and nothing to eat but snakes and grubs and ’offal.  This would be a hell to him; and if he had any wisdom he would know that his own civilization is a hell to the savage—­but he hasn’t any, and has never had any; and for lack of it he shut up those poor natives in the unimaginable perdition of his civilization, committing his crime with the very best intentions, and saw those poor creatures waste away under his tortures; and gazed at it, vaguely troubled and sorrowful, and wondered what could be the matter with them.  One is almost betrayed into respecting those criminals, they were so sincerely kind, and tender, and humane; and well-meaning.

They didn’t know why those exiled savages faded away, and they did their honest best to reason it out.  And one man, in a like case in New South Wales, did reason it out and arrive at a solution: 

     “It is from the wrath of God, which is revealed from heaven against
     cold ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.”

That settles it.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Let us be thankful for the fools.  But for them the rest of us could not succeed. 
                                  —­Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar.

The aphorism does really seem true:  “Given the Circumstances, the Man will appear.”  But the man musn’t appear ahead of time, or it will spoil everything.  In Robinson’s case the Moment had been approaching for a quarter of a century—­and meantime the future Conciliator was tranquilly laying bricks in Hobart.  When all other means had failed, the Moment had arrived, and the Bricklayer put down his trowel and came forward.  Earlier he would have been jeered back to his trowel again.  It reminds me of a tale that was told me by a Kentuckian on the train when we were crossing Montana.  He said the tale was current in Louisville years ago.  He thought it had been in print, but could not remember.  At any rate, in substance it was this, as nearly as I can call it back to mind.

A few years before the outbreak of the Civil War it began to appear that Memphis, Tennessee, was going to be a great tobacco entrepot—­the wise could see the signs of it.  At that time Memphis had a wharf boat, of course.  There was a paved sloping wharf, for the accommodation of freight, but the steamers landed on the outside of the wharfboat, and all loading and unloading was done across it, between steamer and shore.  A number of wharfboat clerks were needed, and part of the time, every day, they were very busy, and part of the time tediously idle.  They were boiling over with youth and spirits, and they had to make the intervals of idleness endurable in some way; and as a rule, they did it by contriving practical jokes and playing them upon each other.

The favorite butt for the jokes was Ed Jackson, because he played none himself, and was easy game for other people’s—­for he always believed whatever was told him.