"Inasmuch as to how?" I said.
"I mean it is sad to think that so many peple have been killed within these gloomy walls. My frens, let us drop a tear."
"No!" I said, "you must excuse me. Others may drop one if they feel like it; but as for me, I decline. The early managers of this institootion were a bad lot, and their crimes were trooly orful; but I can't sob for those who died four or five hundred years ago. If they was my own relations I couldn't. It's absurd to shed sobs over things which occurd during the rain of Henry the Three. Let us be cheerful," I continnered. "Look at the festiv Warders, in their red flannel jackets. They are cheerful, and why should it not be thusly with us?"
A Warder now took us in charge, and showed us the Trater's Gate, the armers, and things. The Trater's Gate is wide enuff to admit about twenty traters abrest, I should jedge; but beyond this, I couldn't see that it was superior to gates in gen'ral.
Traters, I will here remark, are an onforchunit class of pe'ple. If they wasn't, they wouldn't be traters. They conspire to bust up a country—they fail, and they're traters. They bust her, and they become statesmen and heroes.
Take the case of Gloster, afterwards Old Dick the Three, who may be seen at the Tower on horseback, in a heavy tin overcoat—take Mr. Gloster's case. Mr. G. was a conspirator of the basist dye, and if he'd failed, he would have been hung on a sour apple tree. But Mr. G. succeeded and became great. He was slewed by Col. Richmond, but he lives in history, and his equestrian figger may be seen daily for a sixpence, in conjunction with other em'nent persons, and no extra charge for the Warder's able and bootiful lectur.
There's one King in this room who is mounted onto a foaming steed, his right hand graspin a barber's pole. I didn't learn his name.
The room where the daggers and pistils and other weppins is kept is interestin. Among this collection of choice cutlery I notist the bow and arrer which those hot-heded old chaps used to conduct battles with. It is quite like the bow and arrer used at this date by certain tribes of American Injuns, and they shoot 'em off with such an excellent precision that I almost sigh'd to be an Injun when I was in the Rocky Mountain regin. They are a pleasant lot, them Injuns. Mr. Cooper and Dr. Catlin have told us of the red man's wonderful eloquence, and I found it so. Our party was stopt on the plains of Utah by a band of Shoshones, whose chief said:—
"Brothers! the pale-face is welcome. Brothers! the sun is sinking in the west, and Wa-na-bucky-she will soon cease speakin. Brothers! the poor red man belongs to a race which is fast becomin extink."
He then whooped in a shrill manner, stole our blankets, and whisky, and fled to the primeval forest to conceal his emotions.