He invented the thirty-two members and their names.  He invented the five favorite speakers and their five separate styles.  He invented their speeches, and reported them himself.  He would have kept that Club going until now, if I hadn’t deserted, he said.  He said he worked like a slave over those reports; each of them cost him from a week to a fortnight’s work, and the work gave him pleasure and kept him alive and willing to be alive.  It was a bitter blow to him when the Club died.

Finally, there wasn’t any Corrigan Castle.  He had invented that, too.

It was wonderful—­the whole thing; and altogether the most ingenious and laborious and cheerful and painstaking practical joke I have ever heard of.  And I liked it; liked to bear him tell about it; yet I have been a hater of practical jokes from as long back as I can remember.  Finally he said—­

“Do you remember a note from Melbourne fourteen or fifteen years ago, telling about your lecture tour in Australia, and your death and burial in Melbourne?—­a note from Henry Bascomb, of Bascomb Hall, Upper Holywell Hants.”

“Yes.”

“I wrote it.”

“M-y-word!”

“Yes, I did it.  I don’t know why.  I just took the notion, and carried it out without stopping to think.  It was wrong.  It could have done harm.  I was always sorry about it afterward.  You must forgive me.  I was Mr. Bascom’s guest on his yacht, on his voyage around the world.  He often spoke of you, and of the pleasant times you had had together in his home; and the notion took me, there in Melbourne, and I imitated his hand, and wrote the letter.”

So the mystery was cleared up, after so many, many years.

CHAPTER XXVI.

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one! keep
from telling their happinesses to the unhappy. 
                                  —­Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar.

After visits to Maryborough and some other Australian towns, we presently took passage for New Zealand.  If it would not look too much like showing off, I would tell the reader where New Zealand is; for he is as I was; he thinks he knows.  And he thinks he knows where Hertzegovina is; and how to pronounce pariah; and how to use the word unique without exposing himself to the derision of the dictionary.  But in truth, he knows none of these things.  There are but four or five people in the world who possess this knowledge, and these make their living out of it.  They travel from place to place, visiting literary assemblages, geographical societies, and seats of learning, and springing sudden bets that these people do not know these things.  Since all people think they know them, they are an easy prey to these adventurers.  Or rather they were an easy prey until the law interfered, three months ago, and a New York court decided that this kind of gambling is illegal, “because it traverses Article IV, Section 9, of the Constitution of the United States, which forbids betting on a sure thing.”  This decision was rendered by the full Bench of the New York Supreme Court, after a test sprung upon the court by counsel for the prosecution, which showed that none of the nine Judges was able to answer any of the four questions.