(Pointing to Panorama)

A more cheerful view of the desert.

The wild snow-storms have left us and we have thrown our wolf-skin overcoats aside.  Certain tribes of far-western Indians bury their distinguished dead by placing them high in air and covering them with valuable furs.  That is a very fair representation of those mid-air tombs.  Those animals are horses.  I know they are, because my artist says so.  I had the picture two years before I discovered the fact.  The artist came to me about six months ago and said, “It is useless to disguise it from you any longer, they are horses.”

It was while crossing this desert that I was surrounded by a band of Ute Indians.  They were splendidly mounted.  They were dressed in beaver-skins, and they were armed with rifles, knives, and pistols.

What could I do?  What could a poor old orphan do?  I’m a brave man.  The day before the battle of Bull’s Run I stood in the highway while the bullets—­those dreadful messengers of death—­were passing all around me thickly—­in wagons—­on their way to the battle-field.  But there were too many of these Injuns.  There were forty of them, and only one of me, and so I said: 

“Great chief, I surrender.”

His name was Wocky-bocky.  He dismounted and approached me.  I saw his tomahawk glisten in the morning sunlight.  Fire was in his eye.  Wocky-bocky came very close

(Pointing to Panorama)

to me and seized me by the hair of my head.  He mingled his swarthy fingers with my golden tresses, and he rubbed his dreadful tomahawk across my lily-white face.  He said: 

“Torsha arrah darrah mishky bookshean!”

I told him he was right.

Wocky-bocky again rubbed his tomahawk across my face, and said: 

“Wink-ho-loo-boo!”

Says I, “Mr. Wocky-bocky,” says I, “Wocky, I have thought so for years, and so’s all our family.”

He told me I must go to the tent of the Strong Heart and eat raw dog.  It don’t agree with mo.  I prefer simple food.  I prefer pork-pie, because then I know what I’m eating.  But as raw dog was all they proposed to give to me I had to eat it or starve.  So at the expiration of two days I seized a tin plate and went to the chief’s daughter, and I said to her in a silvery voice—­in a kind of German-silvery voice—­I said: 

“Sweet child of the forest, the pale-face wants his dog.”

There was nothing but his paws.  I had paused too long—­which reminds me that time passes—­a way which time has.  I was told in my youth to seize opportunity.  I once tried to seize one.  He was rich; he had diamonds on.  As I seized him he knocked me down.  Since then I have learned that he who seizes opportunity sees the penitentiary.

SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS.

THE JUMPING FROG OF CALAVERAS COUNTY.