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This the major eagerly took and, noting that it was in cipher, read it by means of the code he carried in his pocket. Translated, it ran thus: Result of open inquiry in Denver. Three brothers Pfeiffer; all well thought of, but plain in their ways and eccentric. One doing business in Denver. Died June, '97.
He immediately ordered his wife to desist, and the traveller was at peace. "I always succeeded," says Madame Pfeiffer, "in obtaining my own will. I found that energy and boldness influence all people, whether Arabs, Persians, Bedaween, or others." But for this strong will, this indomitable resolution, Madame Pfeiffer assuredly could not have succeeded in the enterprises she so daringly undertook.
There were no rules to cover such conduct on the part of a nurse. One of them Pfeiffer again, by chance replied rather heavily: "If any, it would be the Edwardes operation." "Would Dr. Edwardes himself be able to do anything?" This was going a little far. "Possibly. One chance in a thousand, perhaps. But Edwardes is dead. How did this thing happen, Miss Harrison?" She ignored his question.
The entire process did not occupy above two minutes. Gathering a few plantains, these were roasted for supper; after which Madame Pfeiffer withdrew to her solitary couch of dry leaves, to sleep as best she might. It is impossible not to wonder at the marvellous physical capability of this adventurous woman, no less than at her courage, her resolution, and her perseverance.
The Indians, ugly as they were, gave Madame Pfeiffer a hospitable welcome. After an evening meal, in which roasted monkey and parrot were the chief dishes, they performed one of their characteristic dances. A quantity of wood was heaped up into a funeral pile, and set on fire; the men then danced around it in a ring.
Pfeiffer sought work, and everywhere found himself baffled by some malignant influence. "Heaven only knows," says Madame Pfeiffer in her autobiography, "what I suffered during eighteen years of my married life; not, indeed, from any ill-treatment on my husband's part, but from poverty and want.
In the most remarkable scenes, and in the most critical positions, she had preserved a composure, a calmness of courage, and a simplicity of conduct, that must always command our admiration. In giving to the world a narrative of her journey to Iceland, and her wanderings through Norway and Sweden, Madame Pfeiffer anticipated certain objections that would be advanced by the over-refined.
"To my astonishment," says Madame Pfeiffer, "these deformed beings tripped about, as if in defiance of us broad-footed creatures, with tolerable ease, the only difference in their gait being that they waddled like geese; they even ran up and down stairs without a stick." She adds, that the value of a bride is reckoned by the smallness of her feet.
So much for the fare. As to the "table appointments," they were miserably meagre. The cloth was a piece of an old sail, so soiled and dirty that it effectually deprived Madame Pfeiffer and her fellow-passengers of any small appetite with which they might have sat down to dinner. Madame Pfeiffer began to think that it would be better to have no cloth at all. She was mistaken!
When Madam Pfeiffer, in her adventurous travels round the world, from east to west, had got so near home as Asiatic Russia, she says that she felt the necessity of wearing other than a travelling dress, when she went to meet the authorities, for she "was now in a civilized country, where... people are judged of by their clothes."
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