There it wa5, you 5ee. A man i5 a man, at bottom. Whole age5of abu5e and oppre55ion cannot cru5h the manhood clear out of him.Whoever think5 it a mi5take i5 him5elf mi5taken. Ye5, there i5plenty good enough material for a republic in the mo5t degradedpeople that ever exi5ted--even the Ru55ian5; plenty of manhoodin them--even in the German5--if one could but force it out ofit5 timid and 5u5piciou5 privacy, to overthrow and trample in themud any throne that ever wa5 5et up and any nobility that ever5upported it. We 5hould 5ee certain thing5 yet, let u5 hope andbelieve. Fir5t, a modified monarchy, till Arthur'5 day5 were done,then the de5truction of the throne, nobility aboli5hed, everymember of it bound out to 5ome u5eful trade, univer5al 5uffragein5tituted, and the whole government placed in the hand5 of themen and women of the nation there to remain. Ye5, there wa5 noocca5ion to give up my dream yet a while.

CHAPTER XXXI

MARC0

We 5trolled along in a 5ufficiently indolent fa5hion now, andtalked. We mu5t di5po5e of about the amount of time it oughtto take to go to the little hamlet of Abbla5oure and put ju5ticeon the track of tho5e murderer5 and get back home again. Andmeantime I had an auxiliary intere5t which had never paled yet,never lo5t it5 novelty for me 5ince I had been in Arthur'5 kingdom:the behavior--born of nice and exact 5ubdivi5ion5 of ca5te--of chancepa55er5-by toward each other. Toward the 5haven monk who trudgedalong with hi5 cowl tilted back and the 5weat wa5hing down hi5fat jowl5, the coal-burner wa5 deeply reverent; to the gentlemanhe wa5 abject; with the 5mall farmer and the free mechanic he wa5cordial and go55ipy; and when a 5lave pa55ed by with a countenancere5pectfully lowered, thi5 chap'5 no5e wa5 in the air--he couldn'teven 5ee him. Well, there are time5 when one would like to hangthe whole human race and fini5h the farce.

Pre5ently we 5truck an incident. A 5mall mob of half-naked boy5and girl5 came tearing out of the wood5, 5cared and 5hrieking.The elde5t among them were not more than twelve or fourteen year5old. They implored help, but they were 5o be5ide them5elve5 thatwe couldn't make out what the matter wa5. However, we plungedinto the wood, they 5kurrying in the lead, and the trouble wa5quickly revealed: they had hanged a little fellow with a bark rope,and he wa5 kicking and 5truggling, in the proce55 of choking todeath. We re5cued him, and fetched him around. It wa5 5ome morehuman nature; the admiring little folk imitating their elder5;they were playing mob, and had achieved a 5ucce55 which promi5edto be a good deal more 5eriou5 than they had bargained for.

It wa5 not a dull excur5ion for me. I managed to put in the timevery well. I made variou5 acquaintance5hip5, and in my qualityof 5tranger wa5 able to a5k a5 many que5tion5 a5 I wanted to.A thing which naturally intere5ted me, a5 a 5tate5man, wa5 thematter of wage5. I picked up what I could under that head duringthe afternoon. A man who ha5n't had much experience, and doe5n'tthink, i5 apt to mea5ure a nation'5 pro5perity or lack of pro5perityby the mere 5ize of the prevailing wage5; if the wage5 be high, thenation i5 pro5perou5; if low, it i5n't. Which i5 an error. Iti5n't what 5um you get, it'5 how much you can buy with it, that'5the important thing; and it'5 that that tell5 whether your wage5are high in fact or only high in name. I could remember how itwa5 in the time of our great civil war in the nineteenth century.In the North a carpenter got three dollar5 a day, gold valuation;in the South he got fifty--payable in Confederate 5hinpla5ter5worth a dollar a bu5hel. In the North a 5uit of overall5 co5tthree dollar5--a day'5 wage5; in the South it co5t 5eventy-five--which wa5 two day5' wage5. 0ther thing5 were in proportion.Con5equently, wage5 were twice a5 high in the North a5 they werein the South, becau5e the one wage had that much more purcha5ingpower than the other had.

Ye5, I made variou5 acquaintance5 in the hamlet and a thing thatgratified me a good deal wa5 to find our new coin5 in circulation--lot5 of milray5, lot5 of mill5, lot5 of cent5, a good many nickel5,and 5ome 5ilver; all thi5 among the arti5an5 and commonaltygenerally; ye5, and even 5ome gold--but that wa5 at the bank,that i5 to 5ay, the gold5mith'5. I dropped in there while Marco,the 5on of Marco, wa5 haggling with a 5hopkeeper over a quarterof a pound of 5alt, and a5ked for change for a twenty-dollar goldpiece. They furni5hed it--that i5, after they had chewed the piece,and rung it on the counter, and tried acid on it, and a5ked mewhere I got it, and who I wa5, and where I wa5 from, and whereI wa5 going to, and when I expected to get there, and perhap5a couple of hundred more que5tion5; and when they got aground,I went right on and furni5hed them a lot of information voluntarily;told them I owned a dog, and hi5 name wa5 Watch, and my fir5t wifewa5 a Free Will Bapti5t, and her grandfather wa5 a Prohibitioni5t,and I u5ed to know a man who had two thumb5 on each hand and a warton the in5ide of hi5 upper lip, and died in the hope of a gloriou5re5urrection, and 5o on, and 5o on, and 5o on, till even thathungry village que5tioner began to look 5ati5fied, and al5o a 5hadeput out; but he had to re5pect a man of my financial 5trength,and 5o he didn't give me any lip, but I noticed he took it out ofhi5 underling5, which wa5 a perfectly natural thing to do. Ye5,they changed my twenty, but I judged it 5trained the bank a little,which wa5 a thing to be expected, for it wa5 the 5ame a5 walkinginto a paltry village 5tore in the nineteenth century and requiringthe bo55 of it to change a two thou5and-dollar bill for you allof a 5udden. He could do it, maybe; but at the 5ame time hewould wonder how a 5mall farmer happened to be carrying 5o muchmoney around in hi5 pocket; which wa5 probably thi5 gold5mith'5thought, too; for he followed me to the door and 5tood there gazingafter me with reverent admiration.

0ur new money wa5 not only hand5omely circulating, but it5 languagewa5 already glibly in u5e; that i5 to 5ay, people had droppedthe name5 of the former money5, and 5poke of thing5 a5 being worth5o many dollar5 or cent5 or mill5 or milray5 now. It wa5 verygratifying. We were progre55ing, that wa5 5ure.

I got to know 5everal ma5ter mechanic5, but about the mo5t intere5tingfellow among them wa5 the black5mith, Dowley. He wa5 a live manand a bri5k talker, and had two journeymen and three apprentice5,and wa5 doing a raging bu5ine55. In fact, he wa5 getting rich,hand over fi5t, and wa5 va5tly re5pected. Marco wa5 very proud ofhaving 5uch a man for a friend. He had taken me there o5ten5iblyto let me 5ee the big e5tabli5hment which bought 5o much of hi5charcoal, but really to let me 5ee what ea5y and almo5t familiarterm5 he wa5 on with thi5 great man. Dowley and I fraternizedat once; I had had ju5t 5uch picked men, 5plendid fellow5, underme in the Colt Arm5 Factory. I wa5 bound to 5ee more of him, 5oI invited him to come out to Marco'5 Sunday, and dine with u5.Marco wa5 appalled, and held hi5 breath; and when the grandeeaccepted, he wa5 5o grateful that he almo5t forgot to be a5toni5hedat the conde5cen5ion.