Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson (Version 2) — 22 - Conclusion

The court rose; the new prisoner, handcuffed, was removed.

Conclusion 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 the 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 per cent.

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 he that 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.

Transcriber's Notes Introduction: 1. Background.

Welcome to Project Gutenberg's presentation of Pudd'nhead Wilson.

The Italian twins in this novel, Luigi and Angelo, were inspired by a real pair of Italian conjoined twins who toured America in the 1890s.

These were Giacomo and Giovanni Battista Tocci.

Homer Plessy was arrested for sitting in a whites-only passenger car on June 7, 1892, and one month later he stood before Judge John Howard Ferguson to plead his case.

Plessy was an octaroon who could easily "pass white."

Four years later, the Supreme Court condoned "Separate but Equal" laws in the famous Plessy vs. Ferguson case, which affirmed the decision of Justice Ferguson in local court.

These events in 1892 unfolded as Twain wrote this story, and changed the tale that he ended up telling.

Arthur Conan Doyle released his best-selling collection of short stories, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, on October 14, 1892. The stories had already appeared in The Strand Magazine, one each month, from July 1891 to June 1892. Holmes inspired Twain to add a component of forensics to this story.

2. Dialect.

The soliloquies and conversations in the novel follow some general rules.

Twain introduced some variations in the spelling of dialect, and sometimes the sound of dialect, but the end meaning seems to be the same thing.

Below is a table of some of these words, and alternatives found in the text: Dialect used in Pudd'nhead Wilson English Dialect, Alternative, Another and en against agin, ag'in, ag'in' because 'ca'se going gwine, gwyne more mo' that dat the de then den there dere, dah these dese they dey, deh this dis was 'uz with wid where whah The above table was presented as a foundation which played into the decision to make some emendations, below, that were not authorized by Twain in 1899. One curious notation is that there was sometimes pronounced dere, but also dah.

Along the same lines, they most often became dey, but in one case, deh.

3. This version.

Our version is based on the 1894 publication of this novel in Hartford.

This was Twain's original American release of the novel in book form.

A

scanned copy of this book is available through Hathitrust.

The book contained some spaces in contractions: I 'll, dat 'll, had n't, could n't, dis 'll, 't ain't / t ain't, and dey 'll are some examples.

These spaces were not retained in our transcription, and are not identified.

We did make a few other emendations.

These emendations were checked with the 1899 version of Pudd'nhead Wilson published by Harper & Brothers.

4. Notes on emendations.

The errors on Page 233 and Page 288, were not changed in the 1899 book, so the case for making those changes may be found in the Detailed Notes section.

The remaining errors were corrected in the 1899 publication, presumably authorized by Twain, who essentially made the case for those emendations.

In the HTML version of this e-book, you can place your cursor over the faint silver dotted lines below the changed text to discover the original text.

The Detailed Notes section of these notes describe these emendations.

5. Other versions.

Please note that many print versions of Pudd'nhead Wilson include the phrase 'spelling and usage have been brought into conformity with modern usage,' and editors have been liberal with their renditions of Twain's story.

6. Detailed notes.

The Detailed Notes Section also includes issues that have come up during transcription.

One common issue is that words are sometimes split into two lines for spacing purposes in the original text.

These words are hyphenated in the physical book, but there is a question sometimes as to whether the hyphen should be retained in transcription.

The reasons behind some of these decisions are itemized.

Production Notes Section: 1. Chapter Titles.

The Chapter Titles, such as Doom in Chapter XXI.

, were not part of Twain's book.

They remain from another version of this book.

The chapter titles are used in PG's Mark Twain index, so we have retained them.