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wanted to take the town, likely. Little did they know me. I wouldn't
have it. They examined my baggage at the depot. They took one of my
ablest jokes and read it over carefully twice and then read it backwards.
But it was too deep for them. They passed it around, and every body
speculated on it awhile, but it mastered them all.
It was no common joke. At length a veteran officer spelled it over
deliberately and shook his head three or four times and said that in his
opinion it was seditious. That was the first time I felt alarmed. I
immediately said I would explain the document, and they crowded around.
And so I explained and explained and explained, and they took notes of
all I said, but the more I explained the more they could not understand
it, and when they desisted at last, I could not even understand it
myself. They said they believed it was an incendiary document, leveled
at the government. I declared solemnly that it was not, but they only
shook their heads and would not be satisfied. Then they consulted a good
while; and finally they confiscated it. I was very sorry for this,
because I had worked a long time on that joke, and took a good deal of
pride in it, and now I suppose I shall never see it any more. I suppose
it will be sent up and filed away among the criminal archives of Rome,
and will always be regarded as a mysterious infernal machine which would
have blown up like a mine and scattered the good Pope all around, but for
a miraculous providential interference. And I suppose that all the time
I am in Rome the police will dog me about from place to place because
they think I am a dangerous character.
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