{"id":"01KG8AK7Y981ANEHWVEE2Z76Y9","cid":"bafkreia2tfi2mbygftfkptmvch6bkf7uj3ikqzbacjhg4nsxeah4l25tc4","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":348,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:47:57.722Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG89J1JMR8XVKPA0G8ADAPC4","start_line":279,"text":"CHAPTER I.\r\n\r\nA MUTE GOES ABOARD A BOAT ON THE MISSISSIPPI.\r\n\r\n\r\nAt sunrise on a first of April, there appeared, suddenly as Manco Capac\r\nat the lake Titicaca, a man in cream-colors, at the water-side in the\r\ncity of St. Louis.\r\n\r\nHis cheek was fair, his chin downy, his hair flaxen, his hat a white fur\r\none, with a long fleecy nap. He had neither trunk, valise, carpet-bag,\r\nnor parcel. No porter followed him. He was unaccompanied by friends.\r\nFrom the shrugged shoulders, titters, whispers, wonderings of the crowd,\r\nit was plain that he was, in the extremest sense of the word, a\r\nstranger.\r\n\r\nIn the same moment with his advent, he stepped aboard the favorite\r\nsteamer Fidèle, on the point of starting for New Orleans. Stared at, but\r\nunsaluted, with the air of one neither courting nor shunning regard, but\r\nevenly pursuing the path of duty, lead it through solitudes or cities,\r\nhe held on his way along the lower deck until he chanced to come to a\r\nplacard nigh the captain's office, offering a reward for the capture of\r\na mysterious impostor, supposed to have recently arrived from the East;\r\nquite an original genius in his vocation, as would appear, though\r\nwherein his originality consisted was not clearly given; but what\r\npurported to be a careful description of his person followed.\r\n\r\nAs if it had been a theatre-bill, crowds were gathered about the\r\nannouncement, and among them certain chevaliers, whose eyes, it was\r\nplain, were on the capitals, or, at least, earnestly seeking sight of\r\nthem from behind intervening coats; but as for their fingers, they were\r\nenveloped in some myth; though, during a chance interval, one of these\r\nchevaliers somewhat showed his hand in purchasing from another\r\nchevalier, ex-officio a peddler of money-belts, one of his popular\r\nsafe-guards, while another peddler, who was still another versatile\r\nchevalier, hawked, in the thick of the throng, the lives of Measan, the\r\nbandit of Ohio, Murrel, the pirate of the Mississippi, and the brothers\r\nHarpe, the Thugs of the Green River country, in Kentucky--creatures,\r\nwith others of the sort, one and all exterminated at the time, and for\r\nthe most part, like the hunted generations of wolves in the same\r\nregions, leaving comparatively few successors; which would seem cause\r\nfor unalloyed gratulation, and is such to all except those who think\r\nthat in new countries, where the wolves are killed off, the foxes\r\nincrease.\r\n\r\nPausing at this spot, the stranger so far succeeded in threading his\r\nway, as at last to plant himself just beside the placard, when,\r\nproducing a small slate and tracing some words upon if, he held it up\r\nbefore him on a level with the placard, so that they who read the one\r\nmight read the other. The words were these:--\r\n\r\n\"Charity thinketh no evil.\"\r\n\r\nAs, in gaining his place, some little perseverance, not to say\r\npersistence, of a mildly inoffensive sort, had been unavoidable, it was\r\nnot with the best relish that the crowd regarded his apparent intrusion;\r\nand upon a more attentive survey, perceiving no badge of authority about\r\nhim, but rather something quite the contrary--he being of an aspect so\r\nsingularly innocent; an aspect too, which they took to be somehow\r\ninappropriate to the time and place, and inclining to the notion that\r\nhis writing was of much the same sort: in short, taking him for some\r\nstrange kind of simpleton, harmless enough, would he keep to himself,\r\nbut not wholly unobnoxious as an intruder--they made no scruple to\r\njostle him aside; while one, less kind than the rest, or more of a wag,\r\nby an unobserved stroke, dexterously flattened down his fleecy hat upon\r\nhis head. Without readjusting it, the stranger quietly turned, and\r\nwriting anew upon the slate, again held it up:--\r\n\r\n\"Charity suffereth long, and is kind.\"\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJJRZ9FY9YQ01XTWF7NMQ","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1JMR8XVKPA0G8ADAPC4","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AK7Y9QWWYYNTY7FCJZBKJ","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:47:57.897Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:06.639Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}