Site Ed. Note:

Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his heart. And while the late steamer Big Missouri worked and sweated in the sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by, dangled his legs, munched his apple, and planned the slaughter of more innocents. There was no lack of material; boys happened along every little while; they came to jeer, but remained to whitewash. By the time Ben was fagged out, Tom had traded the next chance to Billy Fisher for a kite, in good repair; and when he played out, Johnny Miller bought in for a dead rat and a string to swing it with--and so on, and so on, hour after hour. And when the middle of the afternoon came, from being a poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning, Tom was literally rolling in wealth. He had besides the things before mentioned, twelve marbles, part of a jews-harp, a piece of blue bottle-glass to look through, a spool cannon, a key that wouldn't unlock anything, a fragment of chalk, a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six fire-crackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass doorknob, a dog-collar--but no dog--the handle of a knife, four pieces of orange-peel, and a dilapidated old window sash.

He had had a nice, good, idle time all the while--plenty of company--and the fence had three coats of whitewash on it! If he hadn't run out of whitewash he would have bankrupted every boy in the village.

***

What a hero Tom was become, now! He did not go skipping and prancing, but moved with a dignified swagger as became a pirate who felt that the public eye was on him. And indeed it was; he tried not to seem to see the looks or hear the remarks as he passed along, but they were food and drink to him. Smaller boys than himself flocked at his heels, as proud to be seen with him, and tolerated by him, as if he had been the drummer at the head of a procession or the elephant leading a menagerie into town. Boys of his own size pretended not to know he had been away at all; but they were consuming with envy, nevertheless. They would have given anything to have that swarthy suntanned skin of his, and his glittering notoriety; and Tom would not have parted with either for a circus. At school the children made so much of him and of Joe, and delivered such eloquent admiration from their eyes, that the two heroes were not long in becoming insufferably "stuck-up." They began to tell their adventures to hungry listeners--but they only began; it was not a thing likely to have an end, with imaginations like theirs to furnish material. And finally, when they got out their pipes and went serenely puffing around, the very summit of glory was reached.

***

"What!" Huck searched his comrade's face keenly.

"Tom, have you got on the track of that money again?"

"Huck, it's in the cave!" Huck's eyes blazed.

"Say it again, Tom."

"The money's in the cave!"

"Tom--honest injun, now--is it fun, or earnest?"

"Earnest, Huck--just as earnest as ever I was in my life. Will you go in there with me and help get it out?"

"I bet I will! I will if it's where we can blaze our way to it and not get lost."

"Huck, we can do that without the least little bit of trouble in the world."

"Good as wheat! What makes you think the money's--"

"Huck, you just wait till we get in there. If we don't find it I'll agree to give you my drum and every thing I've got in the world. I will, by jings."

"All right--it's a whiz. When do you say?"

"Right now, if you say it. Are you strong enough?"

"Is it far in the cave? I ben on my pins a little, three or four days, now, but I can't walk more'n a mile, Tom--least I don't think I could."

"It's about five mile into there the way anybody but me would go, Huck, but there's a mighty short cut that they don't anybody but me know about. Huck, I'll take you right to it in a skiff. I'll float the skiff down there, and I'll pull it back again all by myself. You needn't ever turn your hand over."

***

I thought all this over for two or three days, and then I reckoned I would see if there was anything in it. I got an old tin lamp and an iron ring, and went out in the woods and rubbed and rubbed till I sweat like an Injun, calculating to build a palace and sell it; but it warn't no use, none of the genies come. So then I judged that all that stuff was only just one of Tom Sawyer's lies. I reckoned he believed in the A-rabs and the elephants, but as for me I think different. It had all the marks of a Sunday-school.

***

So the duke said it WAS kind of hard to have to lay roped all day, and he'd cipher out some way to get around it.

He was uncommon bright, the duke was, and he soon struck it. He dressed Jim up in King Lear's outfit--it was a long curtain-calico gown, and a white horse-hair wig and whiskers; and then he took his theater paint and painted Jim's face and hands and ears and neck all over a dead, dull, solid blue, like a man that's been drownded nine days. Blamed if he warn't the horriblest looking outrage I ever see. Then the duke took and wrote out a sign on a shingle so:

Sick Arab--but harmless when not out of his head.

***

The king got out an old ratty deck of cards after breakfast, and him and the duke played seven-up a while, five cents a game. Then they got tired of it, and allowed they would "lay out a campaign," as they called it. The duke went down into his carpet-bag, and fetched up a lot of little printed bills and read them out loud. One bill said, "The celebrated Dr. Armand de Montalban, of Paris," would "lecture on the Science of Phrenology" at such and such a place, on the blank day of blank, at ten cents admission, and "furnish charts of character at twenty-five cents apiece." The duke said that was HIM. In another bill he was the "world-renowned Shakespearian tragedian, Garrick the Younger, of Drury Lane, London." In other bills he had a lot of other names and done other wonderful things, like finding water and gold with a "divining-rod," "dissipating witch spells," and so on. By and by he says:

"But the histrionic muse is the darling. Have you ever trod the boards, Royalty?"

"No," says the king.

"You shall, then, before you're three days older, Fallen Grandeur," says the duke.

"The first good town we come to we'll hire a hall and do the sword fight in Richard III. and the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet. How does that strike you?"

"I'm in, up to the hub, for anything that will pay, Bilgewater; but, you see, I don't know nothing about play-actin', and hain't ever seen much of it. I was too small when pap used to have 'em at the palace. Do you reckon you can learn me?"

"Easy!"

***

He got out two or three curtain-calico suits, which he said was meedyevil armor for Richard III. and t'other chap, and a long white cotton nightshirt and a ruffled nightcap to match. The king was satisfied; so the duke got out his book and read the parts over in the most splendid spread-eagle way, prancing around and acting at the same time, to show how it had got to be done; then he give the book to the king and told him to get his part by heart.

***

Well, that night we had OUR show; but there warn't only about twelve people there--just enough to pay expenses. And they laughed all the time, and that made the duke mad; and everybody left, anyway, before the show was over, but one boy which was asleep. So the duke said these Arkansaw lunkheads couldn't come up to Shakespeare; what they wanted was low comedy--and maybe something ruther worse than low comedy, he reckoned. He said he could size their style. So next morning he got some big sheets of wrapping paper and some black paint, and drawed off some handbills, and stuck them up all over the village. The bills said:

AT THE COURT HOUSE! FOR 3 NIGHTS ONLY!
The World-Renowned Tragedians
DAVID GARRICK THE YOUNGER!
AND EDMUND KEAN THE ELDER!
Of the London and Continental Theatres,
In their Thrilling Tragedy of

THE KING'S CAMELEOPARD,
OR THE ROYAL NONESUCH ! ! !

Admission 50 cents.

Then at the bottom was the biggest line of all, which said:

LADIES AND CHILDREN NOT ADMITTED.

"There," says he, "if that line don't fetch them, I don't know Arkansaw!"

***

After dinner the duke says:

"Well, Capet, we'll want to make this a first-class show, you know, so I guess we'll add a little more to it. We want a little something to answer encores with, anyway."

"What's onkores, Bilgewater?"

The duke told him, and then says:

"I'll answer by doing the Highland fling or the sailor's hornpipe; and you--well, let me see--oh, I've got it--you can do Hamlet's soliloquy."

"Hamlet's which?"

"Hamlet's soliloquy, you know; the most celebrated thing in Shakespeare. Ah, it's sublime, sublime! Always fetches the house. I haven't got it in the book--I've only got one volume--but I reckon I can piece it out from memory. I'll just walk up and down a minute, and see if I can call it back from recollection's vaults."

***

We struck it mighty lucky; there was going to be a circus there that afternoon, and the country people was already beginning to come in, in all kinds of old shackly wagons, and on horses. The circus would leave before night, so our show would have a pretty good chance. The duke he hired the courthouse, and we went around and stuck up our bills. They read like this:

Shaksperean Revival ! ! !
Wonderful Attraction!
For One Night Only!

The world renowned tragedians, David Garrick the Younger, of Drury Lane Theatre London, and Edmund Kean the elder, of the Royal Haymarket Theatre, Whitechapel, Pudding Lane, Piccadilly, London, and the Royal Continental Theatres, in their sublime Shaksperean Spectacle entitled The Balcony Scene in Romeo and Juliet ! ! !

Romeo...................Mr. Garrick
Juliet..................Mr. Kean

Assisted by the whole strength of the company!
New costumes, new scenery, new appointments!
Also: The thrilling, masterly, and blood-curdling
Broad-sword conflict
In Richard III. ! ! !

Richard III.............Mr. Garrick
Richmond................Mr. Kean

Also: (by special request) Hamlet's Immortal Soliloquy ! !
By The Illustrious Kean!
Done by him 300 consecutive nights in Paris!
For One Night Only,
On account of imperative European engagements!
Admission 25 cents; children and servants, 10 cents.

***

We played robber now and then about a month, and then I resigned. All the boys did. We hadn't robbed nobody, hadn't killed any people, but only just pretended. We used to hop out of the woods and go charging down on hog-drivers and women in carts taking garden stuff to market, but we never hived any of them. Tom Sawyer called the hogs "ingots," and he called the turnips and stuff "julery," and we would go to the cave and powwow over what we had done, and how many people we had killed and marked. But I couldn't see no profit in it. One time Tom sent a boy to run about town with a blazing stick, which he called a slogan (which was the sign for the Gang to get together), and then he said he had got secret news by his spies that next day a whole parcel of Spanish merchants and rich A-rabs was going to camp in Cave Hollow with two hundred elephants, and six hundred camels, and over a thousand "sumter" mules, all loaded down with di'monds, and they didn't have only a guard of four hundred soldiers, and so we would lay in ambuscade, as he called it, and kill the lot and scoop the things. He said we must slick up our swords and guns, and get ready. He never could go after even a turnip-cart but he must have the swords and guns all scoured up for it, though they was only lath and broomsticks, and you might scour at them till you rotted, and then they warn't worth a mouthful of ashes more than what they was before. I didn't believe we could lick such a crowd of Spaniards and A-rabs, but I wanted to see the camels and elephants, so I was on hand next day, Saturday, in the ambuscade; and when we got the word we rushed out of the woods and down the hill. But there warn't no Spaniards and A-rabs, and there warn't no camels nor no elephants. It warn't anything but a Sunday-school picnic, and only a primer-class at that. We busted it up, and chased the children up the hollow; but we never got anything but some doughnuts and jam, though Ben Rogers got a rag doll, and Jo Harper got a hymn-book and a tract; and then the teacher charged in, and made us drop everything and cut. I didn't see no di'monds, and I told Tom Sawyer so. He said there was loads of them there, anyway; and he said there was A-rabs there, too, and elephants and things. I said, why couldn't we see them, then? He said if I warn't so ignorant, but had read a book called Don Quixote, I would know without asking. He said it was all done by enchantment. He said there was hundreds of soldiers there, and elephants and treasure, and so on, but we had enemies which he called magicians; and they had turned the whole thing into an infant Sunday-school, just out of spite. I said, all right; then the thing for us to do was to go for the magicians. Tom Sawyer said I was a numskull.

"Why," said he, "a magician could call up a lot of genies, and they would hash you up like nothing before you could say Jack Robinson. They are as tall as a tree and as big around as a church."

"Well," I says, "s'pose we got some genies to help US--can't we lick the other crowd then?"

"How you going to get them?"

"I don't know. How do THEY get them?"

"Why, they rub an old tin lamp or an iron ring, and then the genies come tearing in, with the thunder and lightning a-ripping around and the smoke a-rolling, and everything they're told to do they up and do it. They don't think nothing of pulling a shot-tower up by the roots, and belting a Sunday-school superintendent over the head with it--or any other man."

***

The front page of the day reports that, after a meeting between K.A.N. Anderson and Bernard Montgomery, the British Eighth Army, stalled for several days before Rommel’s line of retreat at El Agheila, was again on the offensive.

In silent contradiction to Charles de Gaulle’s call for elimination from command of Admiral Darlan, Secretary of War Henry Stimson lavished praise on the Admiral for his having made the call to French forces in Algeria to lay down arms before the landing Allies on November 8. The Secretary also clarified the three-point goal for North Africa: elimination of the Axis from Tunisia; boxing Rommel’s forces between the British Eighth Army and Tripoli; and then securing the North African Mediterranean coastline into Egypt.

From London came the report that the RAF had once again attacked Turin, as well this time Naples, in an apparently large raid which took an hour over England to depart. The unusually dangerous raid had to pass through a five-mile cloud layer which suddenly appeared over the coast of France and remained so obnubilated all the way down to northern Italy's camera obscura. The piece reminds its readers that this raid was further evidence of Prime Minister Churchill’s warning and promise to Italy from his speech two weeks earlier on November 29: "But if the enemy should in due course be blasted from the Tunisian tip--which is our aim--the whole of the south of Italy, all the naval bases, and all the munitions establishments and other military objectives, wherever situated, will be brought under prolonged scientific and shattering air attack."

Once again, Fiat took a pounding.

From Russia, it was reported that the Nazis were again trying to take back the Don Bend, which they had lost to the Russians some three weeks earlier. Said Pravda, a panzer column of 28 tanks in the van first surrounded a Soviet contingent of infantry before being repulsed by the Russian defenders, destroying 23 of the tanks.

A transport in the Solomons carrying 4,000 men, the President Coolidge, was reported to have been sunk after it hit an Allied mine protecting the harbor. The ship had been sunk, though location and date were as yet unreported, at Espirtu Santo on October 26. All save four men had been rescued. Captain Henry Nelson, skipper of the ship, was brought before a court martial in the first week of December for negligence in its operation, but was acquitted on the basis that inadequate advice had been provided him on the presence and location of the mines.

Tim Pridgen offers up a piece on one Bill Kelly, electrical linesman, who had an unfortunate encounter with 11,000 volts issuing on an arc into him from the nearest high tension wire, 18 inches away. He said it sounded like forty freight trains coming at him; he then awakened to find four toes missing and part of his skull gone, his body black as burnt toast. But, he lived to tell the tale. Don’t try that at home.

The part of the article on the San Francisco which got chopped away on the turn of the page to the inside, just as the sailor was about to explain why the crew had dubbed the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal "The Battle of the Lilacs", may be picked up at the Ludington Daily News out of Ludington, Michigan, from the A.P. piece appearing the same date. The continuation of the story suggests that should you ever smell lilacs strangely strong in your midst, as we think we have on occasion, beware enemy activity in the area, whether in San Francisco or the Solomon Islands, or elsewhere. Our experience suggests that the odor foreshadows death in some manner connected with you.

We note on that page also that, strangely, it seems to us that when we last saw Popeye, back around July 21, 1941, somewhere in there, he was courting a mermaid. It seems that the courtship was still going on seventeen months later. This sort of slow-poke story line is why we never paid any attention to the comics page, as we have before mentioned. It, we find, is quite confusing.

Indeed, we still have not figured out what in the world the "Side Glances" meant yesterday in its comment regarding the paper-hanging for General Eisenhower, but we're working on it.

This morning, for some reason, it came to us that we ought impart a little short story, very short, concerning our purchase of a dog back in February, 1976, as we were attending in San Francisco occasionally the trial of Patricia Hearst. We did not understand though exactly why it was that this little story would but ever so slightly relate to any print of late on the pages, perhaps in the most general of senses to San Francisco and the return of the San Francisco to port in San Francisco Bay. But that, it seemed to us this morning, was far too tenuous and general a connection to warrant this little story.

But, as things are apt often to occur here, as we proceed along, there is a little preview on the right side of the page which indicates an article by Tom Revelle on the inside somewhere about a Great Dane selecting its master out at Morris Field, the Army air base at the time in Charlotte.

So:

We saw an ad for a puppy, part St. Bernard, part Great Dane, at an affordable price in the San Francisco Chronicle back in February, 1976. We were in the market then for a doggy and so called the folks up and made an appointment to meet their puppies, all five or six or so. We told a friend that, from the advertised breed mixture of the dog, we thought we would name our puppy "Bogart", as yet sight unseen. Just why that name, we could not really explain to you, then or now. It just seemed the right thing to do.

Thus, we trekked across the Bay Bridge from Oakland over to San Bruno and met the puppies. One particular one was especially friendly to our hand and so we decided we would choose him. Whereupon the owners informed that--and this is absolutely true--they had already provided to this particular puppy a name, you guessed it, "Bogart". When we informed them how coincidental that was, that we had already picked that name before seeing any of their puppies, they looked at us a little strangely. But it was true.

On the way back over the Bay Bridge, little Bogart threw up in our little blue roadster. Consequently, we nearly changed his name to "Bay Bridge". But we decided that Bay Bridge was not so apropos a name for a dog named Bogart. So, "Bogart" he remained.

Eventually, we took Bogart all the way across the country to North Carolina where he resided with us, until one day in the spring of 1977, Bogart up and suddenly disappeared one afternoon, just a little over a year after he chose us as his master. We never did find him, despite a two-day exhaustive search for miles and miles around. A friendly little dog which never quite grew to the size of either a St. Bernard or a Great Dane but nevertheless had the markings of the St. Bernard, we have often speculated on what happened to him. Dognaped? Run over on the road nearby? Or, simply killed out of vengeance? (Bogart, unfortunately, had just a month or so before his untimely disappearance gotten into a gaggle of ducks on a nearby fishing pond and killed a couple of them. One we saved until it died a couple of days later, as its “quacks” in the night became fainter and fainter.)

If you should see Bogart along the road somewhere between North Carolina and San Francisco, let us know. We know it’s been awhile, but Bogey was an extraordinary dog in his youth, and thus would be no less extraordinary in his old age at, what it would it be, 34? Well, that’s not really old at all, is it? Just call us at 1-800-DOG-LOST. There is no reward.

Anyway, that's another true story, this one on the dog which chose its master, we suppose, and maybe then decided to choose another one. We don’t know. We treated Bogart nicely. There was no reason to get mad or anything. But, c'est la vie. Wherever you are, Bogey, here’s lookin’ at you, kid. We hope you find your way home one of these first nights, you dog, you.

Come to think of it, maybe Bogey, somewhere out on the road, linked up with Earl Butz. Oh dear, on third thought, banish the thought.

On the editorial page, Dick Young provides a quick hike through the history of the Charlotte Police Department, going back to its beginnings in 1852, when two patrolmen made rounds only after 9 p.m. until dawn and suffered a fine of $1 for each time they failed hourly through the night to allay all fear of the populace, and, no doubt, cause in the process plentiful sleep disorders, by calling out, "All is well."

By the time we reached the end of that article where Mr. Young describes the Ku Klux Klan riding into town in 1871, led by some Kentucky horse trader who the townspeople fancied but who had to leave town on short notice for his earlier shooting spree, we were expecting some significant conclusion to the related vignette, such as that the individual was the father of David Wark Griffith, or at least Tom Dixon. But, the editorial trailed off into silence on the identity of the individual. Regardless, candidly, we think he should have been hung.

Samuel Grafton tells of a subtle shift in the war, made evident at home in the calls for production: that anti-aircraft ammunition for England was now no longer needed so much, as planes and ships had become the primary priority. Meanwhile, in Germany, production was having to shift to a defensive strategy and turn to anti-aircraft guns and ammunition. He suggests this turn as being corroborative of those who had been calling since early in the year for offensive measures.

But, of course, all had to be accomplished only in its proper order, once the large job of sufficient production and transport of troops and supplies had reached England and then sufficient coordination and training of the troops occurred to produce such a huge offensive, landing at five different points in Morocco and Algeria, at nearly precisely the same moment.

The note, incidentally, at the end of the letter to the editor inquiring why Paul Mallon had been replaced by Samuel Grafton when the letter writer perceived that Mr. Grafton was a New Deal supporter, in the same boat as Raymond Clapper and Dorothy Thompson, thus questioning from what source any critique might come, clears up the mystery as to why Mr. Mallon’s column was dropped: he was on leave for a month for illness. Perhaps the illness in question was the heart condition which eventually killed him in 1950 at age 49. Whether he will return to The News is not indicated; we shall have to wait and see.

So far, we have to say that we prefer the breezy writing style of Mr. Grafton to the rather dry contributions of Mr. Mallon, however well-informed his pieces were.

"Prelude" extends the Grafton comments, suggesting that Hitler appeared to be stressing infantry preparation for defense of home turf, while sending a large part of the Luftwaffe, not in home bases, into the Tunisian and Libyan theaters. The bulk of the Luftwaffe, however, it says, according to military analysts, was being retooled in Germany, thought to be in preparation for a major offensive drive, either against Britain or through Spain against the Allied headquarters at Gibraltar, or through Turkey against the British contingents protecting the Middle East.

Just why "Falsetto Note" chooses in its fictive analogue the names "Klassy Kut" and "Kollege Klothes" in trying to simplify for its readers the competing equities at issue in the suit brought by the Government to break up an alleged monopolistic practice of the Associated Press in Chicago, we don't know. In the case at hand, the competing newspapers were the anti-Administration Tribune of Robert McCormick and the pro-Administration Sun of Marshall Field, the former enjoying the AP's service while the latter being denied it. Do the monikers in the analogue suggest that A.P. and U.P.I. were both K.K.'s? And, so it really didn’t matter one way or the other which service was available?

But then, we would have to assume that Kay Kyser's Kollege of Musical Knowledge was also a K.K. And, that might make us a kard-karrying member of the K.K.

And then there was King and Kennedy also.

So, we'll just pass on all of that speculation and go fly a kite with a key on the end, and hope it doesn’t become entangled in any 11,000-volt high tension wires which might blow off our toes and part of our skull--on which hope we proceed here, at great peril, every day anyway. And, believe us, on some days in the past eleven years, without our even knowing it at the time, we have certainly, at least apparently, made contact with some very high tension wires. But, we caution, any wiseacre best be careful in trying to shock us. We may be carrying a loaded charge by this point ready at any moment for discharge.

Go read some Shakespeare or Tom Sawyer or something and calm down.

Incidentally, if you come upon any dunks or, even a passel of skogs, let us know. It could be Bogey's offspring.

Perhaps, Bogey just broke out, as any madawg in Lone Pine would.

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