Chapter I PUDDâNHEAD WINS HIS NAME
Tell the truth or trumpâbut get the trick.
âPuddânhead Wilsonâs Calendar
THE SCENE OF THIS CHRONICLE is the town of Dawsonâs Landing, on the Missouri side of the Mississippi,1 half a dayâs journey, per steamboat, below St. Louis.
In 1830 it was a snug little collection of modest one and two-story frame dwellings whose whitewashed exteriors were almost concealed from sight by climbing tangles of rose vines, honeysuckles, and morning-glories. Each of these pretty homes had a garden in front fenced with white palings, and opulently stocked with hollyhocks, marigolds, touch-me-nots, princeâs-feathers, and other old-fashioned flowers; while on the window-sills of the houses stood wooden boxes containing moss-rose plants and terra-cotta pots in which grew a breed of geranium whose spread of intensely red blossoms accented the prevailing pink tint of the rose-clad house-front like an explosion of flame. When there was room on the ledge outside of the pots and boxes for a cat, the cat was thereâin sunny weatherâstretched at full length, asleep and blissful, with her furry belly to the sun and a paw curved over her nose. Then that house was complete, and its contentment and peace were made manifest to the world by this symbol, whose testimony is infallible. A home without a catâand a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered catâmay be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?
All along the streets, on both sides, at the outer edge of the brick sidewalks, stood locust-trees with trunks protected by wooden boxing, and these furnished shade for summer and a sweet fragrance in spring when the clusters of buds came forth. The main street, one block back from the river, and running parallel with it, was the sole business street. It was six blocks long, and in each block two or three brick stores three stories high towered above interjected bunches of little frame shops. Swinging signs creaked in the wind, the streetâs whole length. The candy-striped pole, which indicates nobility proud and ancient along the palace-bordered canals of Venice, indicated merely the humble barber shop along the main street of Dawsonâs Landing. On a chief corner stood a lofty unpainted pole wreathed from top to bottom with tin pots and pans and cups, the chief tinmongerâs noisy notice to the world (when the wind blew) that his shop was on hand for business at that corner.
The hamletâs front was washed by the clear waters of the great river; its body stretched itself rearward up a gentle incline; its most rearward border fringed itself out and scattered its houses about the baseline of the hills; the hills rose high, inclosing the town in a half-moon curve, clothed with forests from foot to summit.
Steamboats passed up and down every hour or so. Those belonging to the little Cairo line and the little Memphis line always stopped; the big Orleans liners stopped for hails only,2 or to land passengers or freight; and this was the case also with the great flotilla of âtransients.â These latter came out of a dozen riversâthe Illinois, the Missouri, the Upper Mississippi, the Ohio, the Monongahela, the Tennessee, the Red River, the White River, and so on; and were bound every whither and stocked with every imaginable comfort or necessity which the Mississippiâs communities could want, from the frosty Falls of St. Anthony3 down through nine climates to torrid New Orleans.
Dawsonâs Landing was a slaveholding town, with a rich slave-worked grain and pork country back of it. The town was sleepy and comfortable and contented. It was fifty years old, and was growing slowlyâvery slowly, in fact, but still it was growing.
The chief citizen was York Leicester Driscoll, about forty years old, judge of the county court. He was very proud of his old Virginian ancestry, and in his hospitalities and his rather formal and stately manners he kept up its traditions. He was fine and just and generous. To be a gentlemanâa gentleman without stain or blemishâwas his only religion, and to it he was always faithful. He was respected, esteemed, and beloved by all the community. He was well off, and was gradually adding to his store. He and his wife were very nearly happy, but not quite, for they had no children. The longing for the treasure of a child had grown stronger and stronger as the years slipped away, but the blessing never cameâand was never to come.
With this pair lived the Judgeâs widowed sister, Mrs. Rachel Pratt, and she also was childlessâchildless, and sorrowful for that reason, and not to be comforted. The women were good and commonplace people, and did their duty and had their reward in clear consciences and the communityâs approbation. They were Presbyterians, the Judge was a free-thinker.4
Pembroke Howard, lawyer and bachelor, aged about forty, was another old Virginian grandee with proved descent from the First Families.5 He was a fine, brave, majestic creature, a gentleman according to the nicest requirements of the Virginia rule, a devoted Presbyterian, an authority on the âcode,â6 and a man always courteously ready to stand up before you in the field if any act or word of his had seemed doubtful or suspicious to you, and explain it with any weapon you might prefer from brad-awls to artillery. He was very popular with the people, and was the Judgeâs dearest friend.
Then there was Colonel Cecil Burleigh Essex, another F. F. V. of formidable caliberâhowever, with him we have no concern.
Percy Northumberland Driscoll, brother to the Judge, and younger than he by five years, was a married man, and had had children around his hearthstone; but they were attacked in detail by measles, croup, and scarlet fever, and this had given the doctor a chance with his effective antediluvian methods; so the cradles were empty. He was a prosperous man, with a good head for speculations, and his fortune was growing. On the 1st of February, 1830, two boy babes were born in his house; one to him, the other to one of his slave girls, Roxana by name. Roxana was twenty years old. She was up and around the same day, with her hands full, for she was tending both babies.
Mrs. Percy Driscoll died within the week. Roxy remained in charge of the children. She had her own way, for Mr. Driscoll soon absorbed himself in his speculations and left her to her own devices.
In that same month of February, Dawsonâs Landing gained a new citizen. This was Mr. David Wilson, a young fellow of Scotch parentage. He had wandered to this remote region from his birthplace in the interior of the state of New York, to seek his fortune. He was twenty-five years old, college-bred, and had finished a post-college course in an Eastern law school a couple of years before.
He was a homely, freckled, sandy-haired young fellow, with an intelligent blue eye that had frankness and comradeship in it and a covert twinkle of a pleasant sort. But for an unfortunate remark of his, he would no doubt have entered at once upon a successful career at Dawsonâs Landing. But he made his fatal remark the first day he spent in the village, and it âgagedâ him. He had just made the acquaintance of a group of citizens when an invisible dog began to yelp and snarl and howl and make himself very comprehensively disagreeable, whereupon young Wilson said, much as one who is thinking aloud:
âI wish I owned half of that dog.â
âWhy?â somebody asked.
âBecause I would kill my half.â
The group searched his face with curiosity, with anxiety even, but found no light there, no expression that they could read. They fell away from him as from something uncanny, and went into privacy to discuss him. One said:
âââPears to be a fool.â
âââPears?â said another. âIs, I reckon you better say.â
âSaid he wished he owned half of the dog, the idiot,â said a third. âWhat did he reckon would become of the other half if he killed his half? Do you reckon he thought it would live?â
âWhy, he must have thought it, unless he is the down-rightest fool in the world; because if he hadnât thought it, he would have wanted to own the whole dog, knowing that if he killed his half and the other half died, he would be responsible for that half just the same as if he had killed that half instead of his own. Donât it look that way to you, gents?â
âYes, it does. If he owned one half of the general dog, it would be so; if he owned one end of the dog and another person owned the other end, it would be so, just the same; particularly in the first case, because if you kill one half of a general dog, there ainât any man that can tell whose half it was, but if he owned one end of the dog, maybe he could kill his end of it andââ
âNo, he couldnât, either; he couldnât and not be responsible if the other end died, which it would. In my opinion the man ainât in his right mind.â
âIn my opinion he hainât got any mind.â
No. 3 said: âWell, heâs a lummox, anyway.â
âThatâs what he is,â said No. 4, âheâs a labrick7âjust a Simon-pure labrick, if ever there was one.â
âYes, sir, heâs a dam fool, thatâs the way I put him up,â said No. 5. âAnybody can think different that wants to, but those are my sentiments.â
âIâm with you, gentlemen,â said No. 6. âPerfect jackassâyes, and it ainât going too far to say he is a puddânhead. If he ainât a puddânhead, I ainât no judge, thatâs all.â
Mr. Wilson stood elected. The incident was told all over the town, and gravely discussed by everybody. Within a week he had lost his first name; Puddânhead took its place. In time he came to be liked, and well liked, too; but by that time the nickname had got well stuck on, and it stayed. That first dayâs verdict made him a fool, and he was not able to get it set aside, or even modified. The nickname soon ceased to carry any harsh or unfriendly feeling with it, but it held its place, and was to continue to hold its place for twenty long years.
Chapter II DRISCOLL SPARES HIS SLAVES
Adam was but humanâthis explains it all. He did not want the apple for the appleâs sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent: then he would have eaten the serpent.
âPuddânhead Wilsonâs Calendar
PUDDâNHEAD WILSON had a trifle of money when he arrived, and he bought a small house on the extreme western verge of the town. Between it and Judge Driscollâs house there was only a grassy yard, with a paling fence dividing the properties in the middle. He hired a small office down in the town and hung out a tin sign with these words on it:
DAVID WILSON
ATTORNEY AND COUNSELOR-AT-LAW
SURVEYING, CONVEYANCING, ETC.
But his deadly remark had ruined his chanceâat least in the law. No clients came. He took down his sign after a while and put it up on his own house with the law features knocked out of it. It offered his services now in the humble capacities of land-surveyor and expert accountant. Now and then he got a job of surveying to do, and now and then a merchant got him to straighten out his books. With Scotch patience and pluck he resolved to live down his reputation and work his way into the legal field yet. Poor fellow! he could not foresee that it was going to take him such a weary long time to do it.
He had a rich abundance of idle time, but it never hung heavy on his hands, for he interested himself in every new thing that was born into the universe of ideas, and studied it and experimented upon it at his house. One of his pet fads was palmistry.1 To another one he gave no name, neither would he explain to anybody what its purpose was, but merely said it was an amusement. In fact, he had found that his fads added to his reputation as a puddânhead; therefore he was growing chary of being too communicative about them. The fad without a name was one which dealt with peopleâs finger-marks. He carried in his coat pocket a shallow box with grooves in it, and in the grooves strips of glass five inches long and three inches wide. Along the lower edge of each strip was pasted a slip of white paper. He asked people to pass their hands through their hair (thus collecting upon them a thin coating of the natural oil) and then make a thumb-mark on a glass strip, following it with the mark of the ball of each finger in succession. Under this row of faint grease-prints he would write a record on the strip of white paperâthus:
JOHN SMITH, right handâ.
and add the day of the month and the year, then take Smithâs left hand on another glass strip, and add name and date and the words âleft hand.â The strips were now returned to the grooved box, and took their place among what Wilson called his ârecords.â
He often studied his records, examining and poring over them with absorbing interest until far into the night; but what he found thereâif he found anythingâhe revealed to no one. Sometimes he copied on paper the involved and delicate pattern left by the ball of a finger, and then vastly enlarged it with a pantograph2 so that he could examine its web of curving lines with ease and convenience.
One sweltering afternoonâit was the first day of July, 1830âhe was at work over a set of tangled account-books in his workroom, which looked westward over a stretch of vacant lots, when a conversation outside disturbed him. It was carried on in yells, which showed that the people engaged in it were not close together:
âSay, Roxy, how does yoâ baby come on?â This from the distant voice.
âFust-rate; how does you come on, Jasper?â This yell was from close by.
âOh, Iâs middlinâ; hainât got nothânâ to complain of. Iâs gwine to come a-courtânâ you bimeby, Roxy.â
âYou is, you black mudcat! Yahâyahâyah! I got somepânâ better to do den âsociatânâ wid niggers as b...