The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson

It is often the case that the man who can’t tell a lie thinks he is the best judge of one.

—­Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar

OCTOBER 12, THE DISCOVERY.  It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.

—­Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar

The town sat up all night to discuss the amazing events of the day and swap guesses as to when Tom’s trial would begin.  Troop after troop of citizens came to serenade Wilson, and require a speech, and shout themselves hoarse over every sentence that fell from his lips—­for all his sentences were golden, now, all were marvelous.  His long fight against hard luck and prejudice was ended; he was a made man for good.  And as each of these roaring gangs of enthusiasts marched away, some remorseful member of it was quite sure to raise his voice and say: 

“And this is the man the likes of us have called a pudd’nhead for more than twenty years.  He has resigned from that position, friends.”

“Yes, but it isn’t vacant—­we’re elected.”

The twins were heroes of romance, now, and with rehabilitated reputations.  But they were weary of Western adventure, and straightway retired to Europe.

Roxy’s heart was broken.  The young fellow upon whom she had inflicted twenty-three years of slavery continued the false heir’s pension of thirty-five dollars a month to her, but her hurts were too deep for money to heal; the spirit in her eye was quenched, her martial bearing departed with it, and the voice of her laughter ceased in the land.  In her church and its affairs she found her only solace.

The real heir suddenly found himself rich and free, but in a most embarrassing situation.  He could neither read nor write, and his speech was the basest dialect of the Negro quarter.  His gait, his attitudes, his gestures, his bearing, his laugh—­all were vulgar and uncouth; his manners were the manners of a slave.  Money and fine clothes could not mend these defects or cover them up; they only made them more glaring and the more pathetic.  The poor fellow could not endure the terrors of the white man’s parlor, and felt at home and at peace nowhere but in the kitchen.  The family pew was a misery to him, yet he could nevermore enter into the solacing refuge of the “nigger gallery”—­that was closed to him for good and all.  But we cannot follow his curious fate further—­that would be a long story.

The false heir made a full confession and was sentenced to imprisonment for life.  But now a complication came up.  The Percy Driscoll estate was in such a crippled shape when its owner died that it could pay only sixty percent of its great indebtedness, and was settled at that rate.  But the creditors came forward now, and complained that inasmuch as through an error for which THEY were in no way to blame the false heir was not inventoried at the time with the rest of the property, great wrong and loss had thereby been inflicted upon them.  They rightly claimed that “Tom” was lawfully their property and had been so for eight years; that they had already lost sufficiently in being deprived of his services during that long period, and ought not to be required to add anything to that loss; that if he had been delivered up to them in the first place, they would have sold him and he could not have murdered Judge Driscoll; therefore it was not that he had really committed the murder, the guilt lay with the erroneous inventory.  Everybody saw that there was reason in this.  Everybody granted that if “Tom” were white and free it would be unquestionably right to punish him—­it would be no loss to anybody; but to shut up a valuable slave for life—­that was quite another matter.

As soon as the Governor understood the case, he pardoned Tom at once, and the creditors sold him down the river.