a French sermon is like a French speech–it never names an
historical event, but only the date of it; if you are not up in dates,
you get left. A French speech is something like this:
“Comrades, citizens, brothers, noble parts of the only sublime and
perfect nation, let us not forget that the 21st January cast off our
chains; that the 10th August relieved us of the shameful presence of
foreign spies; that the 5th September was its own justification before
Heaven and humanity; that the 18th Brumaire contained the seeds of its
own punishment; that the 14th July was the mighty voice of liberty
proclaiming the resurrection, the new day, and inviting the oppressed
peoples of the earth to look upon the divine face of France and live;
and let us here record our everlasting curse against the man of the
2d December, and declare in thunder tones, the native tones of France,
that but for him there had been no 17th Mardi in history, no 12th
October, nor 9th January, no 22d April, no 16th November, no 30th
September, no 2d July, no 14th February, no 29th June, no 15th August, no
31st May–that but for him, France, the pure, the grand, the peerless,
had had a serene and vacant almanac to-day.”
I have heard of one French sermon which closed in this odd yet eloquent
way:
“My hearers, we have sad cause to remember the man of the 13th January.
The results of the vast crime of the 13th January have been in just
proportion to the magnitude of the act itself. But for it there had been
no 30th November–sorrowful spectacle! The grisly deed of the 16th June
had not been done but for it, nor had the man of the 16th June known
existence; to it alone the 3d September was due, also the fatal 12th