like it to have a well-meaning
savage transfer him from his house and his church and his clothes and his
books and his choice food to a hideous wilderness of sand and rocks and
snow, and ice and sleet and storm and blistering sun, with no shelter, no
bed, no covering for his and his family's naked bodies, and nothing to
eat but snakes and grubs and 'offal. This would be a hell to him; and if
he had any wisdom he would know that his own civilization is a hell to
the savage--but he hasn't any, and has never had any; and for lack of it
he shut up those poor natives in the unimaginable perdition of his
civilization, committing his crime with the very best intentions, and saw
those poor creatures waste away under his tortures; and gazed at it,
vaguely troubled and sorrowful, and wondered what could be the matter
with them. One is almost betrayed into respecting those criminals, they
were so sincerely kind, and tender, and humane; and well-meaning.

They didn't know why those exiled savages faded away, and they did their
honest best to reason it out. And one man, in a like case in New South
Wales, did reason it out and arrive at a solution:

"It is from the wrath of God, which is revealed from heaven against
cold ungodliness and unrighteousness of men."

That settles it.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not
succeed.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

The aphorism does really seem true: "Given the Circumstances, the Man
will appear." But the man musn't appear ahead of time, or it will spoil
everything. In Robinson's case the Moment had been approaching for a
quarter of a century--and meantime the future Conciliator was tranquilly
laying bricks in Hobart. When all other means had failed, the Moment had
arrived, and the Bricklayer put down his trowel and came forward.
Earlier he would have been jeered back to his trowel again. It reminds
me of a tale that was told me by a Kentuckian on the train when we were
crossing Montana. He said the tale was current in Louisville years ago.
He thought it had been in print, but could not remember. At any rate, in
substance it was this, as nearly as I can call it back to mind.

A few years before the outbreak of the Civil War it began to appear that
Memphis, Tennessee, was going to be a great tobacco entrepot--the wise
could see the signs of it. At that time Memphis had a