My only listener was a Swedish blacksmith who had attended
the creation and development of the earth from the beginning with
unshaken faith, though he was a member of the Lutheran church, with
the pastor and deacons of which I had waged a bitter newspaper war
over the "sin" of dancing. But when I said, on the authority of
Figuier, that an English man-of-war had once during an earthquake
been thrown into the city of Callao and through the roof of a
church, between the walls of which it remained standing upright on
its keel, he got up and went too. He circulated the story in town
with various embellishments. The deacons aforesaid seized upon it
as welcome ammunition, construing it into an insult to the church,
and there was an end to my lecturing.
The warm spring weather, together with these disappointments, bred
in me the desire to roam. I packed away my traps and started for
Buffalo with my grip, walking along the lake. It set in with a
drizzling rain, and I was soon wet to the skin. Where the Chautauqua
summer school grounds are now I surprised a flock of wild ducks
near the shore, and was lucky enough to wound one with my revolver.
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