"De Lord have mercy on me, po' misasble sinner dat I is!"

The clock struck twelve.

The court rose; the new prisoner, handcuffed, was removed.

CONCLUSION

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 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 goo