Another character in the story says, “I know you don’t cotton to the march of science in these matters,” and speaks of something that is unusual as being “a rum affair.”  A walled state prison, presumably in Illinois, is referred to as a “convict camp”; and its warden is called a “governor” and an assistant keeper is called a “warder”; while a Chicago daily paper is quoted as saying that “larrikins” directed the attention of a policeman to a person who was doing thus and so.

The writer describes a “mysterious mere” known as Pilgrim’s Pond, “in which they say”—­a prison official is supposed to be talking now—­“our fathers made witches walk until they sank.”  Descendants of the original Puritans who went from Plymouth Rock, in the summer of 1621, and founded Chicago, will recall this pond distinctly.  Cotton Mather is buried on its far bank, and from there it is just ten minutes by trolley to Salem, Massachusetts.  It is stated also in this story that the prairies begin a matter of thirty-odd miles from Chicago, and that to reach them one must first traverse a “perfect no man’s land.”  Englewood and South Chicago papers please copy.

Chapter XIX

Venice and the Venisons

Getting back again to guides, I am reminded that our acquaintanceship with the second member of the Mark Twain brotherhood was staged in Paris.  This gentleman wished himself on us one afternoon at the Hotel des Invalides.  We did not engage him; he engaged us, doing the trick with such finesse and skill that before we realized it we had been retained to accompany him to various points of interest in and round Paris.  However, we remained under his control one day only.  At nightfall we wrested ourselves free and fled under cover of darkness to German soil, where we were comparatively safe.

I never knew a man who advanced so rapidly in a military way as he did during the course of that one day.  Our own national guard could not hold a candle to him.  He started out at ten A.M. by being an officer of volunteers in the Franco-Prussian War; but every time he slipped away and took a nip out of his private bottle, which was often, he advanced in rank automatically.  Before the dusk of evening came he was a corps commander, who had been ennobled on the field of battle by the hand of Napoleon the Third.

He took us to Versailles.  We did not particularly care to go to Versailles that day, because it was raining; but he insisted and we went.  In spite of the drizzle we might have enjoyed that wonderful place had he not been constantly at our elbows, gabbling away steadily except when he excused himself for a moment and stepped behind a tree, to emerge a moment later wiping his mouth on his sleeve.  Then he would return to us, with an added gimpiness in his elderly legs, an increased expansion of the chest inside his tight and shiny frock coat, and a fresh freight of richness on his breath, to report another deserved promotion.