It is often the case that the man who can’t tell a lie thinks he is the best judge of one.—Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar.
October 12, the Discovery. It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.—Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar.
The town sat up all night to discuss the amazing events of the day and swap guesses as to when Tom’s trial would begin. Troop after troop of citizens came to serenade Wilson, and require a speech, and shout themselves hoarse over every sentence that fell from his lips—for all his sentences were golden, now, all were marvelous. His long fight against hard luck and prejudice was ended; he was a made man for good.
And as each of these roaring gangs of enthusiasts marched away, some remorseful member of it was quite sure to raise his voice and say—
“And this is the man the likes of us have called a pudd’nhead for more than twenty years. He has resigned from that position, friends.”
“Yes, but it isn’t vacant—we’re elected.”
The twins were heroes of romance, now, and with rehabilitated reputations. But they were weary of Western adventure, and straightway retired to Europe.
Roxy’s heart was broken. The young fellow upon whom she had inflicted twenty-three years of slavery continued the false heir’s pension of thirty-five dollars a month to her, but her hurts were too deep for money to heal; the spirit in her eye was quenched, her martial bearing departed with it, and the voice of her laughter ceased in the land. In her church and its affairs she found her only solace.
The real heir suddenly found himself rich and free, but in a most embarrassing situation. He could neither read nor write, and his speech was the basest dialect of the negro quarter. His gait, his attitudes, his gestures, his bearing, his laugh—all were vulgar and uncouth; his manners were the manners of a slave. Money and fine clothes could not mend these defects or cover them up; they only made them the more glaring and the more pathetic. The poor fellow could not endure the terrors of the white man’s parlor, and felt at home and at peace nowhere but in the kitchen. The family pew was a misery to him, yet he could nevermore enter into the solacing refuge of the “nigger gallery”—that was closed to him for good and all. But we cannot follow his curious fate further—that would be a long story.