I took a large
room, far up Broadway, in a huge old building whose
upper stories had been wholly unoccupied for years,
until I came. The place had long been given up to
dust and cobwebs, to solitude and silence. I seemed
groping among the tombs and invading the privacy of
the dead, that first night I climbed up to my
quarters. For the first time in my life a
superstitious dread came over me; and as I turned a
dark angle of the stairway and an invisible cobweb
swung its slazy woof in my face and clung there, I
shuddered as one who had encountered a phantom.
I was glad
enough when I reached my room and locked out the
mould and the darkness. A cheery fire was burning in
the grate, and I sat down before it with a comforting
sense of relief. For two hours I sat there, thinking
of bygone times; recalling old scenes, and summoning
half-forgotten faces out of the mists of the past;
listening, in fancy, to voices that long ago grew
silent for all time, and to once familiar songs that
nobody sings now. And as my reverie softened down to
a sadder and sadder pathos, the shrieking of the
winds outside softened to a wail, the angry beating
of the rain against the panes diminished to a
tranquil patter, and one by one the noises in the
street subsided, until the hurrying foot-steps of the
last belated straggler died away in the distance and
left no sound behind.
The fire had
burned low. A sense of loneliness crept over me. I
arose and undressed, moving on tiptoe about the room,
doing stealthily what I had to do, as if I were
environed by sleeping enemies whose slumbers it would
be fatal to break. I covered up in bed, and lay
listening to the rain and wind and the faint creaking
of distant shutters, till they lulled me to sleep.
I slept
profoundly, but how long I do not know. All at once I
found myself awake, and filled with a shuddering
expectancy. All was still. All but my own heart -- I
could hear it beat. Presently the bed- clothes began
to slip away slowly toward the foot of the bed, as if
some one were pulling them! I could not stir; I could
not speak. Still the blankets slipped deliberately
away, till my breast was uncovered. Then with a great
effort I seized them and drew them over my head. I
waited, listened, waited. Once more that steady pull
began, and once more I lay torpid a century of
dragging seconds till my breast was naked again. At
last I roused my energies and snatched the covers
back to their place and held them with a strong grip.
I waited. By and by I felt a faint tug, and took a
fresh grip. The tug strengthened to a steady strain
-- it grew stronger and stronger. My hold parted, and
for the third time the blankets slid away. I groaned.
An answering groan came from the foot of the bed!
Beaded drops of sweat stood upon my forehead. I was
more dead than alive. Presently I heard a heavy
footstep in my room -- the step of an elephant, it
seemed to me -- it was not like anything human. But
it was moving FROM me -- there was relief in that. I
heard it approach the door -- pass out without moving
bolt or lock -- and wander away among the dismal
corridors, straining the floors and joists till they
creaked again as it passed -- and then silence
reigned once more.
When my
excitement had calmed, I said to myself, "This
is a dream -- simply a hideous dream."
And so I lay thinking it over until I convinced
myself that it WAS a dream, and then a comforting
laugh relaxed my lips and I was happy again. I got up
and struck a light; and when I found that the locks
and bolts were just as I had left them, another
soothing laugh welled in my heart and rippled from my
lips. I took my pipe and lit it, and was just sitting
down before the fire, when -- down went the pipe out
of my nerveless fingers, the blood forsook my cheeks,
and my placid breathing was cut short with a gasp! In
the ashes on the hearth, side by side with my own
bare footprint, was another, so vast that in
comparison mine was but an infant's! Then I had HAD a
visitor, and the elephant tread was explained.
I put out the
light and returned to bed, palsied with fear. I lay a
long time, peering into the darkness, and listening.
Then I heard a grating noise overhead, like the
dragging of a heavy body across the floor; then the
throwing down of the body, and the shaking of my
windows in response to the concussion. In distant
parts of the building I heard the muffled slamming of
doors. I heard, at intervals, stealthy footsteps
creeping in and out among the corridors, and up and
down the stairs. Sometimes these noises approached my
door, hesitated, and went away again. I heard the
clanking of chains faintly, in remote passages, and
listened while the clanking grew nearer -- while it
wearily climbed the stairways, marking each move by
the loose surplus of chain that fell with an accented
rattle upon each succeeding step as the goblin that
bore it advanced. I heard muttered sentences;
half-uttered screams that seemed smothered violently;
and the swish of invisible garments, the rush of
invisible wings. Then I became conscious that my
chamber was invaded -- that I was not alone. I heard
sighs and breathings about my bed, and mysterious
whisperings. Three little spheres of soft
phosphorescent light appeared on the ceiling directly
over my head, clung and glowed there a moment, and
then dropped -- two of them upon my face and one upon
the pillow. They spattered, liquidly, and felt warm.
Intuition told me they had turned to gouts of blood
as they fell -- I needed no light to satisfy myself
of that. Then I saw pallid faces, dimly luminous, and
white uplifted hands, floating bodiless in the air --
floating a moment and then disappearing. The
whispering ceased, and the voices and the sounds, and
a solemn stillness followed. I waited and listened. I
felt that I must have light or die. I was weak with
fear. I slowly raised myself toward a sitting
posture, and my face came in contact with a clammy
hand! All strength went from me apparently, and I
fell back like a stricken invalid. Then I heard the
rustle of a garment -- it seemed to pass to the door
and go out.
When
everything was still once more, I crept out of bed,
sick and feeble, and lit the gas with a hand that
trembled as if it were aged with a hundred years. The
light brought some little cheer to my spirits. I sat
down and fell into a dreamy contemplation of that
great footprint in the ashes. By and by its outlines
began to waver and grow dim. I glanced up and the
broad gas flame was slowly wilting away. In the same
moment I heard that elephantine tread again. I noted
its approach, nearer and nearer, along the musty
halls, and dimmer and dimmer the light waned. The
tread reached my very door and paused -- the light
had dwindled to a sickly blue, and all things about
me lay in a spectral twilight. The door did not open,
and yet I felt a faint gust of air fan my cheek, and
presently was conscious of a huge, cloudy presence
before me. I watched it with fascinated eyes. A pale
glow stole over the Thing; gradually its cloudy folds
took shape -- an arm appeared, then legs, then a
body, and last a great sad face looked out of the
vapor. Stripped of its filmy housings, naked,
muscular and comely, the majestic Cardiff Giant
loomed above me!
All my misery
vanished -- for a child might know that no harm could
come with that benignant countenance. My cheerful
spirits returned at once, and in sympathy with them
the gas flamed up brightly again. Never a lonely
outcast was so glad to welcome company as I was to
greet the friendly giant. I said: "Why,
is it nobody but you? Do you know, I have been scared
to death for the last two or three hours? I am most
honestly glad to see you. I wish I had a chair --
Here, here, don't try to sit down in that
thing!"
But it was too
late. He was in it before I could stop him, and down
he went -- I never saw a chair shivered so in my
life. "Stop, stop, You'll
ruin ev--"
Too late
again. There was another crash, and another chair was
resolved into its original elements.
"Confound it, haven't you got any judgment at
all? Do you want to ruin all the furniture on the
place? Here, here, you petrified fool--"
But it was no
use. Before I could arrest him he had sat down on the
bed, and it was a melancholy ruin.
"Now
what sort of a way is that to do? First you come
lumbering about the place bringing a legion of
vagabond goblins along with you to worry me to death,
and then when I overlook an indelicacy of costume
which would not be tolerated anywhere by cultivated
people except in a respectable theater, and not even
there if the nudity were of YOUR sex, you repay me by
wrecking all the furniture you can find to sit down
on. And why will you? You damage yourself as much as
you do me. You have broken off the end of your spinal
column, and littered up the floor with chips of your
hams till the place looks like a marble yard. You
ought to be ashamed of yourself -- you are big enough
to know better."
"Well,
I will not break any more furniture. But what am I to
do? I have not had a chance to sit down for a
century." And the tears
came into his eyes.
"Poor
devil," I said, "I
should not have been so harsh with you. And you are
an orphan, too, no doubt. But sit down on the floor
here -- nothing else can stand your weight -- and
besides, we cannot be sociable with you away up there
above me; I want you down where I can perch on this
high counting-house stool and gossip with you face to
face."
So he sat down
on the floor, and lit a pipe which I gave him, threw
one of my red blankets over his shoulders, inverted
my sitz-bath on his head, helmet fashion, and made
himself picturesque and comfortable. Then he crossed
his ankles, while I renewed the fire, and exposed the
flat, honey-combed bottoms of his prodigious feet to
the grateful warmth.
"What
is the matter with the bottom of your feet and the
back of your legs, that they are gouged up so?"
"Infernal
chillblains -- I caught them clear up to the back of
my head, roosting out there under Newell's farm. But
I love the place; I love it as one loves his old
home. There is no peace for me like the peace I feel
when I am there."
We talked
along for half an hour, and then I noticed that he
looked tired, and spoke of it. "Tired?"
he said. "Well,
I should think so. And now I will tell you all about
it, since you have treated me so well. I am the
spirit of the Petrified Man that lies across the
street there in the Museum. I am the ghost of the
Cardiff Giant. I can have no rest, no peace, till
they have given that poor body burial again. Now what
was the most natural thing for me to do, to make men
satisfy this wish? Terrify them into it! -- haunt the
place where the body lay! So I haunted the museum
night after night. I even got other spirits to help
me. But it did no good, for nobody ever came to the
museum at midnight. Then it occurred to me to come
over the way and haunt this place a little. I felt
that if I ever got a hearing I must succeed, for I
had the most efficient company that perdition could
furnish. Night after night we have shivered around
through these mildewed halls, dragging chains,
groaning, whispering, tramping up and down stairs,
till, to tell you the truth, I am almost worn out.
But when I saw a light in your room tonight I roused
my energies again and went at it with a deal of the
old freshness. But I am tired out -- entirely fagged
out. Give me, I beseech you, give me some hope!"
I lit off my
perch in a burst of excitement, and exclaimed: "This
transcends everything -- everything that ever did
occur! Why you poor blundering old fossil, you have
had all your trouble for nothing -- you have been
haunting a PLASTER CAST of yourself -- the real
Cardiff Giant is in Albany! Confound it, don't you
know your own remains?"
[Footnote by
Twain: A fact. The original fraud was ingeniously and
fraudfully duplicated, and exhibited in New York as
the "only genuine" Cardiff Giant (to the
unspeakable disgust of the owners of the real
colossus) at the very same time that the latter was
drawing crowds at a museum in Albany.]
I never saw
such an eloquent look of shame, of pitiable
humiliation, overspread a countenance before. The
Petrified Man rose slowly to his feet, and said: "Honestly,
IS that true?"
"As
true as I am sitting here."
He took the
pipe from his mouth and laid it on the mantel, then
stood irresolute a moment (unconsciously, from old
habit, thrusting his hands where his pantaloons
pockets should have been, and meditatively dropping
his chin on his breast), and finally said:
"Well
-- I NEVER felt so absurd before. The Petrified Man
has sold everybody else, and now the mean fraud has
ended by selling its own ghost! My son, if there is
any charity left in your heart for a poor friendless
phantom like me, don't let this get out. Think how
YOU would feel if you had made such an ass of
yourself."
I heard his
stately tramp die away, step by step down the stairs
and out into the deserted street, and felt sorry that
he was gone, poor fellow -- and sorrier still that he
had carried off my red blanket and my bath tub.