THE AMERICAN CLAIMANT.*
THERE is some satire in this book, good-humoured and reasonably effective, and there is plenty of fun, the quality of which is beyond all question. Viscount Berkeley, hearing from his father that an apparently absurd claim for the Ross- more peerage and estates, which has come from America, is really founded on facts, though it can hardly be enforced in law, resolves to give up his position. He will go somewhere where he can earn his own livelihood by his own abilities and his own work. No place, he thinks, could be more favourable for the execution of such a purpose than the States. There all men are equal ; there, if anywhere, lies the career open to talents. He goes and finds that things are very different from his expectations ; and the process of his disenchantment gives in its description plenty of occasion for satire, satire against the young aristo- crat playing at social equality, and against the democracy, which, when it comes to putting theories into practice, is so very anti-democratic. This is all good enough, but the claimant himself, Colonel Mulberry Sellers, is vastly more entertaining. He is not an absolute extravagance ; he is a caricature indeed, but then a caricature is nothing without it suggests a truth. This is what the Colonel does ; we see in him something of the qualities which make " spread-eagleism " in politics and in private life create a curious combination of boundless self-belief and conscious imposture. Above all things, the Colonel is an inventor. The most audacious schemes he propounds with a gravity that is never at fault. A friend has come from the West to Washing- ton as " Congressional Delegate from Cherokee Strip "—the Colonel himself is " Perpetual Member of the Diplomatic Body "—i.e., has failed to obtain any definite employment. The friend's object is to secure five thousand dollars offered as a reward for the conviction of a bank-robber, whom he has traced to the last. Unhappily the criminal perishes in a fire. The Colonel is not discouraged. He will materialise the dead man's departed spirit, and band over the result to the authorities. The act of materialisation is, indeed, his grand profession. Policemen costing four dollars a day will be replaced by " materialisees " at two, superior to temptations of drink or cash, and liable to no injury except to their uniform. For an army that costs twenty millions of dollars will be substituted "ten thousand veterans drawn from the victorious legions of all ages—soldiers that will chase Indians years in and years out on materialised horses, and cost never a cent for rations or repairs." Meanwhile he has time for less magnificent schemes. Thus he has contrived a phonograph which will effect a moral revolution by putting an end to the use of profane language at sea. Sailors are used to be sworn at, and perhaps will not work without. The remedy is to charge the machine once for all with the requisite language, and to turn it on when it is wanted. It is true that the experiments are scarcely successful. The phonograph warbles out instead some plaintive melody ; but the Colonel is sure that he has got some " sailor's profanity " hidden away' somewhere, which can be got at in case of need. In the end, the Colonel gives up his English prospects, to work out his " stupendous idea of reorganising the climates of the earth according to the desire of the populations interested." His scheme is too long to quote ; but it is one of the most characteristic pieces of the American humour of extravagance that we have ever seen.
The story is not wanting in human interest. The Colonel's daughter is a charming young woman, and her love affairs make an interesting story,—of course, poetical justice gives her the young heir of the usurping house, so that in the person of his daughter the "American Claimant" comes to bis own.
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