Chapters from My Autobiography | Page 5

and humble way. When
the book had been out a week, a college-bred gentleman of courtly
manners and ducal upholstery arrived in Hartford in a sultry state of
mind and with a libel suit in his eye, and his name was Eschol Sellers!
He had never heard of the other one, and had never been within a
thousand miles of him. This damaged aristocrat's programme was quite
definite and businesslike: the American Publishing Company must
suppress the edition as far as printed, and change the name in the plates,
or stand a suit for $10,000. He carried away the Company's promise
and many apologies, and we changed the name back to Colonel
Mulberry Sellers, in the plates. Apparently there is nothing that cannot
happen. Even the existence of two unrelated men wearing the
impossible name of Eschol Sellers is a possible thing.
James Lampton floated, all his days, in a tinted mist of magnificent
dreams, and died at last without seeing one of them realized. I saw him

last in 1884, when it had been twenty-six years since I ate the basin of
raw turnips and washed them down with a bucket of water in his house.
He was become old and white-headed, but he entered to me in the same
old breezy way of his earlier life, and he was all there, yet--not a detail
wanting: the happy light in his eye, the abounding hope in his heart, the
persuasive tongue, the miracle-breeding imagination--they were all
there; and before I could turn around he was polishing up his Aladdin's
lamp and flashing the secret riches of the world before me. I said to
myself, "I did not overdraw him by a shade, I set him down as he was;
and he is the same man to-day. Cable will recognize him." I asked him
to excuse me a moment, and ran into the next room, which was Cable's;
Cable and I were stumping the Union on a reading tour. I said--
"I am going to leave your door open, so that you can listen. There is a
man in there who is interesting."
I went back and asked Lampton what he was doing now. He began to
tell me of a "small venture" he had begun in New Mexico through his
son; "only a little thing--a mere trifle--partly to amuse my leisure,
partly to keep my capital from lying idle, but mainly to develop the
boy--develop the boy; fortune's wheel is ever revolving, he may have to
work for his living some day--as strange things have happened in this
world. But it's only a little thing--a mere trifle, as I said."
And so it was--as he began it. But under his deft hands it grew, and
blossomed, and spread--oh, beyond imagination. At the end of half an
hour he finished; finished with the remark, uttered in an adorably
languid manner:
"Yes, it is but a trifle, as things go nowadays--a bagatelle--but amusing.
It passes the time. The boy thinks great things of it, but he is young,
you know, and imaginative; lacks the experience which comes of
handling large affairs, and which tempers the fancy and perfects the
judgment. I suppose there's a couple of millions in it, possibly three,
but not more, I think; still, for a boy, you know, just starting in life, it is
not bad. I should not want him to make a fortune--let that come later. It
could turn his head, at his time of life, and in many ways be a damage
to him."

Then he said something about his having left his pocketbook lying on
the table in the main drawing-room at home, and about its being after
banking hours, now, and--
I stopped him, there, and begged him to honor Cable and me by being
our guest at the lecture--with as many friends as might be willing to do
us the like honor. He accepted. And he thanked me as a prince might
who had granted us a grace. The reason I stopped his speech about the
tickets was because I saw that he was going to ask me to furnish them
to him and let him pay next day; and I knew that if he made the debt he
would pay it if he had to pawn his clothes. After a little further chat he
shook hands heartily and affectionately, and took his leave. Cable put
his head in at the door, and said--
"That was Colonel Sellers."
MARK TWAIN.
(To be Continued.)
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Copyright, 1906, by Harper & Brothers. All Rights Reserved.
[2] Correction. 1906: it was above 100,000, it appears.
[3] Raymond was playing "Colonel Sellers" in 1876 and along there.
About twenty years later Mayo dramatized "Pudd'nhead Wilson" and
played the title role delightfully.

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW
No.