Alaska now, but was only an iceberg then, with a population
composed of bears, walruses, Indians, and other animals;
and how the iceberg got adrift at last, and left all
his paying subscribers behind, and as soon as the commonwealth
floated out of the jurisdiction of Russia the people
rose and threw off their allegiance and ran up the
English flag, calculating to hook on and become an
English colony as they drifted along down the British
Possessions; but a land breeze and a crooked current
carried them by, and they ran up the Stars and Stripes
and steered for California, missed the connection again
and swore allegiance to Mexico, but it wasn’t
any use; the anchors came home every time, and away
they went with the northeast trades drifting off sideways
toward the Sandwich Islands, whereupon they ran up
the Cannibal flag and had a grand human barbecue in
honor of it, in which it was noticed that the better
a man liked a friend the better he enjoyed him; and
as soon as they got fairly within the tropics the weather
got so fearfully hot that the iceberg began to melt,
and it got so sloppy under foot that it was almost
impossible for ladies to get about at all; and at
last, just as they came in sight of the islands, the
melancholy remnant of the once majestic iceberg canted
first to one side and then to the other, and then
plunged under forever, carrying the national archives
along with it—and not only the archives
and the populace, but some eligible town lots which
had increased in value as fast as they diminished
in size in the tropics, and which Riley could have
sold at thirty cents a pound and made himself rich
if he could have kept the province afloat ten hours
longer and got her into port.
Riley is very methodical, untiringly accommodating,
never forgets anything that is to be attended to,
is a good son, a stanch friend, and a permanent reliable
enemy. He will put himself to any amount of trouble
to oblige a body, and therefore always has his hands
full of things to be done for the helpless and the
shiftless. And he knows how to do nearly everything,
too. He is a man whose native benevolence is
a well-spring that never goes dry. He stands
always ready to help whoever needs help, as far as
he is able—and not simply with his money,
for that is a cheap and common charity, but with hand
and brain, and fatigue of limb and sacrifice of time.
This sort of men is rare.
Riley has a ready wit, a quickness and aptness at
selecting and applying quotations, and a countenance
that is as solemn and as blank as the back side of
a tombstone when he is delivering a particularly exasperating
joke. One night a negro woman was burned to death
in a house next door to us, and Riley said that our
landlady would be oppressively emotional at breakfast,
because she generally made use of such opportunities
as offered, being of a morbidly sentimental turn,
and so we should find it best to let her talk along
and say nothing back—it was the only way
to keep her tears out of the gravy. Riley said
there never was a funeral in the neighborhood but
that the gravy was watery for a week.