The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, and Other Stories
raging in the House. As usual, many of the Majority and the most of the
Minority were standing up--to have a better chance to exchange epithets
and make other noises. Into this storm Count Falkenhayn entered, with
his paper in his hand; and at once there was a rush to get near him and
hear him read his motion. In a moment he was walled in by listeners. The
several clauses of his motion were loudly applauded by these allies,
and as loudly disapplauded--if I may invent a word--by such of the
Opposition as could hear his voice. When he took his seat the President
promptly put the motion--persons desiring to vote in the affirmative,
stand up! The House was already standing up; had been standing for an
hour; and before a third of it had found out what the President had been
saying, he had proclaimed the adoption of the motion! And only a few
heard that. In fact, when that House is legislating you can't tell it
from artillery practice.
You will realise what a happy idea it was to side-track the lawful ayes
and noes and substitute a stand-up vote by this fact: that a little
later, when a deputation of deputies waited upon the President and
asked him if he was actually willing to claim that that measure had been
passed, he answered, 'Yes--and unanimously.' It shows that in effect the
whole House was on its feet when that trick was sprung.
The 'Lex Falkenhayn,' thus strangely born, gave the President power to
suspend for three days any deputy who should continue to be disorderly
after being called to order twice, and it also placed at his disposal
such force as might be necessary to make the suspension effective. So
the House had a sergeant-at-arms at last, and a more formidable one, as
to power, than any other legislature in Christendom had ever possessed.
The Lex Falkenhayn also gave the House itself authority to suspend
members for thirty days.
On these terms the Ausgleich could be put through in an
hour--apparently. The Opposition would have to sit meek and quiet, and
stop obstructing, or be turned into the street, deputy after deputy,
leaving the Majority an unvexed field for its work.
Certainly the thing looked well. The government was out of the
frying-pan at last. It congratulated itself, and was almost girlishly
happy. Its stock rose suddenly from less than nothing to a premium.
It confessed to itself, with pride, that its Lex Falkenhayn was a
master-stroke--a work of genius.
However, there were doubters--men who were troubled, and believed that
a grave mistake had been made. It might be that the Opposition was
crushed, and profitably for the country, too; but the manner of it--the
manner of it! That was the serious part. It could have far-reaching
results; results whose gravity might transcend all guessing. It might be
the initial step toward a return to government by force, a restoration
of the irresponsible methods of obsolete times.
There were no vacant seats in the galleries next day. In fact,
standing-room outside the building was at a premium. There were crowds
there, and a glittering array of helmeted and brass-buttoned police, on
foot and on horseback, to keep them from getting too much excited.
No one could guess what was going to happen, but every one felt that
something was going to happen, and hoped he might have a chance to see
it, or at least get the news of it while it was fresh.
At noon the House was empty--for I do not count myself. Half an hour
later the two galleries were solidly packed, the floor still empty.
Another half-hour later Wolf entered and passed to his place; then
other deputies began to stream in, among them many forms and faces grown
familiar of late. By one o'clock the membership was present in full
force. A band of Socialists stood grouped against the ministerial desks,
in the shadow of the Presidential tribune. It was observable that these
official strongholds were now protected against rushes by bolted gates,
and that these were in ward of servants wearing the House's livery.
Also the removable desk-boards had been taken away, and nothing left for
disorderly members to slat with.
There was a pervading, anxious hush--at least what stood very well for
a hush in that House. It was believed by many that the Opposition was
cowed, and that there would be no more obstruction, no more noise. That
was an error.
Presently the President entered by the distant door to the right,
followed by Vice-President Fuchs, and the two took their way down past
the Polish benches toward the tribune. Instantly the customary storm of
noises burst out, and rose higher and higher, and wilder and wilder, and
really seemed to surpass anything that had gone before it in that place.
The President took his seat and begged for order, but no one could
hear him. His lips moved--one could see that; he bowed his body forward
appealingly, and spread his great hand eloquently over his breast--one
could see that; but as concerned his uttered words, he probably could
not hear them himself. Below him was that crowd of two dozen Socialists
glaring up at him, shaking their fists at him, roaring imprecations
and insulting epithets at him. This went on for some time. Suddenly
the Socialists burst through the gates and stormed up through the
ministerial benches, and a man in a red cravat reached up and snatched
the documents that lay on the President's desk and flung them abroad.
The next moment he and his allies were struggling and fighting with the
half-dozen uniformed servants who were there to protect the new gates.
Meantime a detail of Socialists had swarmed up the side steps and
overflowed the President and the Vice, and were crowding and shouldering
and shoving them out of the place. They crowded them out, and down the
steps and across the House, past the Polish benches; and all about them
swarmed hostile Poles and Czechs, who resisted them. One could see fists
go up and come down, with other signs and shows of a heady fight; then
the President and the Vice disappeared through the door of entrance, and
the victorious Socialists turned and marched back, mounted the tribune,
flung the President's bell and his remaining papers abroad, and then
stood there in a compact little crowd, eleven strong, and held the place
as if it were a fortress. Their friends on the floor were in a frenzy of
triumph, and manifested it in their deafening way. The whole House was
on its feet, amazed and wondering.
It was an astonishing situation, and imposingly dramatic. Nobody had
looked for this. The unexpected had happened. What next? But there
can be no next; the play is over; the grand climax is reached; the
possibilities are exhausted; ring down the curtain.
Not yet. That distant door opens again. And now we see what history will
be talking of five centuries hence: a uniformed and helmeted battalion
of bronzed and stalwart men marching in double file down the floor of
the House--a free parliament profaned by an invasion of brute force!
It was an odious spectacle--odious and awful. For one moment it was
an unbelievable thing--a thing beyond all credibility; it must be a
delusion, a dream, a nightmare. But no, it was real--pitifully real,
shamefully real, hideously real. These sixty policemen had been
soldiers, and they went at their work with the cold unsentimentality of
their trade. They ascended the steps of the tribune, laid their hands
upon the inviolable persons of the representatives of a nation, and
dragged and tugged and hauled them down the steps and out at the
door; then ranged themselves in stately military array in front of the
ministerial estrade, and so stood.
It was a tremendous episode. The memory of it will outlast all the
thrones that exist to-day. In the whole history of free parliaments the
like of it had been seen but three times before. It takes its imposing
place among the world's unforgettable things. It think that in my
lifetime I have not twice seen abiding history made before my eyes, but
I know that I have seen it once.
Some of the results of this wild freak followed instantly. The Badeni
government came down with a crash; there was a popular outbreak or two
in Vienna; there were three or four days of furious rioting in Prague,
followed by the establishing there of martial law; the Jews and Germans
were harried and plundered, and their houses destroyed; in other
Bohemian towns there was rioting--in some cases the Germans being the
rioters, in others the Czechs--and in all cases the Jew had to roast, no
matter which side he was on. We are well along in December now;(3) the
next new Minister-President has not been able to patch up a peace among
the warring factions of the parliament, therefore there is no use in
calling it together again for the present; public opinion believes that
parliamentary government and the Constitution are actually threatened
with extinction, and that the permanency of the monarchy itself is a not
absolutely certain thing!
Yes, the Lex Falkenhayn was a great invention, and did what was claimed
for it--it got the government out of the frying-pan.
(1) That is, revolution.
(2) 'In that gracious bygone time when a mild and good-tempered spirit
was the atmosphere of our House, when the manner of our speakers was
studiously formal and academic, and the storms and explosions of to-day
were wholly unknown,' etc.--Translation of the opening remark of a
leading article in this morning's 'Neue Freie Presse,' December 1.
(3) It is the 9th.--M.T.
PRIVATE HISTORY OF THE 'JUMPING FROG' STORY
Five or six years ago a lady from Finland asked me to tell her a story
in our Negro dialect, so that she could get an idea of what that variety
of speech was like. I told her one of Hopkinson Smith's Negro stories,
and gave her a copy of 'Harper's Monthly' containing it. She translated
it for a Swedish newspaper, but by an oversight named me as the author
of it instead of Smith. I was very sorry for that, because I got a good
lashing in the Swedish press, which would have fallen to his share but
for that mistake; for it was shown that Boccaccio had told that very
story, in his curt and meagre fashion, five hundred years before Smith
took hold of it and made a good and tellable thing out of it.
I have always been sorry for Smith. But my own turn has come now. A few
weeks ago Professor Van Dyke, of Princeton, asked this question:
'Do you know how old your “Jumping Frog” story is?'
And I answered:
'Yes--forty-five years. The thing happened in Calaveras County, in the
spring of 1849.'
'No; it happened earlier--a couple of thousand years earlier; it is a
Greek story.'
I was astonished--and hurt. I said:
'I am willing to be a literary thief if it has been so ordained; I
am even willing to be caught robbing the ancient dead alongside of
Hopkinson Smith, for he is my friend and a good fellow, and I think
would be as honest as any one if he could do it without occasioning
remark; but I am not willing to antedate his crimes by fifteen hundred
years. I must ask you to knock off part of that.'
But the professor was not chaffing: he was in earnest, and could not
abate a century. He offered to get the book and send it to me and the
Cambridge text-book containing the English translation also. I thought
I would like the translation best, because Greek makes me tired. January
30th he sent me the English version, and I will presently insert it in
this article. It is my 'Jumping Frog' tale in every essential. It is not
strung out as I have strung it out, but it is all there.
To me this is very curious and interesting. Curious for several reasons.
For instance:
I heard the story told by a man who was not telling it to his hearers as
a thing new to them, but as a thing which they had witnessed and would