The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, and Other Stories
quite impossible that, with that precedent on the books, the Government
will be able to find excuses for continuing its diplomatic salaries at
the present mean figure.
P.S.--VIENNA, January 10.--I see, by this morning's telegraphic news,
that I am not to be the new ambassador here, after all. This--well,
I hardly know what to say. I--well, of course, I do not care anything
about it; but it is at least a surprise. I have for many months been
using my influence at Washington to get this diplomatic see expanded
into an ambassadorship, with the idea, of course th--But never mind. Let
it go. It is of no consequence. I say it calmly; for I am calm. But at
the same time--However, the subject has no interest for me, and never
had. I never really intended to take the place, anyway--I made up my
mind to it months and months ago, nearly a year. But now, while I am
calm, I would like to say this--that so long as I shall continue to
possess an American's proper pride in the honour and dignity of his
country, I will not take any ambassadorship in the gift of the flag at
a salary short of $75,000 a year. If I shall be charged with wanting to
live beyond my country's means, I cannot help it. A country which cannot
afford ambassador's wages should be ashamed to have ambassadors.
Think of a Seventeen-thousand-five-hundred-dollar ambassador!
Particularly for America. Why it is the most ludicrous spectacle, the
most inconsistent and incongruous spectacle, contrivable by even the
most diseased imagination. It is a billionaire in a paper collar, a king
in a breechclout, an archangel in a tin halo. And, for pure sham and
hypocrisy, the salary is just the match of the ambassador's official
clothes--that boastful advertisement of a Republican Simplicity which
manifests itself at home in Fifty-thousand-dollar salaries to insurance
presidents and railway lawyers, and in domestic palaces whose fittings
and furnishings often transcend in costly display and splendour and
richness the fittings and furnishings of the palaces of the sceptred
masters of Europe; and which has invented and exported to the Old World
the palace-car, the sleeping-car, the tram-car, the electric trolley,
the best bicycles, the best motor-cars, the steam-heater, the best and
smartest systems of electric calls and telephonic aids to laziness and
comfort, the elevator, the private bath-room (hot and cold water on
tap), the palace-hotel, with its multifarious conveniences, comforts,
shows, and luxuries, the--oh, the list is interminable! In a word,
Republican Simplicity found Europe with one shirt on her back, so to
speak, as far as real luxuries, conveniences, and the comforts of
life go, and has clothed her to the chin with the latter. We are the
lavishest and showiest and most luxury-loving people on the earth; and
at our masthead we fly one true and honest symbol, the gaudiest flag
the world has ever seen. Oh, Republican Simplicity, there are many, many
humbugs in the world, but none to which you need take off your hat!
LUCK
(NOTE.--This is not a fancy sketch. I got it from a clergyman who was
an instructor at Woolwich forty years ago, and who vouched for its
truth.--M.T.)
It was at a banquet in London in honour of one of the two or three
conspicuously illustrious English military names of this generation. For
reasons which will presently appear, I will withhold his real name and
titles, and call him Lieutenant-General Lord Arthur Scoresby, V.C.,
K.C.B., etc., etc., etc. What a fascination there is in a renowned
name! There sat the man, in actual flesh, whom I had heard of so many
thousands of times since that day, thirty years before, when his name
shot suddenly to the zenith from a Crimean battle-field, to remain for
ever celebrated. It was food and drink to me to look, and look, and
look at that demigod; scanning, searching, noting: the quietness, the
reserve, the noble gravity of his countenance; the simple honesty
that expressed itself all over him; the sweet unconsciousness of his
greatness--unconsciousness of the hundreds of admiring eyes fastened
upon him, unconsciousness of the deep, loving, sincere worship welling
out of the breasts of those people and flowing toward him.
The clergyman at my left was an old acquaintance of mine--clergyman now,
but had spent the first half of his life in the camp and field, and as
an instructor in the military school at Woolwich. Just at the moment I
have been talking about, a veiled and singular light glimmered in his
eyes, and he leaned down and muttered confidentially to me--indicating
the hero of the banquet with a gesture,--'Privately--his glory is an
accident--just a product of incredible luck.'
This verdict was a great surprise to me. If its subject had been
Napoleon, or Socrates, or Solomon, my astonishment could not have been
greater.
Some days later came the explanation of this strange remark, and this is
what the Reverend told me.
About forty years ago I was an instructor in the military academy at
Woolwich. I was present in one of the sections when young Scoresby
underwent his preliminary examination. I was touched to the quick with
pity; for the rest of the class answered up brightly and handsomely,
while he--why, dear me, he didn't know anything, so to speak. He was
evidently good, and sweet, and lovable, and guileless; and so it was
exceedingly painful to see him stand there, as serene as a graven image,
and deliver himself of answers which were veritably miraculous for
stupidity and ignorance. All the compassion in me was aroused in his
behalf. I said to myself, when he comes to be examined again, he will be
flung over, of course; so it will be simple a harmless act of charity to
ease his fall as much as I can.
I took him aside, and found that he knew a little of Caesar's history;
and as he didn't know anything else, I went to work and drilled him like
a galley-slave on a certain line of stock questions concerning Caesar
which I knew would be used. If you'll believe me, he went through
with flying colours on examination day! He went through on that purely
superficial 'cram', and got compliments, too, while others, who knew
a thousand times more than he, got plucked. By some strangely lucky
accident--an accident not likely to happen twice in a century--he was
asked no question outside of the narrow limits of his drill.
It was stupefying. Well, although through his course I stood by him,
with something of the sentiment which a mother feels for a crippled
child; and he always saved himself--just by miracle, apparently.
Now of course the thing that would expose him and kill him at last
was mathematics. I resolved to make his death as easy as I could; so I
drilled him and crammed him, and crammed him and drilled him, just on
the line of questions which the examiner would be most likely to use,
and then launched him on his fate. Well, sir, try to conceive of the
result: to my consternation, he took the first prize! And with it he got
a perfect ovation in the way of compliments.
Sleep! There was no more sleep for me for a week. My conscience tortured
me day and night. What I had done I had done purely through charity,
and only to ease the poor youth's fall--I never had dreamed of any such
preposterous result as the thing that had happened. I felt as guilty and
miserable as the creator of Frankenstein. Here was a wooden-head whom
I had put in the way of glittering promotions and prodigious
responsibilities, and but one thing could happen: he and his
responsibilities would all go to ruin together at the first opportunity.
The Crimean war had just broken out. Of course there had to be a war, I
said to myself: we couldn't have peace and give this donkey a chance to
die before he is found out. I waited for the earthquake. It came. And it
made me reel when it did come. He was actually gazetted to a captaincy
in a marching regiment! Better men grow old and gray in the service
before they climb to a sublimity like that. And who could ever have
foreseen that they would go and put such a load of responsibility on
such green and inadequate shoulders? I could just barely have stood it
if they had made him a cornet; but a captain--think of it! I thought my
hair would turn white.
Consider what I did--I who so loved repose and inaction. I said to
myself, I am responsible to the country for this, and I must go along
with him and protect the country against him as far as I can. So I took
my poor little capital that I had saved up through years of work and
grinding economy, and went with a sigh and bought a cornetcy in his
regiment, and away we went to the field.
And there--oh dear, it was awful. Blunders? why, he never did anything
but blunder. But, you see, nobody was in the fellow's secret--everybody
had him focused wrong, and necessarily misinterpreted his performance
every time--consequently they took his idiotic blunders for inspirations
of genius; they did honestly! His mildest blunders were enough to make
a man in his right mind cry; and they did make me cry--and rage and
rave too, privately. And the thing that kept me always in a sweat of
apprehension was the fact that every fresh blunder he made increased
the lustre of his reputation! I kept saying to myself, he'll get so high
that when discovery does finally come it will be like the sun falling
out of the sky.
He went right along up, from grade to grade, over the dead bodies of his
superiors, until at last, in the hottest moment of the battle of... down
went our colonel, and my heart jumped into my mouth, for Scoresby
was next in rank! Now for it, said I; we'll all land in Sheol in ten
minutes, sure.
The battle was awfully hot; the allies were steadily giving way all over
the field. Our regiment occupied a position that was vital; a blunder
now must be destruction. At this critical moment, what does this
immortal fool do but detach the regiment from its place and order a
charge over a neighbouring hill where there wasn't a suggestion of an
enemy! 'There you go!' I said to myself; 'this is the end at last.'
And away we did go, and were over the shoulder of the hill before the
insane movement could be discovered and stopped. And what did we find?
An entire and unsuspected Russian army in reserve! And what happened?
We were eaten up? That is necessarily what would have happened in
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. But no; those Russians argued that
no single regiment would come browsing around there at such a time.
It must be the entire English army, and that the sly Russian game
was detected and blocked; so they turned tail, and away they went,
pell-mell, over the hill and down into the field, in wild confusion,
and we after them; they themselves broke the solid Russia centre in the
field, and tore through, and in no time there was the most tremendous
rout you ever saw, and the defeat of the allies was turned into a
sweeping and splendid victory! Marshal Canrobert looked on, dizzy with
astonishment, admiration, and delight; and sent right off for Scoresby,
and hugged him, and decorated him on the field in presence of all the
armies!
And what was Scoresby's blunder that time? Merely the mistaking his
right hand for his left--that was all. An order had come to him to fall
back and support our right; and instead he fell forward and went over
the hill to the left. But the name he won that day as a marvellous
military genius filled the world with his glory, and that glory will
never fade while history books last.
He is just as good and sweet and lovable and unpretending as a man can
be, but he doesn't know enough to come in when it rains. He has
been pursued, day by day and year by year, by a most phenomenal and
astonishing luckiness. He has been a shining soldier in all our wars for