By a unanimous voice the people condemned the ex-emperor
and the social democrat to perpetual banishment from
church services, or to perpetual labor as galley-slaves
in the whale-boat—whichever they might prefer.
The next day the nation assembled again, and rehoisted
the British flag, reinstated the British tyranny,
reduced the nobility to the condition of commoners
again, and then straightway turned their diligent attention
to the weeding of the ruined and neglected yam patches,
and the rehabilitation of the old useful industries
and the old healing and solacing pieties. The
ex-emperor restored the lost trespass law, and explained
that he had stolen it not to injure any one, but to
further his political projects. Therefore the
nation gave the late chief magistrate his office again,
and also his alienated Property.
Upon reflection, the ex-emperor and the social democrat
chose perpetual banishment from religious services
in preference to perpetual labor as galley slaves
“with perpetual religious services,” as
they phrased it; wherefore the people believed that
the poor fellows’ troubles had unseated their
reason, and so they judged it best to confine them
for the present. Which they did.
Such is the history of Pitcairn’s “doubtful
acquisition.”
THE CANVASSER’S TALE
Poor, sad-eyed stranger! There was that about
his humble mien, his tired look, his decayed-gentility
clothes, that almost reached the mustard, seed of
charity that still remained, remote and lonely, in
the empty vastness of my heart, notwithstanding I
observed a portfolio under his arm, and said to myself,
Behold, Providence hath delivered his servant into
the hands of another canvasser.
Well, these people always get one interested.
Before I well knew how it came about, this one was
telling me his history, and I was all attention and
sympathy. He told it something like this:
My parents died, alas, when I was a little, sinless
child. My uncle Ithuriel took me to his heart
and reared me as his own. He was my only relative
in the wide world; but he was good and rich and generous.
He reared me in the lap of luxury. I knew no
want that money could satisfy.
In the fullness of time I was graduated, and went
with two of my servants—my chamberlain
and my valet—to travel in foreign countries.
During four years I flitted upon careless wing amid
the beauteous gardens of the distant strand, if you
will permit this form of speech in one whose tongue
was ever attuned to poesy; and indeed I so speak with
confidence, as one unto his kind, for I perceive by
your eyes that you too, sir, are gifted with the divine
inflation. In those far lands I reveled in the
ambrosial food that fructifies the soul, the mind,
the heart. But of all things, that which most
appealed to my inborn esthetic taste was the prevailing
custom there, among the rich, of making collections
of elegant and costly rarities, dainty objets de vertu,
and in an evil hour I tried to uplift my uncle Ithuriel
to a plane of sympathy with this exquisite employment.
Copyrights
Alonzo Fitz and Other Stories from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
