s will go.
Halliday--ah, that's the name--Ben Halliday, your uncle [turning to
Mr. Carnegie]. That was the fellow--Ben Halliday--and Jack was full of
admiration at the prodigious speed that that line of stages made--and it
was good speed--one hundred and twenty-five miles a day, going day and
night, and it was the event of Jack's life, and there at the Fords of
the Jordan the colonel was inspired to a speech (he was always making a
speech), so he called us up to him. He called up five sinners and three
saints. It has been only lately that Mr. Carnegie beatified me. And he
said: "Here are the Fords of the Jordan--a monumental place. At this
very point, when Moses brought the children of Israel through--he
brought the children of Israel from Egypt through the desert you see
them--he guarded them through that desert patiently, patiently during
forty years, and brought them to this spot safe and sound. There you
see--there is the scene of what Moses did."
And Jack said: "Moses who?"
"Oh," he says, "Jack, you ought not to ask that! Moses, the great
law-giver! Moses, the great patriot! Moses, the great warrior! Moses,
the great guide, who, as I tell you, brought these people through these
three hundred miles of sand in forty years, and landed there safe and
sound."
Jack said: "There's nothin' in that three hundred miles in forty years.
Ben Halliday would have snaked 'em through in thirty--six hours."
Well, I was speaking of Jack's innocence, and it was beautiful. Jack was
not ignorant on all subjects. That boy was a deep student in the history
of Anglo-Saxon liberty, and he was a patriot all the way through to
the marrow. There was a subject that interested him all the time.
Other subjects were of no concern to Jack, but that quaint, inscrutable
innocence of his I could not get Williams to put into the picture.
Yes, Williams wanted to do it. He said: "I will make him as innocent
as a virgin." He thought a moment, and then said, "I will make him as
innocent as an unborn virgin;" which covered the ground.
I was reminded of Jack because I came across a letter to-day which is
over thirty years old that Jack wrote. Jack was doomed to consumption.
He was very long and slim, poor creature; and in a year or two after
he got back from that excursion, to the Holy Land he went on a ride on
horseback through Colorado, and he did not last but a year or two.
He wrote this letter, not to me, but to a friend of mine; and he s
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