IN San Francisco Dr. Ulswater set about despatching Hannah Atkins eastward, and I got into communication with The Union Electric Company. Sadler disappeared. He went with Dr. Ulswater to see Hannah Atkins despatched, and then disappeared on business of his own.
Dr. Ulswater wired east: “Goods shipped by S. P. as per letter to follow.” Two days later he received a telegram from the East: “What's the trouble with your shipment?” He wired back: “Don't know of any trouble,” and received this mystic and portentous reply: “Held up at Zionville.”
Zionville! Where and what was Zionville? Dr. Ulswater and I were to find out. How shall one answer the question: “What is Zionville?” We may begin in this way:
A stranger visiting Zionville to-day, if he is one with eyes to see understanding, will notice that the distinction of the place, in some singular and subtle way, seems to come together and concentrate on its cemetery, a noble enclosure with an imposing arched gateway. He will wonder how and why.
If he takes my advice, he will inquire first for Babbitt's Hotel. He will find there a long veranda with thin green pillars, many cane-backed chairs, and many occupants of the chairs. Of these occupants let him inquire for William C. Jones. It may well be that one of the occupants will be William C. Jones. Let him fall into casual conversation with William C. Jones. He will find him full of local patriotism, elderly, cross-eyed, a lawyer by profession, a man of harsh voice, and manner of speech as indirect as his left eye; of a bleak and barren face, heavy, morose, shaped like a Bartlett pear, with light eyelashes and no eyebrows; a man of statesmanlike carriage, with care up on his forehead. Let the stranger, pointing to the cemetery's tallest monument, at last inquire:
“What's that monument for?” Maybe, if he should speak of it as “that pillar of distress,” or some such equivocal term as might suggest a doubt whether he liked its architecture, it might be a good plan. Then William C. Jones will fasten on either side of his questioner a glassy diagonal stare, and speak something to this general effect, inquiring:
—Whether you are a sarcastic and facetious party, or one that has misspent his youth and means to die sudden and ignorant; and if so, whether you are inclined to ribaldry, and don't know a real serious subject from a can of spoiled beans; or are merely a sort of Hottentot party, disguised in a different and on the whole inferior kind of homeliness, with features not well assorted, morals depraved, and intellect omitted; and if so, whether on that account you ought to be excused for illiteracy respecting that world-renowned monument, or were not well brought up, and possibly intend better than you talk.——
In that way the subject will be fairly opened.
Under the guidance of William C. Jones let the stranger go about, listen, and observe. He will hear that originally Zionville was the offspring of a gold mine. He will see that at present she lies in the midst of orchards and vineyards. Superficially, she is a small and happy city lying between the flat plain of the Sacramento and the lower foothills of the Sierras. In reality she is a personage. No origins account for Zionville, and no appearances define her.
Dr. Ulswater is fond of drawing fine distinctions between what he calls “the phenomenal and noumenal Zionville,” between “the objective and the subjective Zionville,” between Zionville as she appears to the senses and “Zionville as such.” This is all more or less beyond me, but I'd go so far as to admit that “Zionville as such” is a personage without parallel in the solar system, without example in the Milky Way. How shall I describe her? She is romantic, and incurably young. She is nonchalant, and yet interested. She is open, unashamed, and yet impenetrable.
When Dr. Ulswater and I first saw her, she appeared to consist of some hundreds of ramshackle houses thrown down anywhere, a few handsome residences on the hillsides, a couple of brick blocks, a high school, a jail, three churches, Babbitt s Hotel, and an outlying Chinatown. There were no sidewalks then to speak of, except on Main Street. There were some gas lamps, but nothing electric, and nothing that looked like a cemetery. Westward lay the plain, eastward the wooded hills and lonely canyons. Nothing spoke outwardly of Zionville s aspirations, her hopes and dreams. And yet she stood there in a crisis of her history.
It is well established now that there are three great dates in Zionville history, of which the first marks the discovery of the Eureka Gold Mine, and the second the Reformation. Opinion agrees that before the Reformation she was already a personage, but admits that her morals were seedy; that morals was not a subject to which she gave any great attention.
The history of the reform movement is a volume by itself. The subject of morals once called to her attention, she went at it with her characteristic ardour and efficiency. Anything labelled “Morality” she was ready to try. She set her mind on higher things. She became conscious of her destiny. A new era dawned. She discarded her old name. The name “Zionville” dates only from the Reformation. Her former name is expunged from her records. No public-spirited citizen ever mentions it now.
Dr. Ulswater and I stepped, then, from the train, and looked about us, and saw a drowsy, shiftless looking town, loafing, sprawling at the feet of the hills. We cared nothing for Zionville. We were looking for Hannah Atkins. We wanted to know what brigand of the Sierras was low-down enough to hold up a lady of her age, discretion, decent poverty, and illustrious descent. We asked the station master if he had any news about him concerning such and such goods, so and so labelled.
He was a small man with pale eyes. No sooner had Dr. Ulswater spoken than his pale eyes glowed with purpose. There was a sudden and mysterious light in them. It was the reflection of the torch of Zionville. It was our first glimpse of Zionville's pure flame.
He sprang up. He ran past us without speaking, out through the open door, and sped up the dusty street. We stood alone in the silent, empty station. The doctor walked to the door, adjusted his glasses, and gazed after. I followed.
“Doctor,” I said, “Hannah's got into trouble. Maybe she stopped off for breakfast and didn't pay her bills.”
He was beyond the reach of jibes, listening, gazing at the phenomena before him. We both looked. We saw Zionville waking up, shaking her mane, pealing her eagle eye, girding her loins and unlimbering herself. First one figure, then another appeared in the hot sunny street; then groups, throngs, gathered and martialled. The dust rose so thickly as to hide them, but the distant murmur grew, and now we heard the thump of drums, the clash of cymbals, the piping of fifes. The brown dust cloud came rolling down the street toward the station; through it we soon discerned the approaching procession, men and women and a fringe of clamouring children.
“Mad!” said Dr. Ulswater. “Why, it's a palpably insane community! What do you conjecture they're after?” I said:
“Maybe it's Hannah's pedigree. Maybe it's us.”
The dusty procession was upon us. We were seized and thrust into the middle of it. The tumult, the shouting, and the noise of semi-musical instruments was so great that if anybody attempted to explain or answer questions, I didn't make it out. I noticed that the confusion was really superficial. Nobody seemed to be in command, every one seemed to have a hand in what was going on—whatever it was—and some common understood purpose seemed to guide it all. It was an organised miscellany. Up the the street we went through the dust, drums, cymbals, fifes, and flags before and after. We turned at last, crowding up the alley where a large hall used to stand behind Gregson's grocery. Whoever in Zionville was not in that hall was looking in through the windows.
AT the upper end of the hall was a low platform, on the left side of which sat twelve men on benches. At the right end of the platform stood that familiar oblong box that contained the last tabernacle of Hannah Atkins. The covers were off. There were signs about her of considerable investigation. A table stood in the centre of the platform and behind it sat a very small man, with a long silky black beard and very delicate features.
Gentlest and suavest of men! He was called “Louisa,” this magistrate. For if he had, hanging disconsolately in the rear of his history, the family name of “Bumper,” it was nothing to the point. The sure taste and discretion of Zionville always refused it.
At that time he was Justice of the Peace, and Coroner, and some other things, and in after days Mayor of Zionville. His voice was sweet, tender, soothing, a sort of a tenor warble; his manners were beautiful, and language flowed from him like molasses from a spigot.
In front of the platform stood a man of features reminding one of the Sahara Desert. This was William C. Jones, the Public Prosecutor.
Dr. Ulswater was in a condition of wrath. With him a condition of wrath implied a condition of eloquence. We being hauled up before that soft and subtle child, Louisa, with Louisa, W. C. Jones, and all Zionville wanting to know all about Hannah Atkins all at once,—being, in fact, for the first time face to face with Zionville, that unique phenomenon,—any kind of behaviour on our part would be likely enough; but on account of haste, and on account of some punches in the back due to the ardour of the occasion, Dr. Ulswater had emotions in his head that kept discharging his hand upwards from his head in a series of explosions, and he started in to give his opinion of Zionville, and let off opinions in volleys and artillery playing wonderful. But Louisa flowed over him like molasses over a hot griddle cake:
“Later, sir, later, we shall be happy to discuss with you the foibles of our society, but what we are interested in now is how this party, in this here truncated coffin, came to be travelling through Zionville in this here noncommittal manner; also, as to what may be the names, titles, pretensions, antecedents, residences, of yourself and friend; also of the noncommittal party aforesaid; also what may be your connection with that party. These, sir, are the points on which Zionville desires to be informed. But perhaps this other gentleman can give us some succinct statement, some short cut to the information this community is after.”
I gave Louisa our names, and told him the party he referred to was a foreign lady that went by the name of “Hannah Atkins,” at least lately she been so called though I had reason to believe it was an alias, or a corruption of her title and pretension.
“I thank you, sir,” said Louisa, sweetly. “We progress, and your statements reasonably agree with the information we already have. And now possibly Dr. Ulswater will entertain us with some still eloquent but more pertinent remarks, some exhilarating but not too gruesome anecdotes, illustrating the immediate causes of this lady's decease.”
The doctor took a new start. He made some flourishing archaeological statements about the Incas and the antiseptic qualities of the Andean climate, and then he sailed off on the high seas of South-American lore and his own enthusiasm over Hannah Atkins. But he was still somewhat flustered and confused. There was a growing tumult round about. I judged Zionville didn't follow him. Louisa said it wouldn't do, and William C. Jones rose up gloomy and bleak, and his forefinger started arguing up and down like a walking beam. He wanted to know:
—Whether them hideous words, unaccounted for by any civilised alphabet, was the names of Mrs. Atkins' ancestors, or of the last heathen jurymen that had tried him (Dr. Ulswater) for some previous harrowing crime; and if so, whether remarks made in the Choctaw language on insurance statistics, such as his (Dr. Ulswater's) remarks appeared to him (the speaker) to be, were not likely to impress an intelligent jury as intended to mislead and deceive; and if so, whether he (Dr. Ulswater) didn't mean,—before justice was summarily executed upon him by the aroused public spirit of Zionville,—to brush his hair and procure a set of whiskers less weedy and revolting; and if so, whether he meant to depose that this here deceased party came by her death naturally or not; and if so, whether he hadn't no better account to give of his possession of the same than incoherent statements, which plainly was meant to evade inquiry with irrelevant excursions into doubtful tradition——
“Doctor,” said Louisa, “I grieve to have misled you. I intended to make plain the desire of the jury for information, not on the subject of this lady's remote ancestry, but as to how she came by her death, and why she was travelling around, not as an authenticated corpse, but as an inorganic freight, addressed to some more or less mythological institution, some abstract idea on the other side of the continent. Do I now make myself clear, sir? Do I understand you to depose her death to have been violent or natural?”
“How the blazes should I know?” cried the doctor, exasperated.
“The defendant, gentlemen, deposes that he don't know. The defendant, in fact, declines to testify on the point.”
“She's a mummy!” shouted the doctor. “A mummy! What's the matter with this maniac of a town? If you don't know what a mummy is, I'm telling you. I know all about her that anybody knows,” and he went on to tell what he knew, but William C. Jones bore him down, inquiring with the voice of calamity:
—Whether them figures he (Dr. Ulswater) was giving was the dimensions of the city of Cuzco, or the age of Mrs. Atkins' parents at the time of her death, or the geography of the Andes, or the story of Mrs. Atkins' young romance; and if so, whether he (Dr. Ulswater) was acquainted with her in youth; and if so, whether she was as yellow at that time or affected since by a fever of that colour; and if so, inasmuch as his (Dr. Ulswater's) statements seemed to imply that he was no relative but only an admirer of Mrs. Atkins, whether his (Dr. Ulswater's) manifestly false and absurd statement that she was upwards of four hundred years old and her complexion complicated with considerable paint, wasn't an unchivalrous statement, that throwed doubts on the genuineness of his (Dr. Ulswater's) boasted admiration; and if so, and there was any museum in Connecticut unscrupulous enough for such barbarous inhumanity, and Mrs. Atkins and Dr. Ulswater ever arrived there—in defeat of justice—whether they was intended to be exhibited in the same show case; and if so, whether the promiscuous and opprobrious language he (Dr. Ulswater) was at present using was by him thought calculated to benefit his case——
“Doctor,” said Louisa, “Zionville is pleased to know you. Under other circumstances your evanescent humour would delight us beyond measure. But it is the opinion of the Court you ought to be informed that this is a moral town. Yes, sir. Not insanity but morality is what's hit us. It's the moralest town this side the Divide. We've got that reputation with the sweat of our virtues. There was a time when anybody found in possession of a corpse might be asked what he was going to do with it, or he might not, according to idle curiosity or intelligent interest. But times are changed. We make a point now of asking where he got it; which is, of course, a sacrifice of perfect courtesy to exacting morals. We admit it. But, sir, you have projected this here casket loaded with moral dynamite—if I may so state it—into this here moral community, and yet you claim not to know 'What the blazes'—if I quote correctly— she died of. The Court deprecates this distrustful attitude. The Court regards such reserve as suspicious, incriminating. In response to pertinent and proper questions you indulge some humorous statements regarding—if I caught the word—“mummies,” some jocular reference to the venerable appearance of the deceased—as the Court supposes. The Court has already inferred deceased was an Injun, and therefore don't care about the rest of her ancestry. You admit, sir, you know all about her, that you are in complete possession of the facts so far as known to any one. And yet, omitting the one pertinent fact, namely the cause and circumstances of her death, you deliver an uncalled-for lecture on Injun customs. The Court deprecates this learned frivolity. The Court penetrates your foolish subterfuge. The Court proposes to inform you of the evidence in its possession bearing on this case.”
Here Louisa took a document from his pocket.
“The following letter,” he said, “was received day before yesterday, addressed 'To The Magistrates of Zionville.'
“'Gentlemen:—-
“'On the 14th, probably on the afternoon east-bound freight, there will enter Zionville and endeavour to pass through a suspicious looking box addressed to some institution in Connecticut that may or may not exist. The undersigned is not informed. But the undersigned is well informed that the consignor of said box passes under the name of James Ulswater.” Now, if on examination of that there box, the Magistrates of Zionville is of the opinion that this yere “James Ulswater” is a party that oughtn't to be at large, the undersigned ain't going to dispute that opinion, undersigned being of the opinion the contents of said box is, or was once, a respectable middle-aged woman, with some Injun blood in her, and named Hannah Atkins, as to occasions of whose death it ain't for him to say. Only he don't take no stock in “James Ulswater's” remarks on the subject. They don't inspire no respect in his bosom. As to how “James Ulswater” came into possession of Mrs. Atkins' remains, the undersigned believes James Ulswater has something up his sleeve that he dassent tell. To what end then is “James Ulswater” shipping Mrs. Atkins, without sign of mourning or mortuary symbol, but with stealth, concealment and disrespect, over the innocent track and guileless freight agencies of the S. P. R. R.?
“'Yours truly,
“'A Former Citizen of Zionville who Believes in her Destiny and Honours her Morals.'”
“Gentlemen,” said Louisa, “do the suspicions of our fellow citizen appear to you justified?”
The jurymen nodded one after another, like a row of tenpins.
“Do the prisoner's remarks inspire confidence in your bosoms?”
One after another the jurymen shook their heads.
“Then the Court directs the sheriff to remove the elderly party calling himself 'Ulswater,' and his presumable accomplice, the younger party with the particular necktie and advantageous trousers, calling himself 'Kirby,' and that the sheriff hold these parties for further action. The Court is adjourned.”
IT seemed to me I was getting into the habit of incarceration. I passed from jail to jail. It was becoming monotonous.
But this was a creditable jail, built in the fervour of the Reformation, with a considerable veranda in front facing on Main Street. In the fervour of the Reformation it had been, as you might say, a centre of interest in Zionville. So many citizens got enclosed there during that period for one reason or another connected with their not understanding the tendency of events, that this jail always had a peculiar social standing. It was not like the jails of other communities. It bore no necessary social stigma. If a citizen was deposited there, it made all the difference, and depended on the amount of repentance his case was supposed to call for, whether he was put in a front or a rear cell. Because in a front-windowed cell he could see Main Street, and maybe talk with friends in the street, or join in the conversation on the veranda. In this way the Judge and the condemned of the preceding afternoon might often be arguing in the evening through a barred window about politics or religion. Hence it always made a man vexed and low in mind to be put in a rear cell, where he couldn't see Main Street.
Doctor Ulswater and I were put in a cell over the veranda, and through the barred window we could see the length of Main Street, which ran from the railway station, at one end of the town, to nothing in particular, as yet, at the other end. Main Street now runs from the railway to the cemetery, but at that time it ran off into generalities.
Main Street at that moment was full of a crowd which acted as if it all belonged to one family. I could see Louisa standing on a dry-goods box and talking confidentially to the family. There was a general session of Zionville on Main Street. I judged we were the subject of conversation, along with Hannah Atkins. William C. Jones and two other statesmen were walking around arm in arm. The whole place was buzzing like a beehive.
Then I noticed that Dr. Ulswater was not saying anything. He was looking over my shoulder through the bars silently, and all anger was gone from his face.
“Kit,” he said, mildly, “this is a town of great interest to archaeology.”
I thought it over, and said:
“Seems to me it'd be of more interest to Mrs. Ulswater's orphan asylum. It's too fresh. It's the most youthful-minded place I ever saw. I don't see any archaeology in it.”
“Precisely,” he said. “The youthfulness of Zionville struck me too, and that not so much because of her crude appearance as because of her buoyancy. I said to myself, 'Clearly we are home again. This is no Latin mob of Portate, no explosion of firecrackers, no furious inefficiency. This is gunpowder in a gun. Here is the organising instinct, the jocular humour, together with the deadly arrival. We are in the States.' But yet I was not satisfied with that, and those considerations are not what's hoisting me now. Cast your eyes back over the late events. Look from this window on that people in their market place, their forum, their agora. Recollect how Zionville got herself together. What unity? What esprit de corps? You recognise it? Ha! No! It's Greek, sir, Greek! It's the civic clan, the municipal State. So looked the Athenians, so they acted in their market place. We have arrived not only in the States, but in Zionville. Now, what is Zionville? A piece of antiquity! Archaeology in flesh and blood! Pompeii be hanged. This is better than Pompeii. This is a reversion, an atavism!”
I said: “You'd better not deal out suspicious sounding names like those within hearing of Zionville. She's high-bred and nervous. If you mean she's a town with a character, I agree. She has more character than a bucking bronco.”
“Mysterious and extraordinary town,” he muttered. “Ha! You're right. 'Character' is the word. Personality! Personality fascinates me. I haven't the article myself. I'm a nebulous gas. Hence I thirst for, I cling to, personality. Most mysterious, most interesting town!”
“I don't deny the interest, doctor,” I said, “but it seems to me it's sort of concentrated around the question whether or not that crowd is going to take a notion to lynch us. It looks like a crowd that takes notions. Would an Athenian populace be likely to act that way?”
“Precisely,” he cried with enthusiasm. “Look at Socrates!”
It seemed to me Zionville had some game going on, but I didn't make out what the game was. It seemed to me a lynching would be little short of frivolous. But then the Athenians had acted frivolous about Socrates. Zionville was surely an unexpected place. But the crowd in Main Street didn't act like an angry crowd. It acted interested.
At this moment the door of our cell opened and Louisa and William C. Jones walked in. They sat down on a bench without speaking, and there they sat and seemed to be embarrassed, and William C. Jones' left eye was searching sideways for the cosine of x, and he began to question:
—Whether coming in a spirit of conciliation or to speak last words of warning or entreaty; and if so—
And there he stopped, as if he couldn't quite get his gait.
“Maybe you're ambassadors,” I said, “ambassadors from Zionville.”
“The very word, sir,” said Louisa, looking pleased. “Ambassadors from Zionville.” And William C. Jones began again to indicate his doubts:
—Whether a certain document received by Magistrates was intended to further public interests, or private ends, or mixed in motive; and if so, whether Dr. Ulswater's account of deceased party in question might be accepted by Magistrates and apologies tendered, according to attitude he (Dr. Uls-water) might hereafter assume; and if so, whether he (Dr. Ulswater) would rather the deceased party in question should be confiscated as incidental to judicial proceedings whose results, although likely to be fatal to him (Dr. Ulswater) and his accomplice, Zionville could no more than vainly regret, public interest being of first importance; and if so, whether Dr. Ulswater would consent to deliver over Mrs. Atkins peaceably, for a consideration, to the necessities of Zionville, and thereby win an honourable place in her (Zionville's) history; and if so, whether he would state his mind on that point without incommoding the subject with the conquest of Peru, or the natural history of South America, and thereby would accommodate the Magistrates; and if so, or whether it would be necessary to return to the Court house in order to hasten proceedings to the end that he (Dr. Ulswater) and his accomplice might be hung before the shades of evening softly descended, in the interests of justice and the destinies of Zionville; and if so, whether he would accept or decline the said proposition,—
“Doctor,” said Louisa, sliding in like syrup. “Allow me to state briefly a few pertinent facts. Zionville is a moral town. It's the moralest town you ever saw. But, sir, we see the necessity of getting this atmospheric morality embodied in substantial institutions. We have already a high school with an Eastern college graduate at the head. We have three churches provided with clergymen, not one of whom dares show himself on the street without a choke collar. And, sir, we have a cemetery; that is, so far as a fence around it, and an excellent grave, well excavated, goes toward providing such an institution; which, however, public opinion is unanimous it don't go far enough. For there was once a time in Zionville when there'd have been no particular difficulty on this point, but those days are passed. In those days, when anybody was dead,—as might happen perhaps by perforation, and airiness in vital parts,—and if he was worth while, we used to ship him to Sacramento to get a ceremony ready made; and if he wasn't worth while, we didn't take much notice where he was planted; and therefore there wasn't any cemetery that anybody could find if he wanted one. Such were our customs and traditions in those days. But Zionville reformed. She took up with sackcloth. She sat down to mourn, and she rose up reformed. 'Morals,' she says, 'shall be my watchword. Morals,' she says, 'that's me.' Sir, since then there ain't anybody died in Zionville whatsoever, none whatever at all. But sometime ago there was a man named Jim Tweedy, who got indented with a chimney falling on him, to that extent he looked not only dead but disreputable, and you couldn't have told him from any other miscellaneous débris. And one of our esteemed citizens, named Pete Chapel, he got officious and jubilant, and went off by himself, and dug a sepulchre on some land that belonged to him out the end of Main Street. But was Jim Tweedy dead? Doctor, he was not! But he played off he was for forty-eight hours, and then he came to, and looks around the corners of himself, and says, 'Blamed if I ain't all triangles!' but he wouldn't have a thing to do with that location Pete Chapel had fixed up for him particular. He rejected it with indignation. Indeed, he was perhaps not justly to be blamed, though he's never had the standing in the community he had before, on account of our feeling he was a man that couldn't be relied on when public interest was concerned, besides looking discreditable on account of indentations in his surface; nor it couldn't be denied that Pete Chapel's position was uneasy too, seeing it was allowed as up to him to provide something for the situation. So he put up Tweedy's grave for a raffle, and it fetched a good price, over the value of the land about it, on account of public spirit in the town. After that it changed hands considerable, the price fluctuating according to rumours of indispositions, or strangers in town looking warlike. It went up and down till it got to be a sort of thermometer of Zionville's condition of depression, or confidence in its destiny. At last it fell into the hands of William C. Jones, here present, who donated it to Zionville, and Zionville put a fence around the property and denominated the same a Cemetery. Such and so far is the history of this institution. But, sir, we feel that our Cemetery has not as yet attained its proper standing in our community by formally entering upon its career of public usefulness. Our morality forbids the thought of too direct action to that end. It has been suggested that time would remedy this want. True. But meanwhile Zionville sees its progress stayed, its development halted. Now, sir, Zionville discerns in Mrs. Atkins an extraordinary fitness for this purpose. William C. Jones and I have consulted. We discern a rare opportunity, a crisis in Zionville's history. We have consulted with our fellow citizens, and they have took to the idea like a nigger to a watermelon. Our determination is inflexible. A monument has been ordered from Sacramento. The ceremonies are arranged whereby to plant Mrs. Atkins, whereby to inaugurate our Cemetery conformable to the spirit of our citizens. The San Francisco press has been notified to send representatives. All is prepared. Name your price, sir. It's yours. Name your conditions. They're granted. The antecedents of Mrs. Atkins are the most essential elements in her value, and we hope to see them, in your own eloquent language, indelibly engraven on the monument.”
“Why, bless my soul!” said Dr. Ulswater. “What good would a Peruvian mummy do you? Why don't you bury a buffalo and call it a bishop? What's the idea?”
“Fame,” said Louisa.
“Fame? fame? But look here! Mummies belong in museums!”
“Very good,” said Louisa. “Ain't a cemetery a museum? Alas, sir! a collection of various mortality?”
“Dear, dear! You'll be the death of me.”
“Whether it shall be possible,” began William C. Jones, “to avoid compassing your decease through obstinacy and public interests, being the object of this interview; and if so——”
“Your honour,” said Dr. Ulswater with a grand gesture. Nobody could beat him for elegance when he was in trim—“Your honour,” he said, interrupting W. C. and addressing Louisa, “I beg the privilege of donating Hannah Atkins to Zionville, and to the service of her fame. To the interests of archaeology Zionville is more than a legion of mummies.”
Louisa ran to the window, thrust his hat through the bars and waved it, and we heard Zionville break forth in one simultaneous pean.
But when Dr. Ulswater and I came out of the jail and joined the rejoicing, when—as the subject and centre of rejoicing—we came down opposite Babbitt's Hotel, there we saw, on the veranda of it, Sadler six feet two, and engaged in sinister meditation against a green pillar. Then I knew he had written the Letter to the Magistrates.
He came down from the veranda to join the rejoicing, and when I claimed to see into his insidious villainy, he looked depressed; but Dr. Ulswater was surprised and delighted.
“By hookey!” he said,—For since his marriage to Mrs. Ulswater he had come to swear always by innocuous things, and he was hard put to it sometimes for satisfaction; hence sometimes his objurgations were familiar, and sometimes recondite.—“By hookey!” he said, “Sadler, I knew there was something Zionville reminded me of. It was you!”
“I belonged to her,” said Sadler, sadly, walking along with us—“before she reformed. She wollered in her nakedness then, and we both found out that sin was monotonous. Since then we've each took a shy at the spiritual life and found it was sportier'n the other. But still I don't know if her Sunday School clothes will fit me. But, doctor,” he concluded, “if it suits you and Mrs. Ulswater to sojourn and abide here, I'll try on them clothes.”
IN the history of Zionville the dates of the Discovery of the Eureka Mine, of the Reformation, and of the Burial of Hannah Atkins, are like 1492 and 1776 in the history of this country. Whether those foreseeing statesmen, William C. Jones and Louisa, had reasoned the whole thing out or not, is now the question. For Sadler claimed that the statesmanship was all his, and that Louisa and W. C. were trying to jump his claim. He and Louisa and W. C. Jones used to sit on the veranda of Babbitt's, and argue which of them ought to be pensioned, and have a bronze statue, and brass band to play for him at meals. Sadler's argument was that he came down on the heels of his Letter to the Magistrates, with the whole menu cooked in his own mind. He saw to it himself that Hannah stopped over. Louisa and W. C. Jones argued that the menu developed in the cooking, that is, under discussion, to say nothing of the delicate handling which lay to their credit. Moreover, they argued that Sadler had mostly in mind the private need that lay in his nature to get even with the Ulswaters for shanghaiing him off Lua. That was one of W. C. Jones' strong arguments against him, whereby there fell a shadow of suspicion on his (Sadler's) purity of motive. He had wanted to draw Dr. Ulswater to, and get him interested in Zionville, where he, Sadler, had lived when he was younger, and before he went over to Asia, and got the gray ashes of Asia on his head. He had a sentiment for Zionville, as have all who breathe her air.
“I used to sit,” he said once, “in that there monastery in Rangoon, in Burmah, with a yeller robe on, and I'd contemplate the same idea for hours and days, same as Ram Nad is doing out there in the dust, which I don't see why Ram Nad can't do his meditating somewhere else besides up against that hitching post to employ one able-bodied man on detail to see nobody's horse don't step on him—Here, Bobby Lee! You call your dog off the prophet, or I'll come around and spank the fattest side of your trousers!—Well, by and by, what with turning that idea over and over, it'd get smooth and round like a billiard ball, and by and by I'd get into a condition where I'd begin to see things running round the ball, like the colours on a soap bubble, and them visions got mixed up with the daylight. But about once in three times when I'd got a vision pinned down so I could make it give its name, it was nothing but Main Street from the station to Babbitt's Hotel. That was the peculiar thing in the cultivation of my soul's garden. I guess their wasn't another garden like it in Burmah. When I started after Nirvana, about once in three I fetched up at Babbitt's.”
“Which,” said W. C. Jones, “is a proper sentiment, but it don't prove you was onto Hannah.”
I don't know either just why Ram Nad liked to meditate against the hitching post in front of Babbitt's. He got into the habit of it when the Ulswaters, and all theirs, lived at Babbitt's. It was before they built the big stone house on the hill, from whose porch one could see thirty miles to where theViolettalay at anchor in the river. Ram Nad never got over the habit of the hitching post. He'd sit there placidly in the dust, with somebody's pony jingling a chain bit over his head, and somebody's dog investigating the conical basket, whose perils no dog could ever understand. Zionville was more than used to Ram Nad. He was one of the assets of the town. He could squat down where he liked, provided it was conspicuous and handy for pointing out to tourists. He was part of Zionville's fame—he and his basket and his dingy long beard, dingy cotton clothes, and brown bony ankles—a sort of public institution. He ate and slept at Babbitt's, or at the Ulswaters', or anywhere he chose. As I recollect, in his later years, he wore a Navajo blanket that Sadler gave him, of a fiery red that burnt a hole in the atmosphere. I recollect the Chinamen from Chinatown that used to drop around and consult him at the hitching post, but what about I don't know. He appeared to be an institution with them too, a sort of high priest or spiritual adviser.
So lived Ram Nad in Zionville. So he died in Zionville by a unanimous agreement with himself. He left off breathing one afternoon, in the sunlight, by his hitching post, calm and harmonious, in a Navajo blanket.
But I was speaking of the burial of Hannah Atkins, and what person, in truth, ought to have a bronze statue in front of the City Hall, with a laurel wreath on his head, and one finger pointing toward Hannah's monument.
Of course, any man, of any likely town in the West, advertises his town. It's the subject of his daily conversation and his nightly dreams, for it's not merely a casual coincidence of people, but an enterprise that every inhabitant has stock in. So far Zionville wasn't peculiar. But no other town would have grasped and gathered in the possibilities of Hannah Atkins. The question is, Whose genius first foresaw those possibilities?
It is some years past now. And yet a tourist on the Overland train now and then still drops off and asks to see where Hannah Atkins was buried. But Oh! that great day of the Burial! Reporters came up from San Francisco to attend, and Dr. Ulswater's oration was a monument in itself. And Oh! the great days that followed! Zionville became celebrated, suddenly and superbly, renowned. Fame jumped upon her. It proclaimed her the healthiest town on earth, not to say the most singular. There was a time—a short time, we admit—when nearly every newspaper in the land had its item about Zionville. It was enough. Dr. Uls-water, William C. Jones, Louisa, Sadler, Ram Nad, all, especially Hannah Atkins, had a period of limelight fame. Europe and America spoke of Zionville. The world stopped its business a moment and gave her a cheer.
The thing was done. Zionville was as well known as Uneeda Biscuit, and launched on her career of increase. Her boom was started.
As phrases from the Declaration of '76 have entered into the national language, so phrases from Dr. Ulswater's great speech are embedded in Zionville usage. “Centripetal point of envious resort,” were words to be remembered and repeated. “Here we lay,” said Dr. Ulswater, “the cornerstone of our fame,” and Zionville roared simultaneously! “He means Hannah!”
“Born in purple of an extinct American dynasty,” said Dr. Ulswater, “she, whom we here deposit, is henceforth become the symbol around which the affections of this democratic community are gathered, the cynosure of our pride, the nucleus of our respectful regrets.”
The statesmen of Zionville, then, saw and grasped their opportunity,—Zionville's peculiar gifts, her imaginative reach and supple unity of action being with them. They demonstrated this fact, this principle, in the floating of a municipal enterprise, namely, the automatic action of the newspaper paragraph.
Now, no one questions the talents, no one grudges the praise, of Sadler, of William C. Jones, of Louisa. They foresaw an automatic paragraph in Hannah Atkins. They developed and put that automatic paragraph in action. But the question is: What seminal mind first bore this seed? Where lay that creative spark of genius, of forecasting insight and prophetic statemanship? Who first conceived the idea?
Susannah and I have long been married. We still occupy each other's horizon. In the same way Dr. Ulswater is apt to see Mrs. Ulswater on the horizon. She is perhaps a superstition of his.
And yet, whenever I hear the Burial debated, and the idea of it traced through William C. Jones, Louisa, and Sadler, I seem to see, talking with Sadler in the evening on the deck of theVioletta, a small, thin, quiet woman, knitting, sewing. Sadler himself does not remember what she said. Probably her words were few. He remembers that it was there certain things took shape in his mind. He remembers describing Zionville to her, and how his sentiments got lively while he did so, and that Mrs. Ulswater was interested, and little by little he saw it all, clear as a map, before him. Was Mrs. Uls-water's then the seminal mind? If you ask her, she says “Fiddlesticks!” If you ask Dr. Ulswater, he says, “Not one imaginable, remote doubt of it!”
I say nothing. Only I see Mrs. Ulswater on the deck of theVioletta, knitting, sewing.
Even so she sits to-day, knitting, or sewing, on the porch of the stone house on the hillside. Below lies the city of Zionville, busy, booming, with its trolley line and electric lights, which I put in for The Union Electric. On the further hillside stands the Sanatarium; built and managed by the Uls-waters. Mrs. Ulswater sits in her rocking chair, caring nothing for bronze statues, little known of newspaper paragraphs, knitting the welfare of her fellow men, sewing, embroidering their destinies, mending their misfortunes. Forward and back goes the restless thrusting thimble; the fine needle glitters, is gone, and reappears.
So Athens lay below the Acropolis, where stood the bronze statue of presiding Pallas, leaning on her spear. It was an idle weapon. The main business of Pallas was to take in glory. Looked at in one way, it was a foolish business. In Zionville Mrs. Uls-water turns all that over to Hannah Atkins, to any one who can stand it. Mrs. Ulswater is a deity from Ohio, and does not care for the parti-coloured bubble of glory.