I stumbled upon one curious character in the Island of Maui. He became a
sore annoyance to me in the course of time. My first glimpse of him was in
a sort of public room in the town of Lahaina. He occupied a chair at the
opposite side of the apartment, and sat eyeing our party with interest for
some minutes, and listening as critically to what we were saying as if he
fancied we were talking to him and expecting him to reply. I thought it
very sociable in a stranger. Presently, in the course of conversation, I
made a statement bearing upon the subject under discussion—and I
made it with due modesty, for there was nothing extraordinary about it,
and it was only put forth in illustration of a point at issue. I had
barely finished when this person spoke out with rapid utterance and
feverish anxiety:
“Oh, that was certainly remarkable, after a fashion, but you ought
to have seen my chimney—you ought to have seen my
chimney, sir! Smoke! I wish I may hang if—Mr. Jones, you
remember that chimney—you must remember that chimney! No, no—I
recollect, now, you warn’t living on this side of the island then.
But I am telling you nothing but the truth, and I wish I may never draw
another breath if that chimney didn’t smoke so that the smoke
actually got caked in it and I had to dig it out with a pickaxe!
You may smile, gentlemen, but the High Sheriff’s got a hunk of it
which I dug out before his eyes, and so it’s perfectly easy for you
to go and examine for yourselves.”
The interruption broke up the conversation, which had already begun to
lag, and we presently hired some natives and an out-rigger canoe or two,
and went out to overlook a grand surf-bathing contest.
Two weeks after this, while talking in a company, I looked up and detected
this same man boring through and through me with his intense eye, and
noted again his twitching muscles and his feverish anxiety to speak. The
moment I paused, he said:
“Beg your pardon, sir, beg your pardon, but it can only be
considered remarkable when brought into strong outline by isolation. Sir,
contrasted with a circumstance which occurred in my own experience, it
instantly becomes commonplace. No, not that—for I will not speak so
discourteously of any experience in the career of a stranger and a
gentleman—but I am obliged to say that you could not, and you
would not ever again refer to this tree as a large one, if
you could behold, as I have, the great Yakmatack tree, in the island of
Ounaska, sea of Kamtchatka—a tree, sir, not one inch less than four
hundred and fifteen feet in solid diameter!—and I wish I may die in
a minute if it isn’t so! Oh, you needn’t look so questioning,
gentlemen; here’s old Cap Saltmarsh can say whether I know what I’m
talking about or not. I showed him the tree.”
Captain Saltmarsh.—“Come, now, cat your anchor, lad—you’re
heaving too taut. You promised to show me that stunner, and I
walked more than eleven mile with you through the cussedest jungle I
ever see, a hunting for it; but the tree you showed me finally warn’t
as big around as a beer cask, and you know that your own self,
Markiss.”
“Hear the man talk! Of course the tree was reduced that way,
but didn’t I explain it? Answer me, didn’t I? Didn’t
I say I wished you could have seen it when I first saw it? When you
got up on your ear and called me names, and said I had brought you eleven
miles to look at a sapling, didn’t I explain to you that all
the whale-ships in the North Seas had been wooding off of it for more than
twenty-seven years? And did you s’pose the tree could last for-ever,
con-found it? I don’t see why you want to keep back things
that way, and try to injure a person that’s never done you
any harm.”
Somehow this man’s presence made me uncomfortable, and I was glad
when a native arrived at that moment to say that Muckawow, the most
companionable and luxurious among the rude war-chiefs of the Islands,
desired us to come over and help him enjoy a missionary whom he had found
trespassing on his grounds.
I think it was about ten days afterward that, as I finished a statement I
was making for the instruction of a group of friends and acquaintances,
and which made no pretence of being extraordinary, a familiar voice chimed
instantly in on the heels of my last word, and said:
“But, my dear sir, there was nothing remarkable about that
horse, or the circumstance either—nothing in the world! I mean no
sort of offence when I say it, sir, but you really do not know anything
whatever about speed. Bless your heart, if you could only have seen my
mare Margaretta; there was a beast!—there was
lightning for you! Trot! Trot is no name for it—she flew! How she
could whirl a buggy along! I started her out once, sir—Colonel
Bilgewater, you recollect that animal perfectly well—I
started her out about thirty or thirty-five yards ahead of the awfullest
storm I ever saw in my life, and it chased us upwards of eighteen miles!
It did, by the everlasting hills! And I’m telling you nothing but
the unvarnished truth when I say that not one single drop of rain
fell on me—not a single drop, sir! And I swear to it! But my dog was
a-swimming behind the wagon all the way!”
For a week or two I stayed mostly within doors, for I seemed to meet this
person everywhere, and he had become utterly hateful to me. But one
evening I dropped in on Captain Perkins and his friends, and we had a
sociable time. About ten o’clock I chanced to be talking about a
merchant friend of mine, and without really intending it, the remark
slipped out that he was a little mean and parsimonious about paying his
workmen. Instantly, through the steam of a hot whiskey punch on the
opposite side of the room, a remembered voice shot—and for a moment
I trembled on the imminent verge of profanity:
“Oh, my dear sir, really you expose yourself when you parade that
as a surprising circumstance. Bless your heart and hide, you are ignorant
of the very A B C of meanness! ignorant as the unborn babe! ignorant as
unborn twins! You don’t know anything about it! It is
pitiable to see you, sir, a well-spoken and prepossessing stranger, making
such an enormous pow-wow here about a subject concerning which your
ignorance is perfectly humiliating! Look me in the eye, if you please;
look me in the eye. John James Godfrey was the son of poor but honest
parents in the State of Mississippi—boyhood friend of mine—bosom
comrade in later years. Heaven rest his noble spirit, he is gone from us
now. John James Godfrey was hired by the Hayblossom Mining Company in
California to do some blasting for them—the “Incorporated
Company of Mean Men,” the boys used to call it.
“Well, one day he drilled a hole about four feet deep and put in an
awful blast of powder, and was standing over it ramming it down with an
iron crowbar about nine foot long, when the cussed thing struck a spark
and fired the powder, and scat! away John Godfrey whizzed like a
skyrocket, him and his crowbar! Well, sir, he kept on going up in the air
higher and higher, till he didn’t look any bigger than a boy—and
he kept going on up higher and higher, till he didn’t look any
bigger than a doll—and he kept on going up higher and higher, till
he didn’t look any bigger than a little small bee—and then he
went out of sight! Presently he came in sight again, looking like a little
small bee—and he came along down further and further, till he looked
as big as a doll again—and down further and further, till he was as
big as a boy again—and further and further, till he was a full-sized
man once more; and then him and his crowbar came a wh-izzing down and lit
right exactly in the same old tracks and went to r-ramming down, and
r-ramming down, and r-ramming down again, just the same as if nothing had
happened! Now do you know, that poor cuss warn’t gone only sixteen
minutes, and yet that Incorporated Company of Mean Men DOCKED HIM FOR THE
LOST TIME!”
I said I had the headache, and so excused myself and went home. And on my
diary I entered “another night spoiled” by this offensive
loafer. And a fervent curse was set down with it to keep the item company.
And the very next day I packed up, out of all patience, and left the
Island.
Almost from the very beginning, I regarded that man as a liar
.................................
The line of points represents an interval of years. At the end of which
time the opinion hazarded in that last sentence came to be gratifyingly
and remarkably endorsed, and by wholly disinterested persons. The man
Markiss was found one morning hanging to a beam of his own bedroom (the
doors and windows securely fastened on the inside), dead; and on his
breast was pinned a paper in his own handwriting begging his friends to
suspect no innocent person of having any thing to do with his death, for
that it was the work of his own hands entirely. Yet the jury brought in
the astounding verdict that deceased came to his death “by the hands
of some person or persons unknown!” They explained that the
perfectly undeviating consistency of Markiss’s character for thirty
years towered aloft as colossal and indestructible testimony, that
whatever statement he chose to make was entitled to instant and
unquestioning acceptance as a lie. And they furthermore stated
their belief that he was not dead, and instanced the strong circumstantial
evidence of his own word that he was dead—and beseeched the
coroner to delay the funeral as long as possible, which was done. And so
in the tropical climate of Lahaina the coffin stood open for seven days,
and then even the loyal jury gave him up. But they sat on him again, and
changed their verdict to “suicide induced by mental aberration”—because,
said they, with penetration, “he said he was dead, and he was
dead; and would he have told the truth if he had been in his right mind?
No, sir.”
