AUTHOR'S NOTE—Another version of this story appeared in a book entitled “Danny's Own Story,” published in 1912 by Doubleday, Page & Co.

I'm not so sure about Prohibition and pledges and such things holding back a man that has got the liquor idea in his head. If meanness is in a man, it usually stays in him, in spite of all the pledges he signs and the promises he makes.

About the meanest man I ever knew was Hank Walters, a blacksmith in a little town in Illinois, the meanest and the whiskey-drinkingest. And I had a chance to know him well, for he and his wife Elmira brought me up. Somebody left me on their doorstep in a basket when I was a baby, and they took me in and raised me. I reckon they took me in so they could quarrel about me. They'd lived together a good many years and quarrelled about everything else under the sun, and were running out of topics to row over. A new topic of dissension sort of briskened things up for a while.

Not having any kids of his own to lick, Hank lambasted me when he was drunk and whaled me when he was sober. It was a change from licking his wife, I suppose. A man like Hank has just naturally got to have something he can cuss around and boss, so as to keep himself from finding out he don't amount to anything... although he must have known he didn't, too, way down deep in his inmost gizzards.

So I was unhappy when I was a kid, but not knowing anything else I never found out exactly how unhappy I was. There were worse places to live in than that little town, and there was one thing in our house that I always admired when I was a kid. That was a big cistern. Most people had their cisterns outside their houses, but ours was right in under our kitchen floor, and there was a trap door with leather hinges opened into it right by the kitchen stove. But that wasn't why I was so proud of it. It was because the cistern was full of fish—bullheads and redhorse and sunfish and pickerel.

Hank's father built the cistern. And one time he brought home some live fish in a bucket and dumped them in there. And they grew. And multiplied and refurnished the earth, as the Good Book says. That cistern full of fish had got to be a family custom. It was a comfort to Hank, for all the Walterses were great fish eaters, though it never went to brains any. We fed 'em now and then, and threw the little ones back in until they were grown, and kept the dead ones picked out as soon as we smelled anything wrong, and it never hurt the water any; and when I was a kid I wouldn't have taken anything for living in a house like that.

One time when I was a kid about six years old Hank came home drunk from Bill Nolan's barroom, and got to chasing Elmira's cat, because he said it was making faces at him. The cistern door was open, and Hank fell in. Elmira wasn't at home, and I was scared. Elmira had always told me not to fool around that cistern door any when I was a kid, for if I fell in there, she said, I'd be a corpse, quicker'n scatt.

So when Hank fell in and I heard him splash, being such a little fellow and awful scared because Elmira had always made it so strong, I supposed that Hank was probably a corpse already. I slammed the door shut over the cistern without looking in, for I heard Hank flopping around down there. I hadn't ever heard a corpse flop before and didn't know but what it might be somehow injurious to me, and I wasn't going to take any chances.

I went out and played in the front yard and waited for Elmira. But I couldn't seem to get my mind settled on playing I was a horse, or anything. I kept thinking of Hank being a corpse down in that cistern. And maybe that corpse is going to come flopping out pretty soon, I thought to myself, and lick me in some new and unusual way. I hadn't ever been licked by a corpse. Being young and innocent, I didn't rightly know what a corpse is, except I had the idea there was something about a corpse that kept them from being popular.

So after a while I sneaked back into the house and set all the flatirons on top of the cistern lid. I heard some flopping and splashing and fluttering, as if that corpse was trying to jump up and was falling back into the water, and I heard Hank's voice, and got scareder and scareder. When Elmira came along down the road she saw me by the gate crying and blubbering, and she asked me why.

“Hank is a corpse!” says I.

“A corpse!” says Elmira, dropping the pound of coffee she was carrying home from the general store and post-office. “Danny, what do you mean?”

I saw then I was to blame somehow, and I wished I hadn't said anything about Hank being a corpse. And I made up my mind I wouldn't say anything more. So when she grabbed hold of me and asked me again what I meant I blubbered harder, as a kid will, and said nothing. I wished I hadn't set those flatirons on the cistern lid, for it came to me all at once that even if Hank had turned into a corpse I hadn't any right to keep him in the cistern.

Just then old Mis' Rogers, one of our neighbours, came by, while Elmira was shaking me and yelling at me and asking how it happened, and had I seen it, and where was Hank's corpse.

“What's Danny been doing now?” asked Mis' Rogers—me being always up to something.

Elmira turned and saw her and gave a whoop and hollered out: “Hank is dead!” And she threw her apron over her head and sat right down in the path and boo-hooed like a baby. And I bellered and howled all the louder.

Mis' Rogers, she never waited to ask anything more. She saw she had a piece of news, and she wanted to be the first to spread it. She ran right across the road to where the Alexanderses lived. Mis' Alexander, she saw her coming and unhooked the screen door and Mis' Rogers hollered out before she reached the porch: “Hank Walters is dead!”

And then she went footing it up the street. There was a black plume on her bonnet, nodding the same as on a hearse, and she was into and out of seven front yards in less than five minutes.

Mis' Alexander she ran across the road to where we were, and kneeled down and put her arm around Elmira, who was still rocking back and forth in the path, and she said:

“How do you know he's dead, Elmira? I saw him not more than an hour ago.”

“Danny saw it all,” says Elmira.

Mis' Alexander turned to me and wanted to know what happened and how it happened and where it happened. But I didn't want to say anything about that cistern. So I busted out crying all over again and I said: “He was drunk and he came home drunk and he did it then, and that's how he did it.”

“And you saw him?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Where is he?” says she and Elmira, both together.

But I was scared to say anything about that cistern, so I just bawled some more.

“Was it in the blacksmith shop?” asks Mis' Alexander.

I nodded my head again, and let it go at that.

“Is he in there now?” she wants to know.

I nodded again. I hadn't meant to give out any untrue stories. But a kid will always lie, not meaning particular to lie, if you sort of invite him with questions like that, and get him scared by the way you're acting. Besides, I says to myself, so long as Hank has turned into a corpse, and being a corpse makes him dead, what's the difference whether he's in the blacksmith shop or in the cistern? I hadn't had any plain idea before that being a corpse meant the same thing as being dead. And I wasn't any too sure what being dead was like, either. Except I knew they had funerals over you then. I knew being a corpse must be a disadvantage from the way that Elmira has always said to keep away from that cistern, or I'd be one. And I began to see the whole thing was more important even than I had figured it was at first. I wondered if there'd be a funeral at our house. If there was one, that would be fine. They didn't have them every day in our town, and we hadn't ever had one of our own.

Mis' Alexander, she led Elmira into the house, both a-crying, and Mis' Alexander trying to comfort her, and me a-tagging along behind holding on to Elmira's skirts and sniffling into them. And in a few minutes all those women that Mis' Rogers had told came filing into the house, one at a time, looking sad and mournful. Only old Mis' Primrose, she was a little late getting there, because she stopped to put on the dress she always wore to funerals, with the black Paris lace on to it that her cousin Arminty White had sent her from Chicago.

When they found out that Hank had come home with liquor in him and done it himself they were all excited and they all crowded around and asked me questions, except two that were holding Elmira's hands where she sat moaning in a chair. And those questions scared me and egged me on to lies I hadn't had any idea of telling.

Says one woman: “Danny, you saw him do it in the blacksmith shop?”

I nodded.

“But how did he get in?” says another one. “The door was locked on the outside with a padlock just now when I came by. He couldn't have killed himself in there and then locked the door on the outside.”

I didn't see how he could have done that myself, so I began to bawl again and said nothing at all.

“He must have crawled into the shop through that little side window,” says Mis' Primrose. “That window was open when I came by, even if the door was locked. Did you see him crawl through the little side window, Danny?”

I nodded. There wasn't anything else I could think of to do.

“But you aren't tall enough to look through that window;” sings out Mis' Rogers. “How could you see into the shop, Danny?”

I didn't know, so I didn't say anything at all; I just sniffled.

“There's a store box right in under the window,” says another one. “Danny must have climbed on to that store box and looked in after he saw Hank crawl through the window. Did you scramble on to the store box and look in, Danny?”

I just nodded again.

“And what was it you saw him do? How did he kill himself?” they all asked together.

I didn't know. So I just bellered and boo-hooed some more. Things were getting past anything I could see the way out of.

“He might have hung himself to one of the iron rings in the joists above the forge,” says another woman.

“He climbed on to the forge and tied the rope to one of those rings, and tied the other end around his neck, and then he stepped off the forge and swung. Was that how he did it, Danny?”

I nodded. And I bellered louder than ever. I knew that Hank was down in that cistern below the kitchen, a corpse and a mighty wet corpse, all this time; but those women kind of got me to thinking he was hanging out in the blacksmith shop by the forge, too.

Pretty soon one woman says, shivery: “I wouldn't want to have the job of opening the door of the blacksmith shop the first one!”

And they all shivered, and looked at Elmira, and says to let some of the men open that door. And Mis' Alexander says she'll run and get her husband and make him do it. And all the time Elmira sits moaning in that chair. One woman says Elmira ought to have a cup of tea, and she'll lay off her bonnet and go to the kitchen and make it for her. But Elmira says no, she can't a-bear to think of tea, with poor Hennery hanging out there in the shop. But she was kind of enjoying all that fuss being made over her, too. And all the other women said: “Poor thing!” But most of them were mad because she said she didn't want any tea, for they wanted some and didn't feel free to take it without she took some. They coaxed her and made her see that it was her duty, and she said she'd have some finally.

So they all went out to the kitchen, taking along some of the best room chairs, Elmira coming, too, and me tagging along. The first thing they noticed was those flatirons on top of the cistern lid. Mis' Primrose says that looks funny. But Mis' Rogers says Danny must have been playing with them. “Were you playing they were horses, Danny?”

I was feeling considerable like a liar by this time, but I nodded. I couldn't see any use hurrying things up. I was bound to get a licking pretty soon anyhow. I could always bet on that. So they picked up the flatirons, and as they picked them up there came a splashing noise in the cistern. I thought to myself that Hank's corpse would be out of there in a minute, and then I'd catch it. One woman says: “Sakes alive! What's that noise?”

Elmira says the cistern is full of fish and it must be some of the biggest ones flopping around. If they hadn't been worked up and excited and talking all together and thinking of Hank hanging out in the blacksmith shop they might have suspicioned something, for that flopping and splashing kept up steady. Maybe I should have mentioned sooner it had been a dry summer and there was only three or four feet of water in the cistern and Hank wasn't in scarcely up to his big hairy chest. When Elmira says the cistern is full of fish that woman opens the trap door and looks in. Hank thinks it's Elmira come to get him out, he says afterward. And he allows he'll keep quiet in there and make believe he is drowned and give her a good scare and make her feel sorry for him.

But when the cistern door was opened he heard a lot of clacking tongues like a hen convention, and he allowed she had told the neighbours, and he'd scare them, too. So he laid low. And the woman that looked in, she sees nothing, for it's as dark down there as the insides of the whale that swallowed Jonah. But she left the door open and went on making tea, and there wasn't scarcely a sound from that cistern, only little ripply noises like it might have been fish. Pretty soon Mis' Rogers says:

“It has drawed, Elmira; won't you have a cup?” Elmira kicked some more, but she took hers. And each woman took hers. And one woman, a-sipping of hers, she says:

“The departed had his good points, Elmira.”

Which was the best thing had been said of Hank in that town for years and years.

Old Mis' Primrose, she always prided herself on being honest, no matter what come of it, and she ups and says: “I don't believe in any hypocritics at a time like this, any more'n any other time. The departed wasn't any good, and the whole town knows it, and Elmira ought to feel like it's good riddance of bad rubbish, and such is my sentiments and the sentiments of truth and righteousness.”

All the other women sings out: “W'y, Mis' Primrose, I never!” But down in underneath more of 'em agreed than let on to. Elmira she wiped her eyes and says:

“Hennery and me had our troubles, there ain't any use denying that, Mis' Primrose. It has often been give and take between us and betwixt us. And the whole town knows he has lifted his hand against me more'n once. But I always stood up to Hennery and I fit him back, free and fair and open. I give him as good as he sent on this earth and I ain't the one to carry a mad beyond the grave. I forgive Hennery all the orneriness he did to me, and there was a lot of it, as is becoming to a church member, which he never was.”

All the women but Mis' Primrose says: “Elmira, you have got a Christian sperrit!” Which did her a heap of good, and she cried considerable harder, leaking out tears as fast as she poured tea in. And each one present tried to think up something nice to say about Hank, only there wasn't much they could say. And Hank in that cistern, listening to every word of it.

Mis' Rogers, she says: “Before he took to drinking like a fish, Hank Walters was as likely a lookin' young feller as ever I see.”

Mis' White, she says: “Well, Hank he never was a stingy man, anyhow. Often and often White has told me about seeing Hank treating the crowd down in Nolan's saloon just as come-easy, go-easy as if it wasn't money he'd ought to have paid his honest debts with.”

They sat there that way telling of what good points they could think of for ten minutes, and Hank hearing it and getting madder and madder all the time. By and by Tom Alexander came busting into the house.

“What's the matter with all you women?” he says. “There's nobody hanging in that blacksmith shop. I broke the door down and went in, and it's empty.”

There was a pretty howdy-do, then, and they all sing out:

“Where's the corpse?”

Some thinks maybe someone has cut it down and taken it away, and all gabbled at once. But for a minute or two no one thought that maybe little Danny had been egged on to tell lies. And little Danny ain't saying a word. But Elmira grabbed me and shook me and said:

“You little liar, what do you mean by that story of yours?”

I thought that licking was about due then. But whilst all eyes were turned on me and Elmira, there came a voice from the cistern. It was Hank's voice, but it sounded queer and hollow, and it said:

“Tom Alexander, is that you?”

Some of the women screamed, for they thought it was Hank's ghost. But Mis' Primrose says: “What would a ghost be doing in a cistern?”

Tom Alexander laughed and yelled down into the cistern: “What in blazes you want to jump in there for, Hank?”

“You darned ijut!” said Hank, “you quit mocking me and get a ladder, and when I get out'n here I'll learn you to ask me what I wanted to jump in here for!”

“You never saw the day you could do it,” says Tom Alexander, meaning the day Hank could lick him. “And if you feel that way about it you can stay down there, for all of me. I guess a little water won't hurt you any, for a change.” And he left the house.

“Elmira,” sings out Hank, mad and bossy, “you go get me a ladder!”

But Elmira, her temper rose up, too, all of a sudden.

“Don't you dare order me around like I was the dirt under your feet, Hennery Walters,” she says.

Hank fairly roared, he was so mad. “When I get out'n here,” he shouted, “I'll give you what you won't forget in a hurry! I heard you a-forgivin' me and a-weepin' over me! And I won't be forgive nor weeped over by no one! You go and get that ladder!”

But Elmira only answered: “You was drunk when you fell in there, Hank Walters. And you can stay in there till you get a better temper on to you.” And all the women laughed and said: “That's right, Elmira! Spunk up to him!”

There was considerable splashing around in the water for a couple of minutes. And then, of a sudden, a live fish came a-whirling out of that hole in the floor, which he catched with his hands. It was a big bullhead, and its whiskers around its mouth was stiffened into spikes, and it landed kerplump on to Mis' Rogers' lap, a-wiggling, and it horned her on the hands. She was that surprised she fainted. Mis' Primrose, she got up and licked the fish back into the cistern and said, right decided:

“Elmira Walters, if you let Hank out of that cistern before he's signed the pledge and promised to jine the church, you're a bigger fool than I take you for. A woman has got to make a stand!”

And all the women sing out: “Send for Brother Cartwright! Send for Brother Cartwright!”

And they sent me scooting down the street to get him quick. He was the preacher. I never stopped to tell but two or three people on the way to his house, but they must have spread the news quick, for when I got back with him it looked like the whole town was at our house.

It was along about dusk by this time, and it was a prayer meeting night at the church. Mr. Cartwright told his wife to tell the folks that came to the prayer meeting he'd be back before long, and to wait for him. But she really told them where he'd gone, and what for.

Mr. Cartwright marched right into our kitchen. All the chairs in the house was in there, and the women were talking and laughing, and they had sent to the Alexanderses for their chairs, and to the Rogerses for theirs. Every once in a while there would be an awful burst of language come rolling up from the hole where that unregenerate old sinner was cooped up.

I have travelled around considerable since those days, and I have mixed up along with many kinds of people in many different places, and some of them were cussers to admire. But I never heard such cussing before or since as old Hank did that night. He busted his own records and he rose higher than his own water marks for previous years. I wasn't anything but a little kid then, not fit to admire the full beauty of it. They were deep down cusses that came from the heart. Looking back at it after these years, I can well believe what Brother Cartwright said himself that night—that it wasn't natural cussing, and that some higher power, like a demon or an evil sperrit, must have entered into Hank's human carcase and given that terrible eloquence to his remarks. It busted out every few minutes, and the women would put their fingers into their ears until a spell was over. And it was personal, too. Hank would listen till he heard a woman's voice he knew, and then he would let loose on her family, going back to her grandfathers and working downward to her children's children.

Brother Cartwright steps up to the hole in the floor and says gentle and soothing like an undertaker when he tells you where to sit at a home funeral:

“Brother Walters! Oh, Brother Walters!”

“Brother!” yelled Hank, “don't ye brother me, you snifflin', psalm-singin', yaller-faced, pigeon-toed hyp-percrit, you! Get me a ladder, gol dern ye, and I'll mount out o'here and learn ye to brother me, I will!” Only that wasn't anything to what Hank really said; no more like than a little yellow fluffy canary is like a turkey buzzard.

“Brother Walters,” said the preacher, calm but firm, “we have all decided that you aren't going to get out of that cistern until you sign the pledge.”

Then Hank told him what he thought of him and pledges and church doings, and it wasn't pretty. He said if he was as deep in the eternal fire of hell as he was in rain water, and every fish that nibbled at his toes was a devil with a red-hot pitchfork sicked on by a preacher, they could jab at him until the whole hereafter turned into icicles before he'd sign anything that a man like Mr. Cartwright gave him to sign. Hank was stubborner than any mule he ever nailed shoes on to, and proud of being that stubborn. That town was a most awful religious town, and Hank knew he was called the most unreligious man in it, and he was proud of that, too; and if any one called him a heathen it just plumb tickled him all over.

“Brother Walters,” says the preacher, “we are going to pray for you.”

And they did it. They brought all the chairs close up around the cistern door, in a ring, and they all knelt down there with their heads on the chairs and prayed for Hank's salvation. They did it up in style, too, one at a time, and the others singing out, “Amen!” every now and then, and they shed tears down on to Hank.

The front yard was crowded with men, all laughing and talking and chawing and spitting tobacco, and betting how long Hank would hold out. Si Emery, that was the city marshal, and always wore a big nickel-plated star, was out there with them. Si was in a sweat, because Bill Nolan, who ran the saloon, and some more of Hank's friends were out by the front fence trying to get Si to arrest the preacher. For they said that Hank was being gradually murdered in that water and would die if he was held there too long, and it would be a crime. Only they didn't come into the house amongst us religious folks to say it. But Si, he says he don't dare to arrest anybody, because Hank's house is just outside the village corporation line; he's considerable worried about what his duty is, not liking to displease Bill Nolan.

Pretty soon the gang that Mrs. Cartwright had rounded up at the prayer meeting came stringing along in. They had brought their hymn books with them, and they sung. The whole town was there then, and they all sung. They sung revival hymns over Hank. And Hank, he would just cuss and cuss. Every time he busted out into another cussing spell they would start another hymn. Finally the men out in the front yard began to warm up and sing, too, all but Nolan's crowd, and they gave Hank up for lost and went back to the barroom.

The first thing they knew they had a regular old-fashioned revival meeting going there, and that preacher was preaching a regular revival sermon. I've been to more than one camp meeting, but for just naturally taking hold of the whole human race by the slack of the pants and dangling of it over hell fire, I never heard that sermon equalled. Two or three old backsliders in the crowd came right up and repented all over again. The whole kit-and-biling of them got the power, good and hard, and sung and shouted till the joints of the house cracked and it shook and swayed on its foundations. But Hank, he only cussed. He was obstinate, Hank was, and his pride and dander had risen up.

“Darn your ornery religious hides,” he says, “you're takin' a low-down advantage of me, you are! Let me out on to dry land, and I'll show you who'll stick it out the longest, I will!”

Most of the folks there hadn't had any suppers, so after all the sinners but Hank had either got converted or sneaked away, some of the women said why not make a kind of a love feast of it, and bring some victuals, like they do at church sociables. Because it seemed that Satan was going to wrestle there all night, like he did with the angel Jacob, and they ought to be prepared. So they did it. They went and they came back with things to eat and they made hot coffee and they feasted that preacher and themselves and Elmira and me, right in Hank's hearing.

And Hank was getting pretty hungry himself. And he was cold in that water. And the fish were nibbling at him. And he was getting cussed out and weak and soaked full of despair. There wasn't any way for him to sit down and rest. He was scared of getting cramps in his legs and sinking down with his head under water and being drowned.

He said afterward he would have done the last with pleasure if there had been any way of starting a lawsuit for murder against that gang. So along between ten and eleven o'clock that night he sings out:

“I give in, gosh dern ye, I give in! Let me out and I'll sign your pesky pledge!”

Brother Cartwright was for getting a ladder and letting him climb out right away. But Elmira said: “You don't know him like I do! If he gets out before he's signed the pledge, he'll never do it.”

So Brother Cartwright wrote out a pledge on the inside leaf of the Bible, and tied it on to a string, and a pencil on to another string, and let them down, and held a lantern down, too, and Hank made his mark, for he couldn't write. But just as Hank was making his mark that preacher spoke some words over Hank, and then he said:

“Now, Henry Walters, I have baptized you, and you are a member of the church.”

You might have thought that Hank would have broken out into profanity again at that, for he hadn't agreed to anything but signing the pledge. But he didn't cuss. When they got the ladder and he climbed up into the kitchen, shivering and dripping, he said serious and solemn to Mr. Cartwright:

“Did I hear you baptizing me in that water?”

Mr. Cartwright said he had.

“That was a low-down trick,” said Hank. “You knowed I always made my brags that I'd never jined a church and never would. You knowed I was proud of that. You knowed it was my glory to tell it, and that I set a heap of store by it, in every way. And now you've gone and took that away from me! You've gone and jined me to the church! You never fought it out fair and square, man strivin' to outlast man, like we done with the pledge, but you sneaked it on to me when I wasn't lookin'!”

And Hank always thought he had been baptized binding and regular. And he sorrowed and grieved over it, and got grouchier and meaner and drunkener. No pledge nor no Prohibition could hold Hank. He was a worse man in every way after that night in the cistern, and took to licking me harder and harder.