Alas for history and geography! One by one these idols were dismounted. Later geographical investigation proves that there is no maelstrom on the coast of Norway; that the statement was founded upon a few rather ugly currents that swirl and eddy among some islands, but which are yet perfectly safe for vessels of light draft.
I had scarcely recovered from this before it came to light that Jackson’s riflemen did not rest their unerring pieces upon cotton bales. When one thinks of it, it would be rather risky to fire flint-lock rifles over such inflammable material as cotton, to say nothing of the confession of that Brobindignagian fraud, Vincent Nolte, who confessed that all there was of the cotton story was this: He was moving a few bales of cotton he had in New Orleans up the country for safety, when it was feared the British would burn the city, and one of his mule teams, with two bales upon the wagon, was passing where some Tennesseeans were throwing up an earthwork. The wild backwoodsmen, in sheer mischief, upset the wagon, cut the mules loose, and buried the two bales and the wagon under the earth. Then, as he sued the government, per custom, for the price of five hundred bales, it was said that the battle was fought behind cotton, and the pictures show it.
For Wellington to have said “Up guards and at them!” would be to presume that Wellington was in the extreme front with the guards, and Taylor, to have made his exclamation, must have been sitting on his horse beside Captain Bragg, something generals never do.
But I said, though all these are gone, I have my Tell left me. Alas! Swiss and German investigators have proved conclusively that there never was such a man as Tell; that Gesler is quite as much of a fiction, and that the whole business of the apple on the son’s head, the leap from the boat, and all the rest of it, is a poetic legend, the counterpart of which may be found in the literature of all old people. There is no mention either of Tell or Gesler in any authentic history.
But I thank heaven my objects of dislike are proved to be just as much fictions as the others. For up comes an English essayist who proves that Richard III. did not smother the infant princes, that he was not a cruel, humpbacked tyrant, but was the wisest and best king England had ever had, and that his untimely taking off was one of the greatest misfortunes that ever befell that country.
So these investigators have reduced humanity to a sort of average dead level, with no Mt. Blancs of goodness and no Jungfraus of badness.
Tibbitts was very indignant when I told him this about Tell. He remarked that he preferred not to believe the investigators; he preferred to believe in Tell. He didn’t care a straw for the investigators, he defied them. Suppose Tell didn’t shoot the apple? What then? Tell shooting the apple made a picturesque picture, and it pleased him. He protested against reducing all mankind to the drawing of molasses and the hewing of calico. He wanted heroes and heroines, and if they didn’t appear in real life the poet gave them to us, and it did just as well.
By this time Tibbitts got wound up. “How does any one know that there was no Tell? I demand proof. You can’t prove that there was not such a man, and that he did not do the feats ascribed to him. Very well! I assert there was such a man; that there was a Gesler; that Gesler put his hat on a pole in the market place, and required everybody to bow to it, and Tell refused; and then Gesler insisted that he should shoot an apple from his boy’s head, and he did it. You have no proof that this is not so. I have proof that it is. I can show you the market place, and an apple. That the feat is possible every schoolboy knows, for have we not all seen Buffalo Bill do the same thing in the theaters? And, then, if it were not precisely true, it should have been. We want such incidents to keep alive a love of country, a healthy spirit of patriotism, and a wholesome hatred of tyrants who go about putting caps upon poles and requiring people to bow to them. Admitting it to be a fable, we want more such fables. What difference does it make if it is a fable? Does it not inculcate a great principle just the same? And inculcating a great principle is the main thing. I hold to Tell with all the simple faith I had in childhood, and even more. For in childhood Tell was merely a romantic and highly colored sensation—now he has grown to the sublime dimensions of a moral necessity.”
And in spite of the bald facts staring him in the face, he went into ecstacies in the chapel, and spoke of it as a “shrine,” and remarked that it would be better for the world had it had more Tells, and said everything that everybody says.
SWISS REVERENCE FOR TELL.