THE PETRIFIED MAN. 241 



and I said that the jury, with that charity so characteristic of pioneers, then dug a 

 grave, and were about to give the petrified man Christian burial, when they found 

 that for ages a limestone sediment had been trickling down the face of the stone 

 against which he was sitting, and this stuff had run under him and cemented him 

 fast to the "bed-rock;" that the jury (they were all silver-miners) canvassed the 

 difficulty a moment, and then got out their powder and fuse, and proceeded to 



•drill a hole under him, in order to blast him from his position^ when Mr. , "with 



, that delicacy so characteristic of him, forbade them, observing that it would, be 

 little less than sacrilege to do such a thing." 



From beginning to end the " Petrified Man " squib was a string of roaring 

 absurdities, albeit they were told with an unfair pretence of truth that even imposed 

 upon me to some extent, and I was in some danger of believing in my own fraud. 

 But I really had no desire to deceive anybody, and no expectation of doing it. I 

 ■depended on the way the petrified man was sitting to explain to the public that he 

 ■was a swindle. Yet I purposely mixed that up with other things, hoping to make 

 it obscure — and I did. I would describe the position of one foot, and then say his 

 right thumb was against the side of his nose ; then talk about his other foot, and 

 presently come back and say the fingers of his right hand were spread apart ; then 

 talk about the back of his head a little, and return and say the left thumb was 

 hooked into the right little finger ; then ramble off about something else, and by 

 and by drift back again and remark that the fingers of the left hand were spread 

 like those of the right. But I was too ingenious. I mixed it up rather too much ; 

 and so all that description of the attitude, as a key to the humbuggery of the 

 article, was entirely lost, for nobody but me ever discovered a»d comprehended 

 the peculiar and suggestive position of the petrified man's hands. 



As a satire on the petrifaction mania, or anything else, my Petrified Man was a 

 ■disheartening failure ; for everybody received him in innocent good faith, and I 

 was stunned to see the creature I had begotten to pull down the wonder-business 

 with, and bring derision upon it, calmly exalted to the grand chief place in the' list 

 of the genuine marvels our Nevada had produced. I was so disappointed at the 

 curious miscarriage of my scheme, that at first I was angry, and did not like to 

 think about it ; but by and by, when the exchanges began to come in with the 

 16 



