'He graduated with honor in an Eastern college,wandered off into the world somewhere,succeeded at nothing,passed out of knowledge and memory years ago,and is supposed to have gone to the dogs.'
'He was bright,and promised well when he was a boy.'
'Yes,but the thing that happened is what became of it all.'
I asked after another lad,altogether the brightest in our village school when I was a boy.
'He,too,was graduated with honors,from an Eastern college;but life whipped him in every battle,straight along,and he died in one of the Territories,years ago,a defeated man.'
I asked after another of the bright boys.
'He is a success,always has been,always will be,I think.'
I inquired after a young fellow who came to the town to study for one of the professions when I was a boy.
'He went at something else before he got through--went from medicine to law,or from law to medicine--then to some other new thing;went away for a year,came back with a young wife;fell to drinking,then to gambling behind the door;finally took his wife and two young children to her father's,and went off to Mexico;went from bad to worse,and finally died there,without a cent to buy a shroud,and without a friend to attend the funeral.'
'Pity,for he was the best-natured,and most cheery and hopeful young fellow that ever was.'
I named another boy.
'Oh,he is all right.Lives here yet;has a wife and children,and is prospering.'
Same verdict concerning other boys.
I named three school-girls.
'The first two live here,are married and have children;the other is long ago dead--never married.'
I named,with emotion,one of my early sweethearts.
'She is all right.Been married three times;buried two husbands,divorced from the third,and I hear she is getting ready to marry an old fellow out in Colorado somewhere.She's got children scattered around here and there,most everywheres.'
The answer to several other inquiries was brief and ******--'Killed in the war.'
I named another boy.
'Well,now,his case is curious!There wasn't a human being in this town but knew that that boy was a perfect chucklehead;perfect dummy;just a stupid ass,as you may say.
Everybody knew it,and everybody said it.Well,if that very boy isn't the first lawyer in the State of Missouri to-day,I'm a Democrat!'
'Is that so?'
'It's actually so.I'm telling you the truth.'
'How do you account for it?'
'Account for it?There ain't any accounting for it,except that if you send a damned fool to St.Louis,and you don't tell them he's a damned fool they'll never find it out.
There's one thing sure--if I had a damned fool I should know what to do with him:ship him to St.Louis--it's the noblest market in the world for that kind of property.Well,when you come to look at it all around,and chew at it and think it over,don't it just bang anything you ever heard of?'
'Well,yes,it does seem to.But don't you think maybe it was the Hannibal people who were mistaken about the boy,and not the St.Louis people'
'Oh,nonsense!The people here have known him from the very cradle--they knew him a hundred times better than the St.Louis idiots could have known him.No,if you have got any damned fools that you want to realize on,take my advice--send them to St.Louis.'
I mentioned a great number of people whom I had formerly known.
Some were dead,some were gone away,some had prospered,some had come to naught;but as regarded a dozen or so of the lot,the answer was comforting:
'Prosperous--live here yet--town littered with their children.'
I asked about Miss ----
Died in the insane asylum three or four years ago--never was out of it from the time she went in;and was always suffering,too;never got a shred of her mind back.'
If he spoke the truth,here was a heavy tragedy,indeed.
Thirty-six years in a madhouse,that some young fools might have some fun!
I was a small boy,at the time;and I saw those giddy young ladies come tiptoeing into the room where Miss ----sat reading at midnight by a lamp.
The girl at the head of the file wore a shroud and a doughface,she crept behind the victim,touched her on the shoulder,and she looked up and screamed,and then fell into convulsions.
She did not recover from the fright,but went mad.In these days it seems incredible that people believed in ghosts so short a time ago.
But they did.
After asking after such other folk as I could call to mind,I finally inquired about MYSELF:
'Oh,he succeeded well enough--another case of damned fool.
If they'd sent him to St.Louis,he'd have succeeded sooner.'
It was with much satisfaction that I recognized the wisdom of having told this candid gentleman,in the beginning,that my name was Smith.