the lower end of the town, and were sweeping everything before them.  Our column moved at once.  It was a very hot night, and my musket was very heavy.  We marched and marched; and the nearer we approached the seat of war, the hotter I grew and the thirstier I got.  I was behind my friend; so, finally, I asked him to hold my musket while I dropped out and got a drink.  Then I branched off and went home.  I was not feeling any solicitude about him of course, because I knew he was so well armed, now, that he could take care of himself without any trouble.  If I had had any doubts about that, I would have borrowed another musket for him.  I left the city pretty early the next morning, and if this grizzled man had not happened to encounter my name in the papers the other day in St. Louis, and felt moved to seek me out, I should have carried to my grave a heart-torturing uncertainty as to whether he ever got out of the riots all right or not.  I ought to have inquired, thirty years ago; I know that.  And I would have inquired, if I had had the muskets; but, in the circumstances, he seemed better fixed to conduct the investigations than I was.

One Monday, near the time of our visit to St. Louis, the ’Globe-Democrat’ came out with a couple of pages of Sunday statistics, whereby it appeared that 119,448 St. Louis people attended the morning and evening church services the day before, and 23,102 children attended Sunday-school.  Thus 142,550 persons, out of the city’s total of 400,000 population, respected the day religious-wise.  I found these statistics, in a condensed form, in a telegram of the Associated Press, and preserved them.  They made it apparent that St. Louis was in a higher state of grace than she could have claimed to be in my time.  But now that I canvass the figures narrowly, I suspect that the telegraph mutilated them.  It cannot be that there are more than 150,000 Catholics in the town; the other 250,000 must be classified as Protestants.  Out of these 250,000, according to this questionable telegram, only 26,362 attended church and Sunday-school, while out of the 150,000 Catholics, 116,188 went to church and Sunday-school.

Chapter 52 A Burning Brand

All at once the thought came into my mind, ’I have not sought out Mr. Brown.’

Upon that text I desire to depart from the direct line of my subject, and make a little excursion.  I wish to reveal a secret which I have carried with me nine years, and which has become burdensome.

Upon a certain occasion, nine years ago, I had said, with strong feeling, ’If ever I see St. Louis again, I will seek out Mr. Brown, the great grain merchant, and ask of him the privilege of shaking him by the hand.’

The occasion and the circumstances were as follows.  A friend of mine, a clergyman, came one evening and said—­