I did nothing about the matter.  I had set the law after living lecture doubles of mine a couple of times in America, and the law had not been able to catch them; others in my trade had tried to catch their impostor-doubles and had failed.  Then where was the use in harrying a ghost?  None—­and so I did not disturb it.  I had a curiosity to know about that man’s lecture-tour and last moments, but that could wait.  When I should see Mr. Bascom he would tell me all about it.  But he passed from life, and I never saw him again..  My curiosity faded away.

However, when I found that I was going to Australia it revived.  And naturally:  for if the people should say that I was a dull, poor thing compared to what I was before I died, it would have a bad effect on business.  Well, to my surprise the Sydney journalists had never heard of that impostor!  I pressed them, but they were firm—­they had never heard of him, and didn’t believe in him.

I could not understand it; still, I thought it would all come right in Melbourne.  The government would remember; and the other mourners.  At the supper of the Institute of Journalists I should find out all about the matter.  But no—­it turned out that they had never heard of it.

So my mystery was a mystery still.  It was a great disappointment.  I believed it would never be cleared up—­in this life—­so I dropped it out of my mind.

But at last! just when I was least expecting it——­

However, this is not the place for the rest of it; I shall come to the matter again, in a far-distant chapter.

CHAPTER XVI.

There is a Moral sense, and there is an Immoral Sense.  History shows us that the Moral Sense enables us to perceive morality and how to avoid it, and that the Immoral Sense enables us to perceive immorality and how to enjoy it.
                              -Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar.

Melbourne spreads around over an immense area of ground.  It is a stately city architecturally as well as in magnitude.  It has an elaborate system of cable-car service; it has museums, and colleges, and schools, and public gardens, and electricity, and gas, and libraries, and theaters, and mining centers, and wool centers, and centers of the arts and sciences, and boards of trade, and ships, and railroads, and a harbor, and social clubs, and journalistic clubs, and racing clubs, and a squatter club sumptuously housed and appointed, and as many churches and banks as can make a living.  In a word, it is equipped with everything that goes to make the modern great city.  It is the largest city of Australasia, and fills the post with honor and credit.  It has one specialty; this must not be jumbled in with those other things.  It is the mitred Metropolitan of the Horse-Racing Cult.  Its race-ground is the Mecca of Australasia.  On the great annual day of sacrifice—­the