fellow out in Colorado somewhere. She's got children scattered around
here and there, most everywheres.'

The answer to several other inquiries was brief and simple--

'Killed in the war.'

I named another boy.

'Well, now, his case is curious! There wasn't a human being in this town
but knew that that boy was a perfect chucklehead; perfect dummy; just
a stupid ass, as you may say. Everybody knew it, and everybody said it.
Well, if that very boy isn't the first lawyer in the State of Missouri
to-day, I'm a Democrat!'

'Is that so?'

'It's actually so. I'm telling you the truth.'

'How do you account for it?'

'Account for it? There ain't any accounting for it, except that if you
send a damned fool to St. Louis, and you don't tell them he's a damned
fool they'll never find it out. There's one thing sure--if I had
a damned fool I should know what to do with him: ship him to St.
Louis--it's the noblest market in the world for that kind of property.
Well, when you come to look at it all around, and chew at it and think
it over, don't it just bang anything you ever heard of?'

'Well, yes, it does seem to. But don't you think maybe it was the
Hannibal people who were mistaken about the boy, and not the St. Louis
people.'

'Oh, nonsense! The people here have known him from the very cradle--they
knew him a hundred times better than the St. Louis idiots could have
known him. No, if you have got any damned fools that you want to realize
on, take my advice--send them to St. Louis.'

I mentioned a great number of people whom I had formerly known. Some
were dead, some were gone away, some had prospered, some had come
to naught; but as regarded a dozen or so of the lot, the answer was
comforting:

'Prosperous--live here yet--town littered with their children.'

I asked about Miss ----.

Died in the insane asylum three or four years ago--never was out of it
from the time she went in; and was always suffering, too; never got a
shred of her mind back.'

If he spoke the truth, here was a heavy tragedy, indeed. Thirty-six
years in a madhouse, that some young fools might have some fun! I was
a small boy, at the time; and I saw those giddy young ladies come
tiptoeing into the room where Miss ---- sat reading at midnight by a
lamp. The girl at the head of the file wore a shroud and a doughface,
she crept behind the victim, touched her on the shoulder, and she looked
up and screamed, and then fell into convulsions. She d