Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/172

 MARK TWAIN

folk have worked off at par on this confiding ob server. It compels the conviction that there was something about him that bred in those speculators a quite unusual sense of safety, and encouraged them to strain their powers in his behalf. They seem to have satisfied themselves that all he wanted was &quot;significant&quot; facts, and that he was not accus tomed to examine the source whence they pro ceeded. It is plain that there was a sort of con spiracy against him almost from the start a conspiracy to freight him up with all the strange extravagances those people s decayed brains could invent.

The lengths to which they went are next to incredible. They told him things which surely would have excited any one else s suspicion, but they did not excite his. Consider this:

There is not in all the United States an entirely nude statue.

If an angel should come down and say such a thing about heaven, a reasonably cautious observer would take that angel s number and inquire a little &quot;further before he added it to his catch. What does the present observer do? Adds it. Adds it at once. Adds it, and labels it with this innocent comment :

This small fact is strangely significant.

It does seem to me that this kind of observing is defective.

Here is another curiosity which some liberal person made him a present of. I should think it ought to have disturbed the deep slumber of his

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