The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, and Other Stories
we talked over the great plan, without ever feeling hungry; and at last,
when all the details had been arranged satisfactorily, we cast lots and
Millet was elected--elected to die, as we called it. Then we scraped
together those things which one never parts with until he is betting
them against future wealth--keepsake trinkets and suchlike--and these we
pawned for enough to furnish us a frugal farewell supper and breakfast,
and leave us a few francs over for travel, and a stake of turnips and
such for Millet to live on for a few days.
'Next morning, early, the three of us cleared out, straightway after
breakfast--on foot, of course. Each of us carried a dozen of Millet's
small pictures, purposing to market them. Carl struck for Paris, where
he would start the work of building up Millet's name against the coming
great day. Claude and I were to separate, and scatter abroad over
France.
'Now, it will surprise you to know what an easy and comfortable thing we
had. I walked two days before I began business. Then I began to sketch
a villa in the outskirts of a big town--because I saw the proprietor
standing on an upper veranda. He came down to look on--I thought he
would. I worked swiftly, intending to keep him interested. Occasionally
he fired off a little ejaculation of approbation, and by-and-by he spoke
up with enthusiasm, and said I was a master!
'I put down my brush, reached into my satchel, fetched out a Millet, and
pointed to the cipher in the corner. I said, proudly:
'“I suppose you recognise that? Well, he taught me! I should think I
ought to know my trade!”
'The man looked guiltily embarrassed, and was silent. I said
sorrowfully:
'“You don't mean to intimate that you don't know the cipher of Francois
Millet!”
'Of course he didn't know that cipher; but he was the gratefullest man
you ever saw, just the same, for being let out of an uncomfortable place
on such easy terms. He said:
'“No! Why, it is Millet's, sure enough! I don't know what I could have
been thinking of. Of course I recognise it now.”
'Next, he wanted to buy it; but I said that although I wasn't rich I
wasn't that poor. However, at last, I let him have it for eight hundred
francs.'
'Eight hundred!'
'Yes. Millet would have sold it for a pork chop. Yes, I got eight
hundred francs for that little thing. I wish I could get it back for
eighty thousand. But that time's gone by. I made a very nice picture
of that man's house and I wanted to offer it to him for ten francs, but
that wouldn't answer, seeing I was the pupil of such a master, so I sold
it to him for a hundred. I sent the eight hundred francs straight to
Millet from that town and struck out again next day.
'But I didn't walk--no. I rode. I have ridden ever since. I sold one
picture every day, and never tried to sell two. I always said to my
customer:
'“I am a fool to sell a picture of Francois Millet's at all, for that
man is not going to live three months, and when he dies his pictures
can't be had for love or money.”
'I took care to spread that little fact as far as I could, and prepare
the world for the event.
'I take credit to myself for our plan of selling the pictures--it was
mine. I suggested it that last evening when we were laying out our
campaign, and all three of us agreed to give it a good fair trial before
giving it up for some other. It succeeded with all of us. I walked only
two days, Claude walked two--both of us afraid to make Millet celebrated
too close to home--but Carl walked only half a day, the bright,
conscienceless rascal, and after that he travelled like a duke.
'Every now and then we got in with a country editor and started an item
around through the press; not an item announcing that a new painter had
been discovered, but an item which let on that everybody knew Francois
Millet; not an item praising him in any way, but merely a word
concerning the present condition of the “master”--sometimes hopeful,
sometimes despondent, but always tinged with fears for the worst. We
always marked these paragraphs, and sent the papers to all the people
who had bought pictures of us.
'Carl was soon in Paris and he worked things with a high hand. He made
friends with the correspondents, and got Millet's condition reported to
England and all over the continent, and America, and everywhere.
'At the end of six weeks from the start, we three met in Paris and
called a halt, and stopped sending back to Millet for additional
pictures. The boom was so high, and everything so ripe, that we saw that
it would be a mistake not to strike now, right away, without waiting any
longer. So we wrote Millet to go to bed and begin to waste away pretty
fast, for we should like him to die in ten days if he could get ready.
'Then we figured up and found that among us we had sold eighty-five
small pictures and studies, and had sixty-nine thousand francs to show
for it. Carl had made the last sale and the most brilliant one of all.
He sold the “Angelus” for twenty-two hundred francs. How we did glorify
him!--not foreseeing that a day was coming by-and-by when France would
struggle to own it and a stranger would capture it for five hundred and
fifty thousand, cash.
'We had a wind-up champagne supper that night, and next day Claude and
I packed up and went off to nurse Millet through his last days and keep
busybodies out of the house and send daily bulletins to Carl in Paris
for publication in the papers of several continents for the information
of a waiting world. The sad end came at last, and Carl was there in time
to help in the final mournful rites.
'You remember that great funeral, and what a stir it made all over
the globe, and how the illustrious of two worlds came to attend it and
testify their sorrow. We four--still inseparable--carried the coffin,
and would allow none to help. And we were right about that, because it
hadn't anything in it but a wax figure, and any other coffin-bearers
would have found fault with the weight. Yes, we same old four, who had
lovingly shared privation together in the old hard times now gone for
ever, carried the cof--'
'Which four?'
'We four--for Millet helped to carry his own coffin. In disguise, you
know. Disguised as a relative--distant relative.'
'Astonishing!'
'But true just the same. Well, you remember how the pictures went up.
Money? We didn't know what to do with it. There's a man in Paris to-day
who owns seventy Millet pictures. He paid us two million francs for
them. And as for the bushels of sketches and studies which Millet
shovelled out during the six weeks that we were on the road, well, it
would astonish you to know the figure we sell them at nowadays--that is,
when we consent to let one go!'
'It is a wonderful history, perfectly wonderful!'
'Yes--it amounts to that.'
'Whatever became of Millet?'
'Can you keep a secret?'
'I can.'
'Do you remember the man I called your attention to in the dining room
to-day? That was Francois Millet.'
'Great--'
'Scott! Yes. For once they didn't starve a genius to death and then
put into other pockets the rewards he should have had himself. This
song-bird was not allowed to pipe out its heart unheard and then be paid
with the cold pomp of a big funeral. We looked out for that.'
MY DÉBUT AS A LITERARY PERSON
In those early days I had already published one little thing ['The
Jumping Frog') in an Eastern paper, but I did not consider that that
counted. In my view, a person who published things in a mere newspaper
could not properly claim recognition as a Literary Person: he must
rise away above that; he must appear in a magazine. He would then be
a Literary Person; also, he would be famous--right away. These
two ambitions were strong upon me. This was in 1866. I prepared my
contribution, and then looked around for the best magazine to go up
to glory in. I selected the most important one in New York. The
contribution was accepted. I signed it 'MARK TWAIN;' for that name had
some currency on the Pacific coast, and it was my idea to spread it
all over the world, now, at this one jump. The article appeared in the
December number, and I sat up a month waiting for the January number;
for that one would contain the year's list of contributors, my name
would be in it, and I should be famous and could give the banquet I was
meditating.
I did not give the banquet. I had not written the 'MARK TWAIN'
distinctly; it was a fresh name to Eastern printers, and they put it
'Mike Swain' or 'MacSwain,' I do not remember which. At any rate, I was
not celebrated and I did not give the banquet. I was a Literary Person,
but that was all--a buried one; buried alive.
My article was about the burning of the clipper-ship 'Hornet' on the
line, May 3, 1866. There were thirty-one men on board at the time, and
I was in Honolulu when the fifteen lean and ghostly survivors arrived
there after a voyage of forty-three days in an open boat, through the
blazing tropics, on ten days' rations of food. A very remarkable trip;
but it was conducted by a captain who was a remarkable man, otherwise
there would have been no survivors. He was a New Englander of the best
sea-going stock of the old capable times--Captain Josiah Mitchell.
I was in the islands to write letters for the weekly edition of the
Sacramento 'Union,' a rich and influential daily journal which hadn't
any use for them, but could afford to spend twenty dollars a week for
nothing. The proprietors were lovable and well-beloved men: long ago
dead, no doubt, but in me there is at least one person who still holds
them in grateful remembrance; for I dearly wanted to see the islands,
and they listened to me and gave me the opportunity when there was but
slender likelihood that it could profit them in any way.
I had been in the islands several months when the survivors arrived. I
was laid up in my room at the time, and unable to walk. Here was a great
occasion to serve my journal, and I not able to take advantage of it.
Necessarily I was in deep trouble. But by good luck his Excellency Anson
Burlingame was there at the time, on his way to take up his post in
China, where he did such good work for the United States. He came and
put me on a stretcher and had me carried to the hospital where the
shipwrecked men were, and I never needed to ask a question. He attended
to all of that himself, and I had nothing to do but make the notes.
It was like him to take that trouble. He was a great man and a great
American, and it was in his fine nature to come down from his high
office and do a friendly turn whenever he could.
We got through with this work at six in the evening. I took no dinner,
for there was no time to spare if I would beat the other correspondents.
I spent four hours arranging the notes in their proper order, then wrote
all night and beyond it; with this result: that I had a very long and
detailed account of the 'Hornet' episode ready at nine in the morning,
while the other correspondents of the San Francisco journals had nothing
but a brief outline report--for they didn't sit up. The now-and-then
schooner was to sail for San Francisco about nine; when I reached the
dock she was free forward and was just casting off her stern-line. My
fat envelope was thrown by a strong hand, and fell on board all right,
and my victory was a safe thing. All in due time the ship reached San
Francisco, but it was my complete report which made the stir and was
telegraphed to the New York papers, by Mr. Cash; he was in charge of the
Pacific bureau of the 'New York Herald' at the time.
When I returned to California by-and-by, I went up to Sacramento and
presented a bill for general correspondence at twenty dollars a week. It
was paid. Then I presented a bill for 'special' service on the 'Hornet'