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Pudd'nhead Wilson: David

About the same time into this quiet community came one David Wilson, hopefully anticipating a successful legal career, a hope blasted in the borning, since a gift of irony, one of David's most tangible assets, fell upon ears so literal as to be unappreciative and suspicious of humor. "I wish I owned half of that dog," said David one morning, when a snarling yellow cur disturbed him. "Why?" asked somebody. "Because then I would kill my half!" replied David.

His hearers fell away from him in alarm. How could a man kill half of a dog without killing the other half also? Surely this man must be out of his mind. "A lummox," said one. "A perfect jackass," said another. "He's a pudd'nhead, that's what he is!" said a third. And from that day forward "Pudd'nhead Wilson" he was. Now Pudd'nhead had two fads--palmistry and finger-prints. The first he occasionally practised, lacking clients to practise law upon, and the second he collected with great assiduity. No man, woman, or child ever entered the circle of Pudd'nhead's acquaintance without leaving a finger-print, or his thumb-mark, behind, and all of these were carefully named, recorded, dated, and filed. Thus it happened that one day came Roxana and her two charges, Tom, the son of Driscoll, and Chambers, the son of herself and another. As like as two peas were the babies, in color, size, and lineaments--so like that save to a mother's eyes they were indistinguishable, and the fingerprints of all were taken, labeled, dated, and added to the collection of Pudd'nhead Wilson. What more natural than that the likeness of the two infants--Tom's own father could not tell him from the slave baby--should suggest to a mother's heart an interchange of the children by which the slave should become the master and the master the slave, especially when that heart was constantly oppressed by the fear that when her babe grew to manhood he might be "sold down the river," that everpresent tormenting dread of the slave of the upper waters? What more natural that, there being no chance of detection, Roxana, for love of her son, should yield to that temptation and forthwith turn Chambers into Tom and Tom into Chambers by a simple interchange of garments, these being the only outward and visible signs by which the boys were differentiated, anyhow? It was in this manner that it came to be the proud offspring of the house of Driscoll grew into the slave boy Chambers, abused and neglected, and that the seemingly white child of a negro slave and an unknown father became the scion of a family of unblemished lineage.

But a mere change of clothes and condition does not penetrate far below the surface. A silken gown cannot alter the currents of a shoddy soul, and while externally the spurious heir was all F. F. V., internally he was negro. After a few years, never having discovered the deception practised upon him by Roxana, Percy Driscoll died, penniless, but his brother, the judge, his prayer for children of his own denied, adopted the supposititious Tom and made the boy his heir. He sent him to college. He gave him every advantage that an affectionate father could have given a boy of his own, but the raw material which was the real Tom was poor, and the soil unfruitful. The boy acquired a taste for dissipation for which the simple life of Dawson's Landing offered no assuagements. He plunged into the gay whirl of St. Louis, garnering nothing but disgraceful gambling debts. Worst of all, he was at heart a snob, abused the real heir now become his slave, and acquired a profound detestation for his ancient nurse Roxana, of whose real relation to him he was unaware, until, goaded to intense resentment by his contemptuous and brutal treatment, she acquainted him with the terrible facts of his birth and ancestry, and demanded that he treat her as a mother on penalty of exposure. The revelation prostrated the impostor for a brief period, but failed to spur him on to better behavior. He went from bad to worse, stooping even to housebreaking in order to obtain funds to pay his gambling debts. In his mother's power, and she not at all disinclined to blackmail, he was driven to all sorts of expedients to satisfy his own and her demands. But through it all he managed to maintain an outward appearance of superiority that enabled him to dazzle his inferiors and deceive his equals. The judge's love for the boy blinded him to the lad's evil character, but once he nearly disinherited him on the score of cowardice. A pair of mysterious Italian twins settled at Dawson's Landing, and at a public meeting, Tom having provoked him to action by his insolence, Luigi, the stronger of the two, had kicked the scion of the House of Driscoll off the stage into the audience, the stain of which insult a real F. F. V. would have wiped out upon the field of honor, but for which the cowardice of Tom found ample satisfaction in the police court, which proceeding so outraged the good judge that for the honor of his family he personally fought a duel with the offending Italian, wounding him and thus laying the foundations for much future trouble.

Came now the supreme touches in the career of the spurious Tom. For the payment of newly acquired gambling debts, with Roxana's consent, Tom sold his own mother back into the slavery from which at Driscoll's death she had been freed, but in violation of his promises he sold her "down the river," a crime that reacted upon his unfilial head when the resourceful Roxana escaped and, under threat of exposure of his real status in life, required him to indemnify her new master lest she be apprehended and returned to him. Having no other resources, Tom resolved upon the robbery of his benefactor, the judge, in the fulfilment of which venture he murdered him, his weapon being an Oriental knife of unusual design which he had stolen from Luigi, the Italian, in one of his theft-raids.

The murder of Judge Driscoll brought great excitement to Dawson's Landing and the Italian twins narrowly escaped lynching for the crime. The evidence was clearly against them. They were confessedly the owners of the gem-studded, ivory-handled knife with which the crime had been committed. What was worse, they had been found standing beside the body when the neighbors rushed in, having come to the judge's aid at his cry for help. Moreover, there was the clear motive of revenge growing out of the duel which Luigi had fought with the judge. The whole community adjudged them guilty-all but Pudd'nhead Wilson, who volunteered to defend them in court, a poor reliance, since they were his first and only clients. But Pudd'nhead was unafraid. The evidence against them was most convincing, but-- There were finger-prints upon the knife-handle, and they were not the finger-prints of the accused!

Whose finger-prints were they?