lxxxviii AUDUBON THE NATURALIST 



train. I think that what terrified me must have been a 

 resemblance to my evil guardian of an early day, Simon the 

 cobbler !" Intelligent people probably knew as well then as they 

 do now that any sharp blow upon the head is not conducive 

 to an improvement in mentality. The Reverend Mr. Hanson 

 should have remembered the Old Testament proverb : "Though 

 thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a 

 pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him." 



Williams told Hanson that the Prince de Joinville, son of 

 Louis Philippe, when in this country in 1841, came to Green 

 Bay and tried to induce him to sign an abdication of his rights 

 to the French throne. When this was denounced in France as 

 a pure fabrication, Williams said to Hanson: "I do not trouble 

 myself much about the matter. . . . My story is on the wings 

 of heaven, and will work its way without me. . . . God in His 

 providence must have some mysterious ends to answer, or He 

 would never have brought me so low from such a height. ... I 

 do not want a crown. I am convinced of my regal descent ; 

 so are my family. The idea of royalty is in our minds, and we 

 will not relinquish it. You have been talking to a king to- 

 night." They were then on a steamboat approaching Bur- 

 lington, Vermont. 



In concluding his article on "The Bourbon Question," the 

 sequel to the one to which I have just referred, Hanson said: 

 "To those who have charitably attributed to me the origi- 

 nation of a moon hoax 1S to sell a magazine, or the credulity of 

 adopting the baseless tale of a monomaniac, I reply . . . that 

 I am content to leave the case to speak for itself, quite satisfied 

 with the approbation of those, neither few, nor stupid, nor 

 credulous, who entertain with me the strongest conviction of 

 the high probability that beneath the romance of incidence 

 there is here the rocky substratum of indestructible fact." 



13 Referring to the story in The Sun (New York) of August 25, 1835, 

 sometimes called the greatest scientific fraud ever perpetrated, which pur- 

 ported to have been written by Sir John Herschel, but is now believed 

 to have been the work of a clever reporter, Richard Adams Locke. 



