character of their personal acts and the acts of ordinary men to whom they have given supernatural qualities.  To your Samson was given supernatural power, and when he broke the withes, and slew the thousands with the jawbone of an ass, and carried away the gate’s of the city upon his shoulders, you were amazed—­and also awed, for you recognized the divine source of his strength.  But it could not profit to place these things before your Hindoo congregation and invite their wonder; for they would compare them with the deed done by Hanuman, when our gods infused their divine strength into his muscles; and they would be indifferent to them—­as you saw.  In the old, old times, ages and ages gone by, when our god Rama was warring with the demon god of Ceylon, Rama bethought him to bridge the sea and connect Ceylon with India, so that his armies might pass easily over; and he sent his general, Hanuman, inspired like your own Samson with divine strength, to bring the materials for the bridge.  In two days Hanuman strode fifteen hundred miles, to the Himalayas, and took upon his shoulder a range of those lofty mountains two hundred miles long, and started with it toward Ceylon.  It was in the night; and, as he passed along the plain, the people of Govardhun heard the thunder of his tread and felt the earth rocking under it, and they ran out, and there, with their snowy summits piled to heaven, they saw the Himalayas passing by.  And as this huge continent swept along overshadowing the earth, upon its slopes they discerned the twinkling lights of a thousand sleeping villages, and it was as if the constellations were filing in procession through the sky.  While they were looking, Hanuman stumbled, and a small ridge of red sandstone twenty miles long was jolted loose and fell.  Half of its length has wasted away in the course of the ages, but the other ten miles of it remain in the plain by Govardhun to this day as proof of the might of the inspiration of our gods.  You must know, yourself, that Hanuman could not have carried those mountains to Ceylon except by the strength of the gods.  You know that it was not done by his own strength, therefore, you know that it was done by the strength of the gods, just as you know that Samson carried the gates by the divine strength and not by his own.  I think you must concede two things:  First, That in carrying the gates of the city upon his shoulders, Samson did not establish the superiority of his gods over ours; secondly, That his feat is not supported by any but verbal evidence, while Hanuman’s is not only supported by verbal evidence, but this evidence is confirmed, established, proven, by visible, tangible evidence, which is the strongest of all testimony.  We have the sandstone ridge, and while it remains we cannot doubt, and shall not.  Have you the gates?’”

CHAPTER XIII.

The timid man yearns for full value and asks a tenth.  The bold man strikes for double value and compromises on par. 
                                  —­Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar.