IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I ■^ lii 12.2 lU lii u 1^ 1^ 12.0 IL25 i 1.4 Ii4 Fhotographic Sciences CQrporalion 23 WEST MAIN STREIT WIBSTiR.N.Y. MSSO (71«)«72-4S03 'A r 6 CIHM/ICMH Microfiche Series. CIHIVI/ICMH Collection de microfiches. Canadian Institute for Historical IVIicroraproductions / Institut Canadian da microraproductions liistoriquas \ \ Tachnical and Bibliographic Notas/Notas tachniquas at bibliographiquat Tha Instituta has attamptad to obtain tha bast original copy availabia for filming. 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Tous les autres exemplaires originaux sont fllmto en commandant par la pramlAre page qui comporte une empreinte d'Impreseion ou d'iilustration et en terminant par ia darnlAre page qui comporte une telle empreinte. Un dee symboles suivants apparattra sur la derni*re image de chaque microfiche, seion ie cas: le symbde — ► signif le "A SUIVRE ", le symbols y signifie "FIN ". Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent Atre fiimte A des taux de reduction diffArents. Lorsque ie document est trop grand pour Atre reprodult en un seul clichA, 11 est film* A partir de Tangle supArieur gauche, de gauche A droite, et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images nAcessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent ia mAthode. 1 2 3 32X 1 2 3 4 5 6 "x: MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES SELECTED AND REVISED BY THE AUTHOR ^ tORONTO THE MUSSON BOOK COMPANY LIMITED uHmmmiammmm y) PREFATORY. Ir I were to sell the reader a barrel of molatiat, and he, instead of sweetening his substantial dinner with the same at judicious intervals, should eat the entire banel at one sitting, and then abuse me for making him sick, I would say that he deserved to be made sick for not knowing any better how to utilize the blessings this world a£fords. And if I sell to the reader this volume of nonsense^ and he^ instead of seasoning his graver readmg with a chapter of it now and then, when his mind de- mands such relaxation, unwisely overdoses himself with several chapters of it at a single sitting, he will well deserve to be nauseated, and he will have nobody to blame but himself if he is. There is no more sin in publishing an entire volume of nonsense than there is in keeping a candy store with no hardware in it It lies wholly with the customer whether he will injure himself by means of either, or will derive fix>m them the benefits which they will a£ford him if he uses their possibilities judiciously. Respectfiilly submitted, TBI Author. I CONTENTS. MSIIORAIIDA II TH> JUMPINO FIDO IJ HOW I BDITBD AN AOUCVLTUItAL PAHtt . . . • SS A MSW BBBCHB& CHURCH .... 30 THB BAD LITTUI BOY 41 tHX GOOD UTTLB BOY 45 DANOn OF LYINO HI BIO. ...... p ABOUT BARBISS S7 HUMAN NATUU. « . 63 JOHNNY OKBBB'B WAY ^ B&XAKINOIT OBMTLY b^ THB JUDGB*S ** SPIRTTBD WOMAN** 67 MY LATB 8BNAT0RIAL SBCBBTARYSHIP .... 69 FACTS IN THB CASB OF OBOBOB FISHBB, DBCBASBD . . 76 THE OBBAT BBBF CONTBACT 86 THB lOOB BDROB 96 "AFTBB** JBNKINS 99 ANSWER TO INQUIRY FROM COMIN^i MAN . . . I-and the bets being doubled and doubled on the other side all the time, till the money was all up ; and then all of a sudden he would grab that other dog jest by the j'int of his hind leg and freeze to it — not chaw, you understand, but only jest grip and hang on till they throwed up the sponge, iif it was a year. Smiley always come out winner on that pup, till he harnessed a \\ \\\ ^ ii it C\ THE JUMPING FROG, a 118 la n -^ If ) dog once that didn't have no hind legs, because they'd been sawed off by a circular saw, and when the thing had gone along far enough, and the money was all up, and he come to make a snatch for his pet holt, he see in a minute how he'd been imposed on, and how the other dog had him in the door, so to speak, and he 'peared surprised, and then he looked sorter discouraged-like, and didn't try no more to win the fight, and so he got shucked out bad. He give Smiley a look, as much as to say his heart was broke, and it was his £iult, for putting up a dog that hadn't no hind legs for him to take holt of, which was his main dependence in a fight, and then he limped off a piece and laid down and died. It was a good pup, was that Andrew Jackson, and would have' made a name for hisself if he'd lived, for the stuff was in him, and he had genius — I know it, because he hadn't had no opportunities to speak of, and it don't stand to reason that a dog could make such a fight as he could under them circumstances, if he hadn't no talent. It always makes me feel soiiy when I think of that last fight of his'n, and the way it turned out Well, thish-yer Smiley had rat-tarriers, and chicken cocks, and tom-cats, and all them kind of things, till you couldn't rest, and you couldn't fetch nothing for him to bet on but he'd match you. He ketched a frog one da/, and took him home, and said he cal'lated to educate him; and so he never done nothing for three months but set in his back yard and learn that frog to jump. And you bet you he did learn him, too. He'd give him a little punch behind, and the next minute you'd see that frog whirling in the air like a doughnut -see him turn one summerset^ i8 MARK TWAirPS SKETCHES, or may be a couple, if he got a good start, and come iown flat-footed and all right, like a cat He got him up 80 in the matter of catching flies, and kept him in prac- tice so constant, that he'd nail a fly every time as far as he could see him. Smiley said au a frog wanted was education, and he could do 'most anything — ^and I believe him. Why, I've seen him set Dan'l Webster down here on this floor — Danl Webster was the name of the frog — and sing out, <' Flies, Dan'l, flies 1 " and quicker'n you could wink, he'd spring straight up, and snake a fly off 'n the counter there, and flop down on the floor again as solid as a gob of mud, and fall to scratching the side of his head with his hind foot as indifferent as if he hadn't no idea he had been doin' anymore'n any frog might do. You never see a frog so modest and straightfor'ard as he was, for all he was so gifted. And when it come to fair and square jumping on a dead level, he could get over more ground at one straddle than any animal of his breed you ever see. Jumping on a dead level was his strong suit, you understand ; and when it come to tha^ Smiley would ante up money on him as long as he had a red. Smiley was monstrous proud of his frog, and well he might be, for fellers that had travelled and been every- wheres, all said he laid over any frog that ever they Well, Smiley kep' the beast in a little lattice bos, and he used to fetch him down town sometimes and lay for a bet. One day a feller — a stranger in the camp, he was — come across him with his box, and says : " What might it be that you've got in the box ? " And Smiley says, sorter indifferent like, *' It might be a THE JUMPING FROG, 19 ;ome no up prac- ar as I was elieve here TOg— ti you ^ofif'n ain as side of hadn't ght do. 1 ashe to fair [el over is breed strong Smiley a red. ell he every- jr tho )x» and y for a was— i» thtbea parrot, or it might be a canary, maybe, but it ain't — it's only just a frog.'' And the feller took it, and looked at it careful, and turned it round this way and that, and says, " H'm — so 'tis. Well, what's Ae good for 1 " " Well," Smiley says, easy and careless, " he's good enough for one thing, I should judge — he can outjump any frog in Calaveras county." The feller took the box again, and took another long, particular look, and give it back to Smiley, and says, very deliberate, " Well, I don't see no p'ints about that frog tliat's any better'n any other frog." " Maybe you don't," Smiley says. " Maybe you un- derstand frogs, and maybe you don't understand 'em ; maybe you've had experience, and maybe you ain't only a amature, as it were. Anyways, I've got my opmion, and I'll resk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras county." And the feller studied a minute, and then says, kinder sad like, " Well, I'm only a stranger here, and I ain't got no frog ; but if I had a frog, I'd bet you." And then Smiley says, "That's all right — ^that's all right — if you'll hold my box a minute, FU go and get you a frog." And so the feller took the box, and put up his forty dollars along with Smiley's, and set down to wait So he set there a good while thinking and thinking to hisself, and then he got the frog out and prised his mouth open and took a teaspoon and filled him full of quail shot — filled him pretty near up to his chin — and set him on the floor. Smiley he went to the swamp and B a 90 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, slopped around in the mud for a long time, and finally he ketched a frog, and fetched him in, and give him to this feller, and says : ** Now, if you're ready, set him alongside of Dan'l, with his fore-paws just even with DanTs, and 111 give the word." Then he says, "One— two — three— ^V /" and him and the feller touched up the fi-ogs from behind, and the new frog hopped o£f lively, but Dan'l give a heave, and hysted up his shoulders — so— like a Frenchman, but it wan't no use — he couldn't budge ; he was planted as solid as a church, and he couldn't no more stir than if he was anchored out Smiley was a good deal surprised, and he was disgusted too, but he didn't have no idea what the matter was, of course. The feller took the money and started away; and when he was going out at the door, he sorter jerked his thumb over his shoulder — this way — at Dan'l, and says again, very deliberate, " Well, /don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog." Smiley he stood scratching his head and looking down at Dan'l a long time, and at last he says, '* I do wonder what in the nation that frog throw'd off for — I wonder if there ain't something the matter with him— he 'pears to look mighty baggy, somehow." And he ketched Dan'l by the nap of the neck, and hefted him, and says, " Why, blame my cats, if he don't weigh five pound ! " and turned him upside down, and he belched out a double handful of shot And then he see how it was, and he was the maddest man— he set the frog down and took out after , that feller, but he never ketched him. And [Here Simon Wheeler heard his name called firom the I THE JUMPING FROG, •t inally m to Dan'l, vethe »'and 1, and heave, in, but ted at in if he prised, 10 idea f ; and ced his id says s about front yard, and got up to see v.hat was wanted.] And turning to me as he moved away, he said: "Just set where you are, stranger, and rest easy — I ain't going to be gone a second." But, by your leave, I did not think that a continuation of the history of the enterprising vagabond Jim Smiley would be likely to afford me much information con- cerning the Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, and so I started away. At the door I met the sociable ^Vheeler rettuning, and he button-holed me and recommenced : " Well, thish-yer Smiley had a yaller one-eyed cow that didn't have no tail, only jest a short stump like a ban- nanner, and ** Lacking both time and inclination, I did not wait to hear about the afflicted cow, but took my leave. g down wonder »nder if [ears to Dan'l "Why, turned landful ras the lut after ..5; ':. •>v >m the HOW I EDITED AN AGRICULTURAL PAPER ONCE. I DID not take the temporary editorship of an agricul- tural paper without misgivings. Neither would a lands- man take command of a ship without misgivings. But I was in circumstances that made the salary an object The regular editor of the paper was going off for a holi- day, and I accepted the terms he offered, and took his place. The sensation of being at work again was luxurious, and I wrought all the week with unflagging pleasure. We went to press, and I waited a day with some solici- tude to see whether my effort was going to attract any notice. As I left the office, toward sundown, a group of men and boys at the foot of the staurs dispersed with one impulse, and gave me passage-way, and I heard one or two of them say : ** That's him ! " I was naturally pleased by this incident The next morning I found a similar group at the foot of the stairs, and scattering couples and individuals standing here and there in the street, and over the way, watching me with interest The group separated and fell back as I approached, and I heard a man say, " Look at his eye ! " I pretended not to ob- serve the notice I was attracting, but secretly I was I HOW I EDITED A PAPER, «l pleased with it, and was purposing to write an account of it to my aunt. I went up the short flight of stairs, and heard cheery voices and a ringing laugh as I drew near the door, which I opened, and caught a glimpse of two young rural-looking men, whose faces blanched and lengthened when they saw me, and then they both plunged through the window with a great crash. I was surprised. In about half an hour an old gentleman, with a flow- ing beard and a fine but rather austere face, entered, and sat down at my invitation. He seemed to have some- thing on his mind. He took off his hat and set it on the floor, and got out of it a red silk handkerchief and a copy of our paper. He put the paper on his lap, and, while he polished his spectacles with his liandkerchief, he said, " Are you the new editor?" I said I was. "Have you ever edited an agricultural paper be- fore ? " " No," I said j " this is my first attempt." " Very likely. Have you had any experience in agri- culture practically?" " No, I believe I have not" " Some instinct told me so," said the old gentleman, putting on his spectacles and looking over them at me with asperity, while he folded his paper into a convenient shape. " I wish to read you what must have made me have that instinct It was this editorial. Listen, and see if it was you that wrote it : — " * Turnips should never be pulled, it injures them. MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, It is much better to send a boy up and let him shake the tree.' ''Now, what do you think of that? — ^for I really sup- pose you wrote it ? ** << Think of it ? Why, I think it is good. I think it if sense. I have no doubt that every year millions and millions of bushels of turnips are spoiled in this town- ship alone by being pulled in a half-ripe condition, when, if they had sent a boy up to shake the tree ^" ** Shake your grandmother I Turnips don't grow on trees ! " "Oh, they don't, don't they? Well, who said they did? The language was intended to be figurative, wholly figurative. Anybody that knows anything will know that I meant that the boy should shake the vine." Then this old person got up and tore his paper all into small shreds, and stamped on them, and broke several things with his cane, and said I did not know as much as a cow ; and then went out and banged the door after him, and, in short, acted in such a way that I fancied he w; displeased about something. But, not knowing wha* die trouble was, I could not be any help to hino. Pretty soon after this a long cadaverous creature, with lanky locks hanging down to his shoulders, and a week's stubble brisding from the hills and valleys of his face, darted within the door, and halted, motionless, with finger on lip, a id head and body bent in listening atti- tude. No sound wa3 heard. Still he listened. No sound. Then he tuniod V* key in the door, and came elaborately tiptoe:ing toward me till he was within long ffOW I EDITED A PAPK% 3S n with kek's face, with attl- No :ame [long reaching distance of me, when he stopped, and aftei ■canning my face with intense interest for a whi^ ^, drew a folded copy of our paper from his bosom, and sai^ — "Thare, you wrote that. Read it to me, qui>:kl Relievf rrc. T suffer." I read as follows : and as the sentences fell from my lips I cv'uld see the relief come, I could see the drawn muscles relax, and the anxiety go out of the face, and rest anrl peace steal over the features like the merciful moonlight over a desolate landscape : *' The guano is a fine bird, but great care is necessary in rearing it It should not be imported earlier than June or later than September. In the winter it should be kept in a warm place, where it can hatch out its young. " It is evident that we are to nave a backward season for grain. Therefore, it will be well for the farmer to begin setting out his corn-stalks and planting his buck- wheat cakes in July instead of August. " Concerning the Pumpkin. — This berry is a favourite with the natives of the interior of New England, who prefer it to the gooseberry for the making of fruit cake, and who likewise give it the preference over the raspberry for feeding cows, as being more filling and fully as satisfying. The puiiipkin is the only esculent of the orange family that will thrive in the North, except the gourd and one or two varieties of the squash. But the custom of plant- ing it in the front yard with the shrubbery is fast going out of vogue, for it ii now generally conceded that the pumpkin as a shade tree is a failure. "Now, as die wariii weather approaches, and the ganders begin to spawn — -st" AfARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. The excited listener sprang toward me, to shake hands, and said — " There, there, that will do ! I know I am all right now, because you have read it just as I did, word for word. But, stranger, when I first read it this morning I said to myself, I never, never believed it before, notwith- standing my friends kepi me under watch so strict, but now I believe I am crazy; and with that I fetched a howl that you might have heard two miles, and started out to kill somebody — because, you know, I knew it would come to that sooner or later, and so I might as well begin. I read one of them paragraphs over again, so as to be certain, and then I burned my house down and started. I have crippled several people, and have got one fellow up a tree, where I can get him if I want him. But I thought I would call in here as I passed along, and make the thing perfectly certain ; and now it is certain, and I tell you it is lucky for the chap that is in the tree. I should have killed him, sure, as I went back. Good-by, sir, good-by; you have taken a great load off my mind. My reason has stood the strain of one of your agricultural articles, and I know that nothing can ever unseat it now. Good-hyy sir." I felt a little uncomfortable about the cripplings and arsons this person had been entertaining himself with, for I could not help feeling remotely accessory to them ; but these thoughts were quickly banished, for the regular editor walked in ! [I thought to myself, Now, if you had gone to Egypt as I recommended you to I might have had a chance to get my hand in ; but you wouldn't do it, and here you are. I sort of expected you.] t HOW I EDITED A PAPER, Vf The editor was looking sad and perplexed and dejected. He surveyed the wreck which that old rioter and those two young fanners had made, and then said, "This is a sad business — a very sad business. There is the mucilage bottle broken, and six panes of glass, and a spittoon and two candlesticks. But that is not the worst. The reputation of the paper is injured, and permanently, I fear. True, there never was such a call for the paper before, and it never sold such a large edition or soared to such celebrity ; but does one want to be famous for lunacy, and prosper upon the infir- mities of his mind ? My friend, as I am an honest man, the street out here is fiiU of people, and others are roosting on the fences, waiting to get a glimpse ot you, because they think you are crazy. And well they might after reading your editorials. They are a disgrace to journalism. Why, what put it into your head that you could edit a paper of this nature ? You do not seem to know the first rudiments of agriculture. You speak of a furrow and a harrow as being the same thing ; you talk of the moulting season for cows ; and you recommend the domestication of the pole-cat on account of its play- fulness and its excellence as a ratter. Your remark that clams will lie quiet if music be played to them was superfluous — entirely superfluous. Nothing disturbs clams. Clams always lie quiet Clams care nothing whatever about music. Ah, heavens and earth, friend I if you had made the acquiring of ignorance the study of your life you could not have graduated with higher honour than you could to-day. I never saw anything aft MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. tike it Your observation that the horse-chestnut as an article of commerce is steadily gaining in favour is simply calculated to destroy this journal. I want you to throw up your situation and go. I want no more holiday — I could not enjoy it if I had it. Certainly not with you in my chair. I would always stand in dread of what you might be going to recommend next It makes me lose all patience every time I think of your discussing oyster beds under the head of * Landscape Gardening.' I want you to go. Nothing on earth could persuade me to take another holiday. Oh, why didn't you tell me you didn't know anything about agriculture ?" " Tell you, you cornstalk, you cabbage, you son of a cauliflower? It's the first time I ever heard such an unfeeling remark. I tell you I have been in the editorial business going on fourteen years, and it is the first time I ever heard of a man's having to know any- thing in order to edit a newspaper. You turnip ! Who write the dramatic critiques for the second-rate papers ? Why, a parcel of promoted shoemakers and apprentice apothecaries, who know just as much about good acting as I do about good farming, and no more. Who review the books ? People who never wrote one. Who do up the heavy leaders on finance? Parties who have had the largest opportunities for knowing nothing about it Who criticise the Indian campaigns ? Gentlemen who do not know a war-whoop from a wigwam, and who never have had to run a foot-race with a tomahawk, or pluck arrows out of the several members of their families to build the evening camp-fire with. Who write the tem- i MOW r EDITED A PAPER. ag perance appeals and clamour about the flowing bowl? Folks who will never draw another sober breath till they do it in the grave. Who edit the agricultural papers, you — ^yam? Men, as a general thing, who fail in tne poetry line, yellow-covered novel line, sensation-drama line, city-editor line, and finally fall back on agriculture as a temporary reprieve from the poor-house. You tiy to tell me anything about the newspaper business ! Sir, I have been through it from Alpha to Omaha, and I tell you that the less a man knows the bigger noise he makes and the higher the salary he commands. Heaven knows if I had but been ignorant instead of cultivated, and impudent instead of diflident, I could have made a .lame for myself in this cold selfish world. I take my leave, sir. Since I have been treated as you have ♦i-eated me, I am perfectly willing to go. But I have done my duty. I have fulfilled my contract, as far as I was permitted to do it. I said I could make your paper of interest to all classes, and I have. I said I could run your circulation up to twenty thousand copies, and if I had had two more weeks I'd have done it. And I'd have given you the best class of readers that ever an agricultural paper had — not a farmer in it, nor a soli- tary individual who could tell a water-melon tree from a peach-vine to save his life. You are the loser by this rupture, not me, Pie-plant. Adios." I then left. A NEW BEECHER CHURCH. Ip the Rev. Mr. Smith, or the Rev. Mr. Jones, or the Rev. Mr. Brown, were about to build a new church edifice, it would be projected on the same old pattern, and be like pretty much all the other churches in the counxry, and so I would naturally mention it as a new Presbyterian church, or a new Methodist, or a new Baptist church, and never think of calling it by the pastor's name ; but when a Beecher projects a church, that edifice is necessarily going to be something entirely fresh and original ; it is not going to be like any other church in the world; it is going to be as variegated, eccentric, and marked with as peculiar and striking an individuality as a Beecher himself; it is going to have a deal more Beecher in it than any one narrow creed can fit into without rattling, or any one arbitrary order of architecture can symmetrically enclose and cover. Con- sequently to call it simply a Congregational church would not give half an idea of the thing. There is only one word broad enough, and wide enough, and deep enough to take in the whole affair, and express it cleanly, lumi* nously, and concisely — and that is Beecker. The projected edifice I am about to speak of is, therefore, properly named in my caption as a new " Betchtr Church." A NLW BEECHER CHURCH. 3« The projector is the Rev. Thoma^ K. Beecher — brother of the other one, of course — I never knew but one Beecher that wasn't, and he was a nephew. The new church is to be built in Elmira, N. Y., where Mr. B. has been preaching to one and the same congregation for the last sixteen years, and is thoroughly esteemed and be- loved by his people. I have had opportunity to hear all about the new church, for I have lately been visiting in Elmira. Now, when one has that disease which give its pos- sessor the title of " humorist," he must make oath to his statements, else the public will not believe him. There fore I make solemn oath that what I am going to tell about the new church is the strict truth. The main building — for there are to be three, massed together in a large grassy square, ornamented with quite a forest of shade trees — will be the church proper, it will be lofty, in order to secure good air and ventilation. The auditorium will be circular — an amphitheatre, after the ordinary pattern of an opera-house, withoitt galleries. It is to seat a thousand persons. On one side (or one end, if you choose) will be an ample, raised platform for the minister, the rear half of which will be occupied by the organ and the choir. Before the minister will be the circling amphitheatre of pews, the first thirty or forty on the level floor, and the next rising in graduated tiers to the walls. The seats on the level flbor will be occupied by the aged and infirm, who can enter the church through a hall under the speaker's platform, without climbing any stairs. The people occupying the raised tiers will enter by a dozen doors opening into the church 3» MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. from a lobby like an opera-house lobby, and descend the various aisles to their places. In case of fire or earth- quakes these numerous exits will be convenient and useful. No space is to be wasted. Under the raised tiers of pews are to be stalls for horses and carriages, so that these may be sheltered from sun and rain. There will be twenty-four of these stalls, each stall to be entered by an arch of ornamental masonry — no doors to open or shut. Consequently, the outside base of the church will have a formidable port-hole look, like a man-of-war. The stalls are to be so mailed with " deadeners," and so thoroughly plastered, that neither sound nor smell can ascend to the church and offend the worshippers. The horses will be in attendance at church but an hour or two at a time, of course, and can defile the stalls but little ; an immediate cleansing after they leave is to set that all right again. There is to be no steeple on the church — merely be- cause no practical use can be made of it There is to be no bell, because all men know what time church service begins without that exasperating nuisance. In explanation of this remark, I will state that at home I suffer in the vicinity and under the dis- tracting clangour of thkteen church bells, all of whom (is that right ?) clamour at once, and no two in accord. A large part of my time is taken up in devising cruel and unusual sufferings and in fancy inflicting them on those bell-ringers, and having a good time. The second building is to be less lofty than the church; it is to be built right against the rear of it, and communi- cate with it by a door. It is to have two stories. On A NSW BEECHER CHURCH. 3S the first floor will be three distinct Sunday school rooms ; all large, but one considerably larger than the other two. The Sunday school connected with Mr. Bescher's church has always been a " graded " one, and each department singularly thorough in its grade of instruction ; the pupil wins his advancement to the higher grades by hard-won proficiency, not by mere added years. The largest of the three compartments will be used as the main Sunday school room and for the week-day evening lecture. The whole upper story of this large building will be well lighted and ventilated, and occupied wholly as a play-room for the children of the church, and it will stand open and welcome to them through all the week- days. They can fill it with their playthings if they choose, and besides it will be fiimished with dumb-bells, swings, rocking-horses, and all such matters as children delight in. The idea is to make a child look upon a church as only another home^ and a sunny one, rather than as a dismal exile or a prison. The third building will be less lofty than the second ; it will adjoin the rear of the second, and communicate with it by a door or doors. It will consist of three stories. Like the other two buildings, it will cover con- siderable ground. On the first floor will be the " church parlours " where the usual social gatherings of modem congregations are held. On the same floor, and opening into the parlours, will be a reception-room, and also a circulating library — z.fr^ library — not simply free to the church membership, but to everybody, just as is the pre- lent library of Mr. Beecher's church (and few libraries are more extensively and more diligently and gratefiilly 34 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. used than this one). Also on this first floor, and com- municating with the parlours, will be — tell it not in Gath, publish it not in Askalon I — six baih rooms! — hot and cold water — free tickets issued to any applicant among the unclean of the congregation ! The idea is sound and sensible, for this reason : Many members of all congre- gations have no good bathing facilities, and are not able to pay for them at the barbers* shops without feeling the expense ; and yet a luxurious bath is a thing that all civil- ized beings greatly enjoy and derive healthy benefit from. The church buildings are to be heated by steam, and consequently the waste steam can be very judiciously utilised in the proposed bath rooms. In speaking of this bath-room project, I have revealed a state secret — ^but I never could keep one of any kind, state or otherwise. Even the congregation were not to know of this matter, the building committee were to leave it unmentioned in their report; but I got hold of it — and from a member of that committee, too — ^and I had rather part with one of my hind legs than keep still about it. The bath rooms are unquestionably to be built, and so why not tell it? In the second story of this third building will be the permanent residence of the " church missionary," a lady who constantly looks after the poor and sick of the church ; also a set of lodging and living rooms for the janitors (or janitresses ? — for they will be women, Mr. Beecher holding that women are tidier and more efficient in such a position than men, and that they ought to dwell upon the premises and give them their undivided care); also on this second floor are to be six rooms to do duty as a church infirmary for the sick poor of the congrega- A NEW BEECHER CHURCH, 3S id coin- in Gath, hot and : among und and congre- not able eling the t all civil- efit from, eam, and idiciously ng of this et— but I otherwise, is matter, tioned in lember of Lth one of ith rooms it? ill be the '," a lady ik of the for the len, Mr. efficient it to dwell led care); do duty |congrega> tion, this church having always supported and taken care of its own unfortunates instead of leaving them to the public charity. ' > the infirmary will be kept one or two water-beds (fc r./alids whose pains will not allow them to lie on a less yielding substance), and half-a-dozen reclining invalid-chairs on wheels. The water-beds and invalid-chairs at present belonging to the church are always in demand and never out of service. Part of the appurtenances of the new church will be a horse and an easy vehicle, to be kept and driven by a janitor, and used wholly for giving the church's indigent invalids air and exercise. It is found that such an establishment is daily needed — so much so, indeed, as to aknost amount to a church necessity. The third story of this third building is to be occupied as the church kitchetiy and it is sensibly placed aloft, so that the ascending noises and boarding-house smells shall go up and aggravate the birds instead of the saints — except such of the latter as are above the clouds, and they can easily keep out of the way of it, no doubt. Dumb-waiters will carry the food down to the church parlours, instead of up. Why is it that nobody has thought of the simple wisdom of this arrangement be- fore ? Is it for a church to step forward and tell us how to get rid of kitchen smells and noises? If it be asked why the new church will need a kitchen, I remind the reader of the infirmary occupants, etc. They must eat; and, besides, social gatherings of members of this con- gregation meet at the church parlours as often as three and four evenings a week, and sew, drink tea, and g , G , It commences with g, I think, but somehow I c a MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. i cannot think of the word. The new church parlours will be large, and it is intended that these social gatherings shall be promoted and encouraged, and that they shall take an added phase, viz. : when several families want to indulge in a little reunion, and have not room in their small houses at home, they can have it in the church parlours. You will notice in every feature of this new church one predominant idea and purpose always dis- cernible — the banding together of the congregation as a family^ and the making of the church z.hoine* You see it in the play-room, the library, the parlours, the baths, the infirmary — it is everywhere. It is the great central, ruling idea. To entirely consummate such a thing v.'ould be impossible with nearly any other congregation in the Union ; but after sixteen years of moulding and teaching, Mr. Beecher has made it wholly possible and practicable with this one. It is not stretching metaphor too far to say that he is the father of his people, and his church their mother. If the new church project is a curiosity, it is still but an inferior curiosity compared to the plan of raising the money for it One could have told, with his eyes shut and one hand tied behind him, that it originated with a Beecher — I was going to say with a lunatic, but the success of the plan robs me of the opportunity. When it was decided to build a new church edifice at a cost of not less than 40,000 dollars nor more than 50,000 dollars (for the membership is not three hundred and fifty strong, and there are not six men in it who can strictly be called rich), Mr. Beecher gave to each member a printed circular worded as follows — each circular A NEW BEECHER CHURCH. 37 enclosed in an envelope prepaid and addressed to him- self, to be returned through the post-office : [Confidential. J It is proposed to build a ineeting*house and other rooms for the the use of the church. To do this work honestly and well, it is pro* posed to spend one year in raising a part of the money in advance^ and in getting plans and making contracts. One year—plans and contracts .April i, 187 1, to 187a „ „ build and cover in . . „ 1872, „ 1873 „ „ plaster, finish, and furnish . tt 1^73» •• 1S74 „ „ pay for in full and dedicate . „ 1874, „ 1875 It is proposed to expend not less than twenty thousand dollars noi more than fifty thousand — according to the ability shown by the returns of these cards of confidential subscription. Any member of the church and congregation, or any friend of the church, is allowed and invited to subscribe. But no one is urged. T. K. Beecher, Pastor. To help build our meeting-hous^ I think that I shall be able to give Not less than and Not more than Each year for four years, beginning April i, 1871. Or I can make in one payment Trusting in the Lord to help me, I hereby subscribe the same at noted above. Name '' Residence ....... The subscriptions were to be wholly voluntary and strictly confidential; no one was to know the amount of a man's subscription except himself and the minister ; nobody was urg^ to give anything at all ; all were simply invited to give whatever sum they felt was right and just, from ten cents upward, and no questions asked> no eii- MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, ticisms made, no revealments uttered. There was no possible chance for glory, for even though a man gave his whole fortune nobody would ever know it. I do not know when anything has struck me as being so Utopian, 80 absurdly romantic, so ignorant, on its face, of human nature. And so anybody would have thought Parties said Mr. Beecher had " educated " his people, and that each would give as he privately felt able, and not bother about the glory. I believed human nature to be a more potent educator than any minister, and that the result would show it. But I was wrong. At the end of a month or two, some two-thirds of the circulars had wended back, one by one, to the pastor, silently and secretiy, through the post-office, and then, without men- tior ing the name of any giver or the amount of his gift, Mr. Bee her announced from the pulpit that all the money needed was pledged — the certain amount being over 45,000 dollars, and the possible amount over 53,000 dollars ! When the remainder of the circulars have come in, it ib confidently expected and believed that they will add to these amounts a sum of not less than 10,000 dol- lars. A great many subscriptions from children and working men consisted of cash enclosures ranging from a ten cent currency stamp up to five, ten, and fifteen dol- lars. As I said before, the plan of levying the building tax, and the success of the plan, are much more curious and surprising than the exceedingly curious edifice the money is to create. The reason the moneys are to be paid in four annual instalments — for that is the plan — is, partly to make the payments easy, but chiefly because the church is to be I A NEW BEECHER CHURCH. substantially built, and its several parts allowed time to settle and season, each in its turn. For instance, the substructures will be allowed a good part of the first year to settle and compact themselves, after completion ; the walls the second year, and so forth and so on. There it to be no work done by contract, and no unseasoned wood used. The materials are to be sound and good ; and honest, competent, conscientious workmen (Beecher says there are such, the opinion of the world to the con- trary notwithstanding) hired at full wages, by the day, to put them together. The above statements are all true and genuine, accord- ing to the oath I have already made thereto, and which I am now about to repeat before a notary, in legal form, with my hand upon the Book. Consequently we are going to have at least one sensible, but very, very curious church in America. I am aware that I had no business to tell all these matters, but the reporter instinct was strong upon me, and I could not help it. And besides they were in everybody's mouth in £lmir% anyway. THE STORY OF THE BAD LITTLE BOY WHO DIDN'T COME TO GRIEF. Once there was a bad little boy, whose name was Jim — though, if you will notice, you will find that bad little boys are nearly always called James in your Sunday- school books. It was very strange, but still it was true, that this one was simply called Jim. He didn't have any sick mother, either — a sick mother who was pious and had the consumption, and would be glad to lie down in the grave and be at rest, but for the strong love she bore her boy, and the anxiety she felt that the world would be harsh and cold toward him when she was gone. Most bad boys in the Sunday books are named James, and have sick mothers, who each them to say, " Now I lay me down," &c., and sing them to sleep with sweet plaintive voices, and then kiss them good-night, and kneel down by the bedside and weep. But it was difierent with this fellow. He was named Jim, and there wasn't anything the matter with his mother — ^no consumption, or anything of that kind. She was rather stout than otherwise, and she was not pious ; moreover, she was not anxious on Jim'a account. She said if he were to break his neck, it wouldn't be much loss. She always spanked Jim to sleep, and she THE BAD LITTLE BOY, 41 who sing kiss and was with cind. not sunt. be she '\ \ never kissed him good-night; on the contrary, she boxed his ears when she was ready to leave him. Once this little bad boy stole the key of the pantry und slipped in there and helped himself to some jam, and filled up the vessel with tar, so that his mother would never know the difference ; but all at once a ter- rible feeling didn't como over him, and something didn't seem to whisper to him, ''Is it right to disobey my mother? Isn't it sinful to do this? Where do bad little boys go who gobble up their good kind mother's jam ?" and then he didn't kneel down all alone and promise never to be wicked any more, and rise up with a light, happy heart, and go and tell his mother all about it, and beg her forgiveness, and be blessed by hei with tears of pride and thankfulness in her eyes. No ; that is the way with all other bad boys in the books ; but it happened otherwise with this Jim, strangely enough. He ate that jam, and said it was bully, in his sinful, vulgar way ; and he put in the tar, and said that was bully also, and laughed, and observed " that the old woman would get up and snort " when she found it out ; and when she did find it out, he denied knowing any- thing about it, and she whipped him severely, and he did the crying himself. Everything about this boy was curious — everything turned out differently with him from the way it does to the bad Jameses in the books. Once he climbed up Farmer Acorn's apple-tree to steal apples, and the limb didn't break, and he didn't fall and break his arm, and get torn by the farmer's great dog, and then languish on a sick bed for weeks, and repent and become good. Oh ! no ; he stole as many 43 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. rfi apples as he wanted, and came down all right ; and he was all ready for the dog too, and knocked him endways with a brick when he came to tear him. It was very strange — nothing like it ever happened in those mild little books with marbled backs, and with pictures in them of men with swallow-tailed coats, and bell-crowned hats, and pantaloons that are short in the legs, and women with the waists of their dresses under their arms, and no hoops on. Nothing like it in any of the Sunday- school books. Once he stole the teacher's penknife, and when he was afraid it would be found out, and he would get whipped, he slipped it into George Wilson's cap — poor Widow Wilson's son, the moral boy, the good little boy of the village, who always obeyed his mother, and never told an untruth, and was fond of his lessons and infa- tuated with Sunday-school. And when the knife dropped from the cap, and poor George hung his head and blushed, as if in conscious guilt, and the grieved teacher charged the theft upon him, and was just in the very act of bringing the switch down upon his trembling shoulders, a white-haired improbable justice of the peace did not suddenly appear in their midst and strike an attitude and say "Spare this noble boy — there stands the cowering culprit ! I was passing the school-door at recess, and, unseen myself, I saw the theft committed ! " And then Jim didn't get whaled, and the venerable justice didn't read the tearful school a homily, and take George by the hand and say such a boy deserved to be exalted, and then tell him to come and make his home with him, and sweep out the office, and make fires, and THE BAD LITTLE BOY. 43 >'^> and ran errands, and chop wood, and study law, and help his wife to do household labours, and have all the balance of the time to play, and get forty cents a month, and be happy. No; it would have happened that way in the books, but it didn't happen that way to Jim. No meddling old clam of a justice dropped in to make trouble, and so the model boy George got thrashed, and Jim was glad of it ; because, you know, Jim hated moral boys. Jim said he was "down on them milk- sops." Such was the coarse language of this bad, neglected boy. But the strangest thing that ever happened to Jim was the time he went boating on Sunday and didn't get drowned, and that other time that he got caught out in the storm when he was fishing on Sunday, and didn't get struck by lightning. Why, you might look, and look, and look through the Sunday-school books, from now till next Christmas, and you would never come across anything like this. Oh 1 no ; you would find that all the bad boys who go boating on Sunday invariably get drowned ; and all the bad boys who get caught out in storms, when they are fishing on Sunday, infallibly get struck by lightning. Boats with bad boys in them always upset on Sunday, and it always storms when bad boys go fishing on the Sabbath. How this Jim ever escaped is a mystery to me. This Jim bore a charmed life — that must have been the way of it Nothing could hurt him. He even gave the elephant in the menagerie a plug of tobacco, and the elephant didn't knock the top of his head off with his trunk. He browsed around the cupboard after 44 MARK TIVAIN*S SKETCHES. essence of peppermint, and didn't make a mistake and drink aquafortis. He stole his father's gun and went hunting on the Sabbath, and didn't shoot three or four of his fingers off. He struck his little sister on the temple with his fist when he was angry, and she didn't linger in pain through long summer days, and die with sweet words of forgiveness upon her lips that redoubled the anguish of his breaking heart. No ; she hit back ; and she never got sick at all He ran off and went to sea at last, and didn't come back and find himself sad and alone in the world, his loved ones sleeping in the quiet churchyard, and the vine-embowered home of his boyhood tumbled down and gone to decay. Ah 1 no ; he came home drunk as a piper, and got into the station-house the first thing. And he grew up, and married, and raised a large family, and brained them all with an axe one night, and got wealthy by all manner of cheating and rascality; and now he is the infernalest wickedest scoundrel in his native village, and is universally respected, and belongs to the Legislature. So you see there never was a bad James in the Sunday-school books that had such a streak of luck as this sinful Jim with the charmed life. I laxge THE STORV OF THE GOOD LITTLE BOY WHO DID NOT PROSPER. Once there was a good little boy by the name of Jacob Blivens. He always obeyed his parents, no matter how absurd and unreasonable their demands were ; and he always learned his book, and never was late at Sabbath School He would not play hookey, even when his sober judgment told him it was the most profitable thing he could do. None of the other boys could ever make that boy out, he acted so strangely. He wouldn't lie, no matter how convenient it was. He just said it was wrong to lie, and that was sufficient for him. And he was so honest that he was simply ridicu- lous. The curious ways that that Jacob had surpassed everything. He wouldn't play marbles on Sunday, he wouldn't rob birds' nests, he wouldn't give hot pennies to organ-grinders' monkeys; he didn't seem to take any interest in any kind of rational amusement So the other boys used to try to reason it out and come to an under- standing of him, but tbt^y couldn't ^ve at any satisfac- tory conclusion. As I said before, they could only figure out a sort of vague idea that he was " afflicted," and so they took him under their protection, and never allowed any harm to come to him. 46 MARK nVA/JV'S SKETCHES, This good little boy read all the Sunday-school books j they were nis greatest delight. This was the whole secret of it He believed in the good little boys they put in the Sunday-school books ; he had every confidence in them. He longed to come across one of them alive, once ; but he never did. They all died before his time, maybe. Whenever he read about a particularly good one he turned over quickly to the end to see what became of him, because he wanted to travel thousands of miles and gaze on him ; but it wasn't any use ; that good little boy always died in the last chapter, and there was a picture of the funeral, with all his relations and the Sunday-school children standing around the grave in pantaloons that were too short, and bonnets that were too large, and everybody crying into handkerchiefs that had as much as a yard and a half of stuff in them. He was always headed off in this way. He never could see one of those good little boys on account of his always dying in the last chapter. Jacob had a noble ambition to be put in a Sunday- school book. He wanted to be put in, with pictures representing him gloriously declining to lie to his mother, and her weeping for joy about it; and pictures repre- senting him standing on the doorstep giving a penny to a poor beggar-woman with six children, and telling her to spi nd it freely, but not to be extravagant, because extravagance is a sin; and pictures of him magnani- mously refusing to tell on the bad boy who always lay in wait for him around the comer as he came from school, and welted him over the head with a lath, and then chased him home, saying, *< Hi ! hi 1 " as he pro- THE GOOD LITTLE BOY, 47 pro- ceeded. That was the ambition of young Jacob Blivens. He wished to be put in a Sunday-school book. It made him feel a little uncomfortable sometimes when he re- flected that the good little boys always died. He loved to live, you know, and this was the most unpleasant feature about being a Sunday-school-book boy. He knew it was not healthy to be good. He knew it was more fatal than consumption to be so supernaturally good as the boys in the books were ; he knew that none of them had ever been able to stand it long, and it pained him to think that if they put him in a book he wouldn't ever see it, or even if they did get the book out before he died it wouldn't b" popular without any picture of his funeral in the back part of it. It couldn't be much of a Sunday-school book that couldn't tell about the advice he gave to the community when he was dying. So at last, of course, he had to make up his mind to do the best he could under the circumstances — to live right, and hang on as long as he could, and have his dying speech all ready when his time came. But somehow nothing ever went right with this good little boy ; nothing ever turned out with him the way it turned out with the good little boys in the books. They always had a good time, and the bad boys had the broken legs ; but in his case there was a screw loose somewhere, and it all happened just the other way. When he found Jim Blake stealing apples, and went under the tree to read to him about the bad little *boy who fell out of a neighbour's apple-tree and brok^ his arm, Jim fell out of the tree too, but he fell on him^ and broke his arm, and Jim wasn't hurt at all. Jacob couldn't MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. understand that There wasn't anything in the booki like it And once, when some bad boys pushed a blind man over in the mud, and Jacob ran to help him up and receive his blessing, the blind man did not give him any blessing at all, but whacked him over the head with his stick and said he would like to catch him shoving him again, and then pretending to help him up. This was not in accordance with any of the books. Jacob looked them all over to see. One thing that Jacob wanted to do was to find a lame dog that hadn't any place to stay, and was hungry and persecuted, and bring him home and pet him, and have that dog's imperishable gratitude. And at last he found one and was happy ; and he brought him home and fed him, but when he was going to pet him the dog flew at him and tore all the clothes off him except those that were in front, and made a spectacle of him that was astonishing. He examined authorities, but he could not understand the matter. It was of the same breed of dogs that was in the books, but it acted very differently. Whatever this boy did he got into trouble. The very things the boys in the books got rewarded for turned out to be about the most unprofitable things he could invest in. Once when he was on his way to Sunday-school he saw some bad boys starting off pleasuring in a sail-boat He was filled with consternation, because he knew from his reading that boys who went sailing on Sunday in- variably got drowned. So he ran out on a raft to warn them, but a log turned with him and slid him into the i books nd man up and him any Mrith his ing Aim 'his was » looked I a lame igry and nd have le found and fed flew at se that at was •uld not reed of [erently. le very led out invest iool he -boat from lay in- wam Ito the T//£ COOD LITT T BOY, 49 river. A man got him out pretty soon, and the doctor pumped the water out of nim, and gave him a fresh start with his bellows, but he caught cold and lay sick a-bed nine weeks. But the most unaccountable thing about it was that the bad boys in the boat had a good time all day, and then reached home alive and well in the most surprising manner. Jacob Blivens said there was nothrni/ like these things in the books. He was perfectly dumb founded. When he got well he was a little discouraged, but he resolved to keep on trying anyhow. He knew that so far his experiences wouldn't do to go in a book, but he hadn't yet reached the allotted term of life for good little boys, and he hoped to be able to make a record yet if he could hold on till his time was fully up. If everything else failed he had hit dying speech to fall back on. He examined his authoritiei, and found that it was now time for him to go to sea as a cabin-boy. He called on a ship captain and made his application, and when the captain asked for his recommendations he proudly drew out a tract and pointed to the words, " To Jacob Blivens, from his affectionate teacher." But the captain was a coarse vulgar man, and he said, " Oh, that be blowed ! thai wasn't any proof that he knew how to wash dishes or handle a slush-bucket, and he guessed he didn't want him." This was altogether the most extraordinary thing that ever happened to Jacob in all his life. A compliment from a teacher, on a tract, had never failed to move the tenderest emotions of ship captains, and open the way to all offices of honour and profit in their MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. gift — it never had in any book that ever he had read. He could hardly believe his senses. This boy always had a hard time of it Nothing ever came out according to the authorities with him. At last, one day, when he was around hunting up bad little boys to admonish, he found a lot of them in the old iron foundry fixing up a little joke on fourteen or fifteen dogs, which they had tied together in long procession and were going to ornament with empty nitro-glycerine cam made fast to their tails. Jacob's heart was touched. He sat down on one of those cans (for he never minded grease when duty was before him), and he took hold of the foremost dog by the collar, and turned his reproving eye upon wicked Tom Jones. But just at that moment Alderman McWelter, full of wrath, stepped in. All the bad boys ran aw^y, but Jacob Blivens rose in conscious innocence and began one of those stately little Sunday- school-book speeches which always commence with " Oh, sir 1 " in dead opposition to the fact that no boy, good or bad, ever starts a remark with '*0h, sir!" But the alderman never waited to hear the rest. He took Jacob Blivens by the ear and turned him round, and hit him a whack in the rear with the flat of his hand ; and in an instant that good little boy shot out through the roof and soared away towards the sun, with the fragments of those fifteen dogs stringing after him like the tail of a kite. And there wasn't a sign of that alderman or that old iron foundry left on the ia^i of the earth ; and, as for young Jacob Blivens, he never got a chance to make his last dying speech after all his trouble fixing it up, unless he made it to the birds; because, although the bulk of him THE aOOD LITTLE BOY, 5t read gcvec Lt last, eboys d iron I dogs, in and lecani >uched. noinded tiold of proving aoment AU the came down all right in a tree-top in an adjoining county, the rest of him was apportioned around among foul townships, and so they had to hold five inquests on him to find out whether he was dead or not, and how it occurred. You never saw a boy scattered so. Thus perished the good little boy who did the best he could, but didn't come out according to the books. Every boy who ever did as he did prospered except him. His case is truly remarkable. It will probably never be accounted for. NoTK. — This nitro-glycerine suggestion is borrowed from a float ing newspaper item — author unknown. in an hof and If those kite. Id iron young lis last :ss he l>f him D3 THE DANGER OF LYING IN BED. Thb man in the ticket-office said, " Have an accident- insurance ticket, also ? " ** No/' I said, after studying the matt'.r over a little. "No, I believe not ; I am going to be travelling by rail all day to-day. However, to-morrow I don't travel Give me one for to-morrow." The man looked puzzled. He said— " But it is for accident insurance, and if you are going to travel by rail " " If I am going to travel by rail I shan't need it Lying at home in bed is the thing /am afraid of." I had been looking into this matter. Last year I travelled twenty thousand miles, almost entirely by rail ; the year before, I travelled over twenty-five thousand miles, half by sea and half by rail ; and the year before that I travelled in the neighbourhood of ten thousand miles, exclusively by rail. I smpose, if I put in all the little odd journeys here and mere, I may say I have travelled sixty thousand miks during the three years I have mentioned, and never an saident. For a good while I said "» myself every mornings " Now, I have escaped thus t , and so the chances are just that much incrtased that I shall catch it this time. : i I THE DANGER OF LYING IN BED, $3 ccideni- a little. I by rail ; travel ^e going need it year I by rail ; [housand before lousand all the I have years I loming, ices are lis time. I will be shrewd, and buy an accident ticket." And to a dead moral certainty I drew a blank, and went to bed that night without a joint started or a bone splintered. I got tired of that sort of daily bother, and fell to buying accident tickets that were good for a month. I said to myself, " A man canU buy thirty blanks in one bundle." But I was mistaken. There was never a prize in the lot I could read of railway accidents every day — the newspaper atmosphere was foggy with them ; but some- how they never came my way. I found I had spent a good deal of money in the accident business, and had nothing to show for it. My suspicions were aroused, and I began to hunt around for somebody that had won in this lottery. I found plenty of people who had invested, but not an individual that had ever h.'^d an accident or made a cent I stopped buying accident tickets and went to ciphering. The result was astounding. The PERIL LAY NOT IN TRAVEM .'\G, BUT IN STAVING AT HOME. I hunted up statistics^ and was amazed to find that, after all the glaring newspaper headings concerning rail- road disasters, less th/ui three hundred people had really lost their lives by those disasters in the preceding twelve months. The Erie road was set down as the most mur- derous in the list. It had killed forty-six— or twenty-six, I do not exactly remember which, but I know the number was double that of any other 'road. But the fact straightway suggested itself that the Erie was an im- mensely long road, and did more business than any other line in the country ; so the double number of killed ceased to be matter for surprise. $4 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. By further figuring it appeared, that between New York and Rochester the Erie ran eight passenger-trains each way every day — sixteen altogether, and carried a daily average of 6000 persons. That is about a million in six months — the population of New York city. Well, the Erie kills from thirteen to twenty-three persons out of its million in six months ; and in the same time 13,000 of New York's million die in their beds ! My flesh crept, my hair stood on end. " This is appalling 1 " I said. ** The danger isn't in travelling by rail, but in trusting to those deadly beds. I will never sleep in a bed again." I had figured on considerably less than one-half the length of the Erie road. It was plain that the entire road must transport at least eleven or twelve thousand people every day. There are many short roads running out of Boston that do fully half as much ; a great many such roads. There are many roads scattered about the Union that do a prodigious passenger business. There- fore it was fair to presume that an average of 2500 pas- sengers a day for each road in the country would be about correct There are 846 railway lines in our country, and 846 times 2500 are 2,115,000. So the railways of America move more than two millions of people every day; six hundred and fifty millions of people a year, without counting the Sundays. They do that, too, there is no question about it ; though where they get the raw material is clear beyond the jurisdiction of my arithmetic ; for I have hunted the census through and through, and I find that there are not that many people in the United States by a matter of six hundred THE DANGER OF LYING IN BED. S5 and ten millions at the very least They must use some of the same people over again, likely. San Francisco is one-eighth as populous as New York ; there are 60 deaths a week in the former and 500 a week in the latter — if they have luck. That is, 3120 deaths a year in San Francisco, and eight times as many in New York — say about 25,000 or 26,000. The health of the two places is the same. So we will let it stand as a fair presumption that this will hold good all over the country, and that consequently 25,000 out of every million of people we have must die every year. That amounts to one-fortieth of our total population. One million of us, then, die annually. Out of this million ten or twelve thousand are stabbed, shot, drowned, hanged, poisoned, or meet a similarly violent death in some other popular v;ay, such as perishing by kerosene lamp and hoop-skirt conflagrations, getting buried in coal-mines, falling off housetops, breaking through church or lecture-room floors, taking patent medicines, or committing suicide in other forms. The Erie railroad kills from 23 to 46 ; the other 845 railroads kill an average of one-third of a man each; and the rest of that million, amounting in the aggregate to the appalling figure of nine hundred and eighty-seven thousand six hundred and thirty-one corpses, die naturally in their beds ! You will excuse me from taking any more chances on those beds. The railroads are good enough for me. And my advice to all people is. Don't stay at home any more than you can help ; but when you have got to stay at home a while, buy a packet of those insurance tickets and sit up nights. You cannot be too cautious. $« MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, (One can see now why I answered that ticket agent in the manner recorded at the top of this sketch.) The moral of this composition is, tliat thoughtless people grumble more than is fair about railroad manage- ment in the United States. When we consider that every day and night of the year full fourteen thousand railway trains of various kinds, freighted with life and armed with death, go thundering over the land, the marvel is, not that they kill three hundred human beings in a twelvemonth, but that they do not kill three hundred times three hundred 1 ABOUT BARBERS. i All things change except barb^is, the ways of barbersy and the sunoundings of barbers. These never change. What on^ ' v iences in a barber-shop the first time he enters one : Imt he always experiences in barber-shops afterwards till the end of his days. I got shaved this morning as usual. A man approached the door from Jones Street as I approached it from Main — a thing that always happens. I hurried up, but it was of no use ; he entered the door one little step ahead of me, and I followed in on his heels and saw him take the only vacant chair, the one presided over by the best barber. It always happens so. I sat down, hoping that I might fall heir to the chair belonging to the better of the remaining two barbers, for he had already begun combing his man's hair, whilf liis comrade was not yet quite done rubbing up and ogling his customer's locks. I watched the probabilities with strong interest. When I saw that No. a was gaining on No. x my interest grew to solicitude. When No. i stopped a moment to make change on a bath ticket for a new-comer, and lost ground in the race, my solicitude rose to anxiety. When No. i caught up again, and both he and his comrade were ^! 5< MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. pulling the towels away and brushing the powder from their customers' ch :ks, and it was about an even thing which one would say "Nextl" first, my very breatn stood still with the suspense. But when at the final culminating moment No. i stopped to pass a comb a couple of times through his customer's eyebrows, I saw that he had lost the race by a single instant, and I rose indignant and quitted the shop, to keep firom falling into the hands of No. 2 ; for I have none of that enviable firmness that enables a man to look calmly into the eyes of a waiting barber and tell him he will wait for his fellow-barber's chair. I stayed out fifteen minutes, and then went back, hoping for better luck. Of course all the chairs were occupied now, and four men sat waiting, silent, unsoci- able, distraught, and looking bored, as men always do who are awaiting their turn in a barber's shop. I sat down in one of the iron-armed compartments of an old sofa, and put in the time for a while, reading the fi-amed advertisements of all sorts of quack nostrums for dyeing and colouring the hair. Then I read the greasy names on the private bay rum bottles; read the names and noted the numbers on the private shaving cups in the pigeon-holes; studied the stained and damaged cheap prints on the walls, of battles, early Presidents, and voluptuous recumbent sultanas, and the tiresome and everlasting young girl putting her grandfather's spectacles on ; execrated in my heart the cheerful canary and the distracting parrot that few barber-shops are without. Finally, I searched out the least dilapidated of last year's illustrated papers th$it littered the foul centre-table, and ABOUT BARBERS, 59 conned their unjustifiable misrepresentations of old for- gotten events. At last my turn came. A voice said " Next ! '* and I sunendered to — No. 2, of course. It always happens so. I said meekly that I was in a hurry, and it affected hhi as strongly as if he had never heard it. He shoved up my heady and put a napkin under it. He ploughed his fingers into my collar and fixed a towel there. He explored my hair with his claws and suggested that it needed trimming. I said I did not want it trimmed He explored again and said it was pretty long for the present style — ^better have a little taken off; it needed it behind especially. I said I had had it cut only a week before. He yearned over it reflectively a moment, and then asked, with a disparaging manner, who cut it ? I came back at him promptly with a " You did ! " I had him there. Then he fell to stirring up his lather and regarding himself in the glass, stopping now and then to get close and examine his chin critically or torture a pimple. Then he lathered one side of my face thoroughly, and was about to lather the other, when a dog-fight attracted his attention, and he ran to the window and stayed and saw it out, losing two shillings on the result in bets with the other barbers, a thing which gave me great satisfaction. He finished lathering, meantime getting the brush into my mouth only twice, and then began to rub in the suds with his hand ; and cis he now had his head turned, discussing the dog-fight with the other barbers, he naturally shovelled consider- able lather into my mouth without knowing it, but I did. He now began to sharpen his razor on an old si}9- 6o MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, pender, and was delayed a good deal on account of a controversy about a cheap masquerade ball he had figured at the night '^' ^ore, in red cambric and bogus ermine, as some kinc / a king. He was so gratified with being chaffed about some damsel whom he had smitten with his charms that he used every means to continue the controversy by pretending to be annoyed at the chaffings of his fellows. This matter begot more surveyings of himself in the glass, and he put down his razor and brushed his hair with elaborate care, plastering an inverted arch of it down on his forehead, accom- plishing an accurate "part" behind, and brushing the two wings forward over his ears with nice exactness. In the mean time the lather was drying on my face, and apparently eating into my vitals. Now he began to shave, digging his fingers into my countenance to stretch the skin, making a handle of my nose now and then, bundling and tumbling my head this way and that as convenience in shaving demanded, and "hawking" and expectorating pleasantly all the while. As long as he was on the tough sides of my face I did not suffer ; but when he began to rake, and rip, and tug at my chin, the tears came. I did not mind his getting so close down to me ; I did not mind his garlic, because all barbers eat garlic, I suppose ; but there was an added something that made me fear that he was decaying inwardly while still alive, and this gave me much concern. He now put his finger into my mouth to assist him in shaving the comers of my upper lip, and it was by this bit of circumstantial evidence that I discovered that a part of his duties in the shop I ABOUT BARBERS. «| was to clean the kerosene lamps. I had often wondered in an indolent way whether the barbers did that, or whether it was the boss. About this time I was amusing myself txying to guess where he would be most likely to cut me this time, but he got ahead of me, and sliced me on the end of the chin before I had got my mind made up. He immediately sharpened his razor — he might have done it before. I do not like a close shave, and would not let him go over me a second time. I tried to get him to put up his razor, dreading that he woitld make for the side of my chin, my pet tender spot, a place which a razor cannot touch twice without making trouble ; but he said he only wanted to just smooth off one little roughness, and in that same moment he slipped his razor along the for- bidden ground, and the dreaded pimple-signs of a close shave rose up smarting and answered to the call. Now he soaked his towel in bay rum, and slapped it all over my face nastily ; slapped it over as if a human being ever yet washed his face in that way. Then he dried it by slapping with the dry part of the towel, as if a human being ever dried his face in such a fashion ; but a barber seldom rubs you like a Christian. Next he poked bay rum into the cut place with his towel, then choked the wound with powdered starch, then soaked it with bay rum again, and would have gone on soaking and pow- dering it for evermore, no doubt, if I had not rebelled and begged off. He powdered my whole face now, straightened me up, and began to plough my hair thoughtfully with his hands and examine his fingers cri* ticallyi Then he suggested a shampoo, and said my j !■?■■ MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, hair needed it badly, veiy badly. I observed that 1 shampooed it myself very thoroughly in the bath yester- day. I "had him" again. He next recommended some of ''Smith's Hair Glorifier," and offered to sell me a bottle. I declined. He praised the new perfumei "Jones's Delight of the Toilet," and proposed to sell me some of that. I declined again. He tendered me a tooth-wash atrocity of his own invention, and when I declined offered to trade knives with me. He returned to business after the miscarriage of this last, enterprise, sprinkled me all over, legs and all, greased my hair in defiance of my protests against it, rubbed and scrubbed a good deal of it out by the roots, and combed and brushed the rest, parting it behind and plastering the eternal inverted arch of hair down on my forehead, and then, while combing my scant eyebrows and defiling them with pomade, strung out an account of the achievements of a six-ounce black and tan terrier of his till I heard the whistles blow for noon, and knew I was five minutes too late for the train. Then he matched away the towel, brushed it lightly about my face, passed his comb through my eyebrows once more, and gaily sang out " Next !" This barber fell down and died of apoplexy two hours later. I am waiting over a day for my revenge — I am going to attend his fiineraL tat 1 ster- lome ae a ime, sell [ me en I HUMAN NATURE this all, St it, oots, and 1 my rows ount rrier new he my ore, There are some natures which never grow large enough to speak out, and say a bad act is a bad act, until they have inquired into the politics or the nationality of the man who did it. And they are not really scarce, either. Cain is branded a murderer so heartily and unanimously in America only because he was neither a Democrat nor a Republican. The Feejee Islander's abuse of Cain ceased very suddenly when the white man mentioned casually that Cain was a Feejee Islander. The next remark of the savage, after an awkward pause, was, '* Well, what did Abel come fooling around there fori*'* ' - >ura am JOHNNY GREER'S WAY. " The church was densely crowded that lovely summer Sabbath," said the Sunday-school superintendent, *' and all, as their eyes rested upon the small coffin, seemed im- pressed by the poor black boy's fate. Above the stillness the pastor's voice rose, and chained the interest of every year as he told, with many an envied compliment, how that the brave, noble, daring little Johnny Greer, when he saw the drowned body sweeping down toward the deep part of the river whence the agonised parents never could have recovered it in this world, gallantly sprang into the stream, and at the risk of his life towed the corpse to shore, and held it fast till help came and secured it Johnny Greer was sitting just in front of me. A ragged street boy, with eager eye, turned upon him instantly, and said in a hoarse whisper : " * No, but did you though ?* "'Yes.' '' * Towed the carkiss ashore and saved it yo'self ? ' ««Yes.' " * Cracky I What did they give you ? ' ♦"Nothing.' ^ " * W-h-a-t 1 [with intense disgust] D' you know what I'd a done ? I'd a anchored him out in the stream, and said, Five dollars^ gmts^ or you cam' t have yo^ nigger J* BREAKING IT GENTLY. " Yes, I remember that anecdote," the Sunday school superintendent said, with the old pathos in his voice, and the old sad look in his eyes. " It was about a simple creature named Higgins, that used to haul rock for old Maltby. When the lamented Judge Bagley tripped and fell down the court-house stairs and broke his neck, it was a great question how to break the news to poor Mrs. Bagley. But finally the body was put into Higgins's waggon, and he was instructed to take it to Mrs. B., but to be very guarded and discreet in his language, and not break the news to her at once, but do it gradually and gently. When Higgins got there with his sad freight, he shouted till Mrs. Bagley came to the door. Then he said, '' Does the widder Bagley live here?" " The widow Bagley ? No^ sir 1 " " m bet she does. But have it your own way. Well, ^Qts Judge Bagley live here ?" " Yes, Judge Bagley lives here." *' I'll bet he don't. But never mind, it ain't for me to contradict Is the Judge in ? * •* No, not at present" 66 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. '' I jest expected as much. Because, you know— take hold o' suthin, mum, for I'm a-going to make a little com- munication, and I reckon maybe itil jar you some. There's been an accident, mum. I've got the old Judge curled up out here in the waggon, and when you see hiu you'll acknowledge yourself that an inquest is about the only thing that could be a comfort to him /" t-' . i.< ike >m- at, dge see out THE JUDGE'S ** SPIRITED WOMAi^.' ** I WAS sitting here," said the Judge, " in thin old pulpit, holding court, and we were trying a big, wicked« looking Spanish desperado for killing the husband of a bright pretty Mexican woman. It was a lazy summer day, and an awfully long one, and the witnesses were tedious. None of us took any interest in the trial except that nervous uneasy devil of a Mexican woman — because you know how they love and how they hate, and this one had loved her husband with all her might, and now she had boiled it all down into hate, and stood here spitting it at that Spaniard with her eyes; and I tell you she would stir me up, too, with a little of her summer light- ning occasionally. Well, I had my coat off and my heels up, lolling and sweating, and smoking one of ttv ^^c cab- bage cigars the San Francisco people used to think were good enough for us in those times ; and the lawyers they all had their coats off, and were smoking and whittling, and the witnesses the same, and so was the prisoner. Well, the fact is, there wam't any interest in a murder trial then, because the fellow was always brought in ''not guilty," the jury expecting him to do as much for them some time ; and, although the evidence was straight and square against this Spaniard, we knew we could not con- vict him without seeming to be rather high-handed and •ort of reflecting on every gentleman in the community; 1 a 68 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, for there w&m't any carriages and liveries then, and so the only * style' there was, was to keep your private graveyard. But that woman seemed to have her heart set on hanging that Spaniard ; and you'd ought to have seen how she would glare on him a minute, and then look up at me in her pleading way, and then turn and for the next five minutes search the jury's faces, and by- and-by drop her face in her hands for just a little while as if she was most ready to give up, but out she'd come again directly and be as live and anxious as ever. But when the jury announced the verdict — Not Guilty, and 1 told the prisoner he was acquitted and free to go, that woman rose up till she appeared to be as tall and grand as a seventy-four-gun ship, and says she — " ' Judge, do I understand you to say that this man is not guilty, that murdered my husband without any cause before my own eyes and my little children's, and that all has been done to him that ever justice and the law can do ? ' " The same,* says I. " And then what do you reckon she did ? Why, she turned on that smirking Spanish fool like a wild cat, and out with a 'navy' and shot him dead in open court!" " That was spirited, I am willing to admit" " Wasn't it, though ? " said the Judge, admiringly. " I wouldn't have missed it for anything. I adjourned court right on the spot, and we put on our coats and went out and took np a collection for her and her cubs, and sent them over the mountains to their friends. Ah, she was a spirited wench I " MY LATE SENATORIAL SECRETARYSHIP. H^ \ I AM not a private secretary to a senator any more, now. I held the berth two months in security and in great cheerfulness of spirit, but my bread began to return from over the waters, then — that is to say, my works came back and revealed themselves. I judged it best to resign. The way of it was this. My employer sent for me one morning tolerably early, and, as soon as I had finished inserting some conundrums clandestinely into his last great speech upon finance, I entered the presence. There was something portentous in his appearance. Hie cravat was untied, his hair was in a state of disorder, and his countenance bore about it the signs of a suppressed storm. He held a package of letters in his tense grasp, and I knew that the dreaded Pacific mail was in. He said — " I thought you were worthy of confidence." I said, " Yes, sir." He said, " I gave you a letter from certain of my con. stituents in the State of Nevada, asking the establishment of a post-ofiice at Baldwin's Ranch, and told you to answer it, as ingeniously as you could, with arguments 70 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, which should persuade them that there was no real necessity for an office at that place." I felt easier. " Oh, if that is all, sir, I did do that." "Yes, you did. I will read your answer, for your own humiliation : •* Washington, Nov. 24. " 'Messrs, Smithy yoneSf and others. " * Gentlemen; What the mischief do you suppose you want with a post-office at Baldwin's Ranch ? It would not do you any good. If any letters came there, you couldn't read them, you know; and, besides, such letters as ought to pass through, with money in them, for other localities, would not be likely to g^ through, you must perceive at once ; and that would make tiouble for us alL No, don't bother about a post-office in your camp. I have your best interests at heart, and feel that it would only be an ornamental folly. What you want is a nice jail, you know— a nice, substantial jail and a free school. These will be a lasting benefit to you. These will make you really contented and happy. I will move in the matter at once. *' 'Very truly, etc., % " 'Mark Twain, ; •" For James W. N** U. S. Senaton' \, \ "That is the way you answered that letter. Those people say they will hang me, if I ever enter that district again ; and I am perfectly satisfied they willf too." " Well, sir, I did not know I was doing any harm. I only wanted to convince them.'* " Ah. Well, you did convince them, I make no manner of doubt Now, here is another specimen. I gave you a petition from certain gentlemen of Nevada, praying that I would get a bill through Congress incorporating the Methodist Episcopal Church of the State of Nevada. UyiATM SENATORIAL SECRETARYSHIP, jt I told you to lay, in reply, that the creation of such a law came more properly within the province of the State Legislature ; and to endeavour to show them that, in the present feebleness of the religious element in that new commonwealth, the expediency of incorporating thv^s church was questionable. What did you write ? " 'Washington, Not. 24. ** *R«v. yohn Halifax and others. ** * Gentlemen t You will have to go to the State Legislature about that ipecuUtion of yours— Congress don't know anything about religion. But don't you hurry to go there, either ; because this thing you propose to do out in that new country isn't expedient —in fact, it is ridiculous. Your religious people there are too feeble, in intellect, in morality, In piety — in everything, pretty much. You had better drop this— you can't make it work. You can't issue stock on an incorporation like that— or if you could, it would only keep you in trouble all the time. The other denominations would abuse it, and "bear" it, and "sell it short," and break it down. They would do with it just as they would with one of your silver mines out there— they would try to make all the world believe it was "wildcat." You ought not to do anything that b calculated to bring a sacred thing into disrepute. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves— that is what / think about it You close your petition with the words i " And we will ever pray." I think you had better —you need to do it "•Very truly, etc., " • Mark Twain, " 'For James W. N**, U. S. Senator.* ** TTiat luminous epistle finishes me with the religious clement among my constituents. But that my political murder might be made sure, some evil instinct prompted me to hand you this memorial from the grave company of elders composing the Board of Aldermen of the city of 7* MARK TWAIN*S SKETCHES. San Francisco, to try your hand upon — 9. memorial pray- ing that the city's right to the ^ /ater-lots upon the city front might be established by Jaw of Congress. I told you this was a dangerous matte tc move in. I told you to write a non-committal letter to the Aldermen — an am- biguous letter — a letter that should avoid, as far as pos- sible, all real consideration and discussion of the water-lot question. If there is any feeling left in you — any shame — surely this letter you wrote, in obedience to that order, ought to evoke it, when its words fall upon your ears : (I I Washington, Nov. 37. "* The Hon. Board of Aldermen^ etc. " * Gentlemen ; George Washington, the revered Father of his Country, is dead. His long and briUianl career is closed, alas! for- ever. He was greatly respected in this section of the country, and his untimely decease cast a gloom over the whole commumty. He died on the 14th day of December, 1799. He passed peacefully away from the scene of his honours and his great achievements, the most lamented hero and the best beloved that ever earth hath yielded unto Death. At such a time as this, you speak of water-lots I — ^what a lot was his I '* ' What is fame I Fame is an accident. Sir Isaac Newton dis- covered an apple falling to the ground — a trivial discovery, truly, and one which a million men had made before him — but his parents were influential, and so they tortured that small circumstance into something wonderful, and, lo 1 the simple world took up the shout and, in almost the twinkling of an eye, that man was famous. Trea- sure these thoughts. ** * Poesy, sweet poesy, who shall estimate what the world owes to thee I " Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow — And everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to ga" { MY LATE SENATORIAL SECRETARYSHtP, 73 " Jack «nd GUI went up the hiU To draw a pail of water ; Jack fell down and broke hi< crown, And Gill came tnmbling after." For simplicity, elegance of diction, and freedom from immoral ten- dencies, I regard those two poems in the light of gems. They are suited to all grades of intelligence, to every sphere of life — ^to the field, to the nursery, to the guild. Especially should no Board of Aldermen be without them. " ' Venerable fossils ! write again. Nothing improves one so much as friendly correspondence. Write again — and if there is any- thing in this memorial of yours that refers to anything in particular, do not be backward about explaining it. We shall always be happy to hear you chirp. " * Very truly, etc. "•Mark Twain, " « For James W. N**, U. S. Senator.* " That is an atrocious, a ruinous epistle I Distraction !" " Well, sir, I am really sorry if there is anything wrong about it — ^but — but — it appears to me to dodge the water- lot question." "Dodge the mischief! Oh! — ^but never mind. As long as destruction must come now, let it be complete. Let it be complete — ^let this last of your performances, which I am about to read, make a finality of it. I am a ruined man. I had my misgivings when I gave you the letter from Humboldt, asking that the post route from Indian Gulch to Shakespeare Gdp and intermediate points, be changed partly to the old Mormon trail. But I told you it was a delicate question, and warned you to deal with it deftly — to answer it dubiously, and leave them a litde in the dark. And your fatal imbecility 74 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, impelled you to make this di!>riStrous reply. I should think you would stop your ears, if you are not dead to all shame : ** 'Washington, Not. 3a "* * Messrs. PerHins, JVagneft et ai. " 'Gen'TLEMEN : It is a delicate question about this Indian trail, but, handled with proper deftness and dnbiousnf ks, I doubt not we siiall succeed in some measure or otherwise, because the pkce where the route leaves the Lassen Meadows, over beyond where those two Shawnee chu ft, Dilapidated- Vengeance and Biter-of-the« Clouds, were scalped laji ivintcr; this beinj; the favourite direction to some, but others preferring something else in consequence of things, the Mormon ttail leaving Moshy's at three in the morning, and pass- ing through Jawbone 1<'kt to Blucher, and then down by Jug-Handle, the road passing to the right of it, and naturally leaving it on the right, too, and Dawson's on the left of the trail where it passes to the left of said Dawson's, and onward thence to Tomahawk, thus ntaking the route cheaper, easier of access to all who can get at it, and compassing all the desirable objects so considered by others, and, therefore, conferring the most good upon the greatest number, and, cou^^equently, I am encouraged to hope we shall. However, I shall be tcady, and happy, to afford you still further information upon the subject, from time to time, as you may desire it and the Post-ofiice Department be enabled to furnish it to me. *• 'Very truly, etc. " 'Mark Twain, " 'For James W. N**, U. S. Senator.* " There — now, what do you think of that?" ** Well, I don't know, sir. It — well, it appears to me — to be dubious enough." " Du — ^leave the house ! I am a ruined man. Those Humboldt savages never will forgive me for tangling their brains up with this inhuman letter. I have lost the the , i MY LATE SENATORIAL SECRETARYSHIP, 75 respect of the Methodist Church, the Board of Alder- men ** *^ Well, I haven't anything to say about that, because I may have missed it a little in their cases, but I was too many for the Baldwin's Ranch people, General 1 " " Leave the house ! Leave it for ever and for ever, too!" I regarded that as a sort of covert intimation that my services could be dispensed with, and so I resigned. I never will be a private secretary to a senator again. You can't please that kind of people. They don't know anything. They can't appreciate a party's efforts. THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF GEORGE FISHER, DECEASED. This is history. It wild like extravaganza, "John Williamson Mackenzie's Great Beef Contract," but is a plain statement of facts and circumstances with which the Congress of the United States has interested itself from time to time during the long period of half a century. I will not call this matter of George Fisher's a great deathless and unrelenting swindle upon the Government and people of the United States — for it has never been so decided, and I hold that it is a grave and solemn wrong for a writer to cast slurs or call names when such is the case — ^but will simply present the evidence and let the reader deduce his own verdict. Then we shall do no- body injustice, and our consciences shall be clear. On or about the ist day of September, 1 8 13, the Creek war being then in progress in Florida, the crops, herds, and houses of Mr. George Fisher, a citizen, weio de- stroyed, either by the Indians or by the United States troops in pursuit of them. By the terms of the law, if the Indians destroyed the property, there was no relief for Fisher ; but if the troops destroyed it, the Government of the United States was debtor to Fisher for the amount anvolved. GEORGE FISHER, DECEASED 77 George Fisher must have considered that the Indians destroyed the property, because, although he lived se- veral years afterward, he does not appear to have ever made any claim upon the Government. In the course of time 1 isher died, and his widow mar- ried again. And by-and-by, nearly twenty years after that dimly remembered raid upon Fisher's cornfields, the •widow FisJieis new husband petitioned Congress for pay for the property, and backed up the petition with many depositions and affidavits which purported to prove thai the troops, and not the Indians, destroyed the property \ that the troops, for some inscrutable reason, deliberately burned down " houses " (or cabins) valued at $600, tlie same belonging to a peaceable private citizen, and also destroyed various other property belonging to the same citizen. But Congress declined to believe that the troops were such idiots (after overtaking and scattering a band of Indians proved to have been found destroying Fisher^s property) as to calmly continue the work of destruction themselves and make a complete job of what the Indians had only commenced. So Congress denied the petition of the heirs of George Fisher in 1832, and did not pay them a cent. We hear no more from them officially until 1848, six- teen years after tlieir first attempt on the Treasury, and a full generation after the death of the man whose fields were destroyed. The new generation of Fisher heirs then came forward and put in a bill for damages. The Second Auditor awarded them 18,873, being half the damage sustained by Fisher. The Auditor said the tes- timony showed that at least half the destruction was done 111 7« MARK TWAIN'S SfCETCHES, by the Indians ^^ before the troops started in pursuit^ and of course the Government was not responsible for that half. a. That was in April, 1848. In December, 1848, the heirs of George Fisher, deceased, came forward and pleaded for a " revision " of their bill of damages. The revision was made, but nothing new could be found in their favour except an error of $100 in the former calcu- lation. However, in order to keep up the spirits of the Fisher family, the Auditor concluded to go back and allow interest from the date of the first petition (1832) to the date when the bill of damages was awarded. This sent the Fishers home happy with sixteen years' interest on $8,873 — the same amounting to 18,997 94* Total, $17,87094. 3. For an entire year the suffering Fisher family remained quiet — even satisfied, after a fashion. Then they swooped down upon Government with their wrongs once more. That old patriot, Attorney-General Toucey, burrowed through the musty papers of the Fishers and discovered one more chance for the desolate orphans-— 6iterest on that original award of $8,873 ^^om date of destruction of the property (18 13) up to 1832 ! Result, $10,004 89 for the indigent Fishers. So now we have : First, $8,873 damages ; second, interest on it from 183a to 1848, $8,997 94 ; third, interest on it dated back to 18x3, $10,004 89. Total, $27,875 83 ! What better investment for a great-grandchild than to get the Indians to bum a cornfield for him sixty or seventy years before his birth, and plausibly lay it on lunatic United States troops? GEORGE FISHER, DECEASED, 79 4. Strange as it may seem, the Fishers let Congress alone for five years — or, what is perhaps more likely, failed to make themselves heard by Congress for that length of time. But at last, in 1854, they got a hearing. They persuaded Congress to pass an act requiring the Auditor to re-examine their case. But this time they stumbled upon the misfortune of an honest Secretary of the Treasury (Mr. James Guthrie), and he spoiled every thing. He said in very plain language that the Fishers were not only not entitled to another cent, but that those children of many sorrows and acquainted with grief had been paid too much already. • 5. Therefore another interval of rest and silence en- sued — an interval which lasted four years, viz., till 1858. The " right man in the right place " was then Secretary of War — John B. Floyd, of peculiar renown ! Here was a master intellect; here was the very man to succour the suffering heirs of dead and forgotten Fisher. They came up from Florida with a rush — a great tidal wave of Fishers freighted with the same old musty documents about the same immortal cornfields of their ancestor. They straightway got an act passed transferring the Fisher matter from the dull Auditor to the ingenious Floyd. What did Floyd do ? He said " it was proved that the Indians destroyed everything they could before the troops entered inpursuit,^^ He considered, therefore, that what they destroyed must have consisted of " the houses with all their contents, and the liquor ^^ (the most trifling part of the destruction, and set down at only $3,200 all told), and that the Government troops then drove them off and calmly proceed to destroy-^ MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. THifo hundred and twenty acres of com in thcfidd^ thirty-^ five acres of wheatf and nine hundred and eighty-six head of live stock! [What a singularly intelligent army we had in those days, according to Mr. Floyd — though not accord- ing to the Congress of 1833.] So Mr. Floyd decided that the Government was not responsible for that $3,200 worth of rubbish which the Indians destroyed, but was responsible for the property destroyed by the troops — which property consisted of (I quote from the printed U. S. Senate document) — Com at Bassett's creek .... $3,000 Cattle 5,000 Stock hogs 1,050 Drove hogs 1,204 Wheat 350 Hides 4,000 Com on the Alabama river . . . 3,500 Total . . . $18,104 That sum, in his report, Mr. Floyd calls the "/«// value of the property destroyed by the troops." He allows that sum to the starving Fishers, together with INTEREST FROM 1813. From this new sum total the amounts already paid to the Fishers were deducted, and then the cheerful remainder (a fraction under forty thou- sand dollars) was handed to them, and again they retired to Florida in a condition of temporary tranquillity. Their ancestor's farm had now yielded them, altogether, nearly sixty-seven thousand dollars in cash. 6. Does the reader suppose that that was the end of it? Does he suppose those diffident Fishers were I 1; ( ; ) GEORGE FISHER, DECEASED, 8i He ITH the and hou- ired ^ity. ^her, of rere satisfied? Let the evidence show. The Fishers were quiet just two years. Then they came swarming up out of the fertile swamps of Florida mih. their same old documents, and besieged Congress once more. Con- gress capitulated on the first of June, i860, and instructed Mr. Floyd to overhaul those papers again and pay that bill. A Treasury clerk was ordered to go through those papers and report to Mr. Floyd what amount was still due the emaciated Fishers. This clerk (I can produce him whenever he is wanted) discovered what was appa- rently a glaring and recent forgery in the papers, whereby a witness's testimony as to the price of com in Florida in 1 8 13 was made to name double the amount which that witness had originally specified as the price ! The clerk not only called his superior's attention to this thing, but in making up his brief of the case called par- ticular attention to it in writing. That part of the brief never got before Congress^ nor has Congress ever yet had a hint of a forgery existing among the Fisher papers. Nevertheless, on the basis of the doubled prices (and totally ignoring the clerk's assertion that the figures were manifestly and unquestionably a recent forgery), Mr. Floyd remarks in his new report that " the testimony, partkularly in regard to the com crops^ demands a much HIGHER ALLOWANCE than any heretofore made by the Auditor or myself." So he estimates the crop at sixty bushels to the acre (double what Florida acres produce), and then virtuously allows pay for only half the crop, but allows two dollars and a half a bushel for that half, when there are rusty eld books and documents in the Congressional /ibraiy to show just what the Fisher tes- 8s MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, timony showed before the forgery, viz. : that in the fall of 1813 com was only worth from $1 25 to |i 50 a bushel. Having accomplished this, what does Mr. Floyd do next? Mr. Floyd (" with an earnest desire to execute truly the legislative will/' as he piously remarks) goes to work and makes out an entirely new bill of Fisher damages, and in this new bill he placidly ignores the Indians altogether — puts no particle of the destruction of the Fisher property upon them, but, even repenting him of charging them with burning the cabins and drinking the whiskey and breaking the crockery, lays the entire damage at the door of the imbecile United States troops, down to the very last item 1 And not only that, but uses the forgery to double the loss of corn at "Bassett's creek," and uses it again to absolutely treble the loss of corn on the "Alabama river." This new and ably conceived and executed bill of Mr. Floyd's figures up as follows (I copy again from the printed U. S. Senate document) : Th* United States in account with the legal representatives (f George Fisher^ deceased, 1813. — To 550 head of cattle, at f 10 . .$5,50000 To 86 head of drove hogs • • • 1,20400 To 350 head of stock hogs . • • 1,750 00 To 100 ACRES OP CORN ON Basseti-'s CREEK .... • • 6,00000 To 8 barrels of whisker . • • • 35000 To 2 barrels of brandy . • • 28000 To I barrel of rum . • • • 7000 Tb dry goodt and merchandise in store , 1,10000 Cany forward $16, 254 00 a tJ t< I o l< ii Ai lA in d< GEORGE FISHER, DECEASED. Is r.s. Brought forward $16,25400 To 35 acres of wheat • 35000 To 2,000 hides . • . 4,00000 Tcfurs and hats in store . * 60000 To crockery ware in store • 100 00 To smiths' and carpenters* tools • 25000 To houses burned and destroyed • 60000 To 4 dozen bottles of wine . • 4800 1814.— To 120 acres of corn on Alabama river . 9,500 00 To crops of peas, fodder, etc. . • . 3,250 00 Total .... ♦34»9S2 00 To interest on $22,202, from July, 1813 to November, i860, 47 years and 4 months 63»o53 68 To interest on $12,750, from Septem- ber, 1814, to November, i860, 46 years and 2 months . . . 35>3I7 5^ Total . . .$133,323 18 He puts everything in, this time. He does not even allow that the Indians destroyed the crockery or drank the four dozen bottles of (currant) wine. When it came to supernatural comprehensiveness in " gobbling," John E Floyd was without his equal, in his own or any other generation. Subtracting from the above total the $67,000 already paid to George Fisher's implacable heirs, Mr. Floyd announced that the Government was still indebted to them in the sum of sixty -^ix thousand five hundred and nineteen dollars and eighty five cents , "which," Mr. Floyd complacently remarks, " will be paid, accord* ingly, to the administrator of the estate of George Fishe^ deceased, or to his attorney in fact'' Fa «4 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, But, sadly enough for the destitute orphans, a new President came in just at this time, Buchanan and Floyd went out, and they never got their money. The first thing Congress did in 1861 was to rescind the resolution of June I, i860, under which Mr. Floyd had been cipher- ing. Then Floyd (and doubtless the heirs of George Fisher likewise) had to give up financial business for a while, and go into the Confederate army and serve their country. Were the heirs of George Fisher killed ? No. They are back now at this very time (July, 1870), beseeching Congress, through that blushing and diffident creature, Garrett Davis, to commence making pa}Tnents again on their interminable and insatiable bill of damages for com and whiskey destroyed by a gang of irresponsible Indians, so long ago that even Government red-tape has failed to keep consistent and intelligent track of it Now, the above are facts. They are history. Any one who doubts it can send to the Senate Document Department of the Capitol for H. R. Ex. Doc No. 21, 36th Congress, and Session, and for S. Ex. Doc. No. 106, 41st Congress, 2nd Session, and satisfy himself. The whole case is set forth in the first volume of the Court of Claims Reports. It is my belief that as long as the continent of America holds together, the heirs of George Fisher, deceased, will still make pilgrimages to Washington from the swamps of Florida, to plead for just a little more cash on their bill of damages (even when they received the last of that sixty-seven thousand dollars, they said it was only one-fourth what the Government owed them on that , Any iment I. 21, 1. 1 06, The lourt GEORGE FISHER, DECEASED. H fruitful com-iield), and as long as they choose to come, they will find Garrett Davises to drag their vampire schemes before Congress. This is not the only hereditary fraud (if fraud it is — which I have before repeatedly remarked is not proven) that is being quietly handed down from generation to generation of fathers and sons, through the persecuted Treasury of the United States. lenca (ased, the cash the was that THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF THE GREAT BEEF CONTRACT. \ In as few words as possible I wish to lay before the nation what share, howsoever small, I have had in this matter — this matter which has so exercised the public mind, engenjdered so much ill-feeling, and so filled the newspapers of both continents with distorted statements and extravagant comments. The origin of this distressful thing was this — and I assert here that every fact in the following rhutn'e can be amply proved by the official records of the General Government :— John Wilson Mackenzie, of Rotterdam, Chemung county. New Jersey, deceased, contracted with the General Government, on or about the icth day of October, 1861, to furnish to General Sherman the sum total of thuty barrels of beef. Very well. He started after Sherman with the beef, but when he got to Washington Sherman had gone to Manassas ; so he took the beef and followed him there, but arrived too late ; he followed him to Nashville, and from Nashville to Chattanooga, and from Chattanooga to Atlanta — but he never could overtake him. At Atlanta he took a i I THE GREAT BEEF CONTRACT. 87 ;: so ■ freiih start and followed him clear through his man.h to the sea. He arrived too late again by a few days ; but hearing that Sherman was going out in the Quaker City excursion to the Holy Land, he took shipping for Beirut, calculating to head off the other vessel. When he arrived in Jerusalem with his beef, he learned that Sherman had not sailed in the Quaker City^ but had gone to the Plains to fight the Indians. He returned to America, and started for the Rocky Mountains. After sixty-eight days of arduous travel on the Plains, and when he had got within four miles of Sherman's head-quarters, he was tomahawked and scalped, and the Indians got the beef. They got all of it but one barrel. Sherman's army captured that, and so, even in death, the bold navigator partly fiilfilled his contract In his will, which he had kept like a journal, he bequeathed the contract to his son Bartholomew W. Bartholomew W. made out the following bill, and thea died:— « The United States In account with JOHN WiLSON MACKENZIE, of New Jersey, deceased . . . Dr. To thirty barrels of beef for General Sherman, @ $100 I3i000 To travelling expenses and transportation . . 14,000 r.. • Total Rec'd Pay't .$17,000 He died tlien ; but he left the cont'-act to Wm. J. Martin, who tried to collect it, but died before he got through. He left it to Barker J. Allen, and he tried to collect it also. He did not survive. Barker J. Allen 88 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. left it to Anson G. Rogers, who attempted to collect it, and got along as far as the Ninth Auditor's Office, when Death, the great Leveller, came all unsummoned, and foreclosed on him also. He left the bill to a relative of his in Connecticut, Vengeance Hopkins by name, who listed ^OTTT weeks and two days, and made the best time on record, coming within one of reaching the Twelfth Auditor, In his will he gave the contract bill to his uncle, by the name of 0-be-joyful Johnson. It was too un ' ::imining for Joyful. His last words were : " Weep not for me-- '' am willing to go." And so he was, poor soul. Seven people inherited the contract after that ; but they all died. So it came into my hands at last. It fell to me through a relative by the name of Hubbard — Beth- lehem Hubbard, of Indiana. He had had a grudge against me for a long time ; but in his last moments he sent for me, and forgave me everything, and, weeping, gave me the beef contract. This ends the history of it up to the time that I suc- ceeded to the property. I will now endeavour to set myself straight before the nation in every? hin^j that con- cerns my share in the matter. I took this beef contract, and the bill for mileage and transportation, to the Presi- dent of the United States. He said, " Well, sir, what can I do for you ? " I said, " Sire, on or about the loth day of October, 1 86 1, John Wilson Mackenzie, of Rotterdam, Chemung county, New Jersey, deceased, contracted with the General Government to furnish to General Sherman the sum total of thirty barrels of beef " He stopped me there, and dismissed me from his THE GREAT BEEF CONTRACT 89 le lis presence — kindly, but firmly. The next day I called on the Secretary of State. He said, "Well, sir?" -^ >- I said, " Your Royal Highness : on or about the loth day of October, 1861, John Wilson Mackenzie, of Rot- terdam, Chemung county. New Jersey, deceased, con- tracted with the General Government to furnish to General Sherman the sum total of thirty barrels of beef ^" " That will do, sir — that will do ; this office has nothing to do with contracts for beef." I was bowed out I thought the matter all over, and finally, the following day, I visited the Secretary of the Navy, who said, " Speak quickly, sir ; do not ke^ me waiting." I said, " Your Royal Highness, on or about the loth day of October, 1861, John Wilson Mackenzie, of Rot- terdam, Chemung county. New Jersey, deceased, con- tracted with the General Government to furnish to General Sherman the sura total of tliirty barrels of beef '* Well, it was as far as I could get. He had nothing to do with beef contracts for General Sherman either. I began to think it was a curious kind of a Government. It looks somewhat as if they wanted to get out of paying for that beef. The following day I went to the Secretary of the Interior. I said, " Your Imperial Highness, on or about the loth day of October " " That is sufficient, sir. I have heard of you before. Go, take your infamous beef contract out U' thiit estab- MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, !, lUhment The Interior Department has notliing what* ever to do with subsistence for the army." I went away. But I was exasperated now. I said I would haunt them ; I would infest every department of this iniquitous Government till that contract business was settled. I , ould collect that bill, or fall, as fell my pre- decessors, trying. I assailed the Postmaster-General ; I besieged the Agricultural Department; I waylaid the Speaker of the House of Representatives. They had nothing to do with army contracts for beef. I moved fipon the Commissioner of the Patent Office. I said, " Your August Excellency, on or about " " Perdition I have you got here with your incendiary beef contract, at last ? We have nothing to do with beef contracts for the army, my dear sir." " Oh, that is all very well — but somebody has got to pay for that beef It has got to be paid now, too, or I'll con- fiscate this old Patent Office and everything in it" " But, my dear sir " " It don't make any difference, sir. The Patent Office is liable for that beef, I reckon ; and, liable or not liable, the Patent Office has got to pay for it" Never mind the details. It ended in a fight The Patent Office won. But I found out something to my advantage. I was told that the Treasury Department was the proper place for me to go to. I went there. I waited two hours and a half, and then I was admitted to the First Lord of the Treasury. I said, " Most noble, grave, and reverend Signov, on or about the loth day of October, 1861, John Wilson Macken '' THS GREAT BEEF CONTRACT. W ii to on on " That is sufficient, sir. I have heard of you. Go to Ihe First Auditor of the Treasury." I did so. He sent me to the Second Auditor. The Second Auditor sent me to the Third, and the Third sent me to the First Comptroller of the Corn-Beef Division. This began to look like business. He examined his books and all his loose papers, but found no minute of the beef contract I went to the Second Comptroller of the Corn-Beef Division. He examined his books and his loose papers, but with no success. I was encouraged. During that week I got as far as the Sixth Comptroller in that division ; the next week I got through the Claims Department ; the third week I began and completed the Mislaid Contracts Department, and got a foothold in the Dead Reckoning Department I finished that in three days. There was only one place left for it now. I laid siege to the Commissioner of Odds and Ends. To his clerk, rather — he was not there himself. There were sixteen beautiful young ladies in the room, writing in books, and there were seven well-favoured young clerks showing them how. The young women smiled up over their shoulders, and the clerks smiled back at them, and all went merry as a marriage bell. Two or three clerks that were reading the newspapers looked at me rather hard, but went on reading, and nobody said anything. However, I had been used to this kind of alacrity from Fourth-Assistant-Junior Clerks all through ray eventful career, fVom the very day I entered the first office of the rnin Bpef Burrau rleiir till 1 passed out of the last ona \\\ ihe Dead Beckoning DlvlHion. I had got sn accom- Plilhj4 by \\m timt that I could stand on gne iuot from 7^ MAKM TIVAIN'S SKETCHES, ; S ! the moment I entered an office till a clerk spoke to me, without changing more than two, or maybe three times. So I stood there till I had changed four different times. Then I said to one of the clerks who was reading — " Illustrious Vagrant, where is the Grand Turk ? " " What do you mean, sir ? whom do you mean ? If you mean the Chief of the Bureau, he is out" " Will he visit the harem to-day?" The young man glared upon me awhile, and then went on reading his paper. But I knew the ways of those clerks. I knew I was safe if he got through before anothtr New York mail arrived. He only had two more paperi left. After awhile he finished them, and then he yaw led and asked me wliat I. wanted. "renowned and honcMrcd 1 mbecile : On or about " "Yol' are the beef ctiiiUact man. Give me your papers." He took them, and for a long time he ransacked his odds and ends. Finally he found the North- West Pas- sage, as / regarded it — he found the long-lost record of that beef contract — he found the rock upon which so many of my ancestors had split before f h>^v ever got to it I was deeply moved. And yet I rejoiced — for I had survived. I said with emotion, " Give it me. The Go- vernment will settle now." He waved me back, and said there was something yet to be done first. " Where is this John Wilson Mackenzie ? " said he. " Dead." "When did he die?" •* He didn't die at all— he was killed." \ I THE GREAT BEEF CONTRACT, 93 't suppose it "How?" "Tomahawked." " Who tomahawked him ? " " Why, an Indian, of course. You •,vas a superintendent of a Sunday sr' " No. An Indian, was it ? " *' The same." " Name of the Indian ? " " His name ? / don't know his name.* '^ Must have his name. Who saw the tomahawking done?" " I don't know." " You were not present yourself, then?* " Which you can see by my hair. I was absent*' " Then how do you know that Mackenzie is dead?" " Because he certainly died at that time, and I have every reason to believe that he has been dead ever since. I know he has, in fact." " We must have proofs. Have you got the Indian ?" " Of course not." " Well, you must get him. Have you got the toma- hawk?" " I never thought of such a thing." "You must get the tomahawk. You must produce the Indian and the tomahawk. If Mackenzie's death can be proven by these, you can then go before the com- mission appointed to audit claims with some show of getting your bill under such headway that your children may possibly live to receive the money and enjoy it But that man's death must be proven. However, I may as well tell you that the Government will never pay that # >v / ^ .'^ '^ '/ IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I 1^1^ |2.5 |50 ■^" ■■■ ^ P^ 12.2 1.8 XL K4 Photographic Sdences Corporation 1.25 |U ||.6 < 6" ► SJ v ^i^N-^ <^ [v o ^ c^ <> 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14S80 (716) 872-4503 4ts 4^ '"> Pri« -Ag^titude; the fa^:;tX-««Ph perfect,, pS ''°«h of peaches, ora be.t ifi. ""* ""^e doilare' »:"« «ke a chan'nel.buoro^^Vbb'^'^ % or a watt ^'h.s °"? head, and e^^l ,^??V" "^^ 'espects cnarities are not respectfnir. ^ -^"^ *«e trivial are thrust insolentin^n"^^" ^""^""^ tendere^bu^ *at plainly show, that Si? ^^''"'^r' '""^ with a.^ air -countability in the nexMWr" "^ "'" '° » «"^ I a» not an editor of , ^" P^P*'- •^ to do right and be l!, ^'^''Per. and shaD aJway, »« ""e; but there «e^ll "' *^ *^ °<« -^^ '«Pression «,mehow Aat r ! ^T"' *"'' ''^^e go?5^e «d they treat me ^^IT '^ '^»'' °^ «*"»««• 98 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. article of furniture worth eight or ten dollars, or a pair of crutches, or a truss, or an artificial nose, or a few shillings' worth of rubbish of the vegetable species ; and here lately, all in one day, I received a barrel of apples, a thing to milk cows with, a basket of peaches, a box of grapes, a new sort of wooden leg, and a patent " com- position " grave-stone. " Notices " requested. A barrel of apples, a cow-milker, a basket of peaches, and a box of grapes, all put together, are not worth the bore of writing a "notice," or a tenth part of the room the *^ notice " would take up in the paper, and so they re- mained unnoticed. I had no immediate use for the wooden leg, and would not have accepted a charity grave-stone if I had been dead and actually suffering for it when it came : so I sent those articles back. The ungraceful custom, so popular in the back settle- ments, of facetiously wailing about the barren pockets of editors, is the parent of this uncanny present-mflicting, and it is time that the guild that originated the custom and now suffer in pride and purse from it reflected that decent and dignified poverty is thoroughly respectable ; while the flaunting of either a real or pretended neediness in the public face, and the bartering of nauseating " puffs " for its legitimate fruit of charitable presents, are as thoroughly indelicate, unbecoming, and disreputable. AFTER" JENKINS. , A GRAND affair of a ball — the Pioneers' — came of! At the Occidental some time ago. The following notes of tlie costumes worn by the belles of the occasion may not be uninteresting to the general reader, and Jenkins may get an idea therefrom : Mrs. W. M. was attired in an elegant p&th de foU gras^ made expressly for her, and was greatly admired. Miss S. had her hair done up. She was the centre of attraction for the gentlemen and the envy of all the ladies. Miss G. W. was tastefullly dressed in a tout ensemble^ and was greeted with deafening applause wherever she went Mrs. C. N. was superbly arrayed in white kid gloves. Hei modest and engaging manner accorded well with the unpretending simplicity of her costume, and caused her to be regarded with absorbing interest by every one. The charming Miss M. M. B. appeared in a thrilling waterfall, whose exceeding grace and volume compelled the homage of pioneers and emigrants alike. How beautiful she was 1 The queenly Mrs. L. R. was attractively attired in her new and beautiful false teeth, and the bonjour effect they o a J^. 100 MAHIC TWAIN'S SKETCHES, naturally produced was heightened by her enchanting and well-sustained smile. The manner of the lady is charmingly pensive and melancholy, and her troops of admirers desired no greater happiness than to get on the scent of her sozodont-sweetened sighs, and track her through her sinuous course among the gay and restless multitude. Miss R. P., with that repugnance to ostentation in dress, which is so peculiar to her, was attired in a simple white lace collar, fastened with a neat pearl-button soli- taire. The fine contrast between the sparkling vivacity of her natural optic and the steadfast attentiveness of her placid glass eye, was the subject of gieneral and enthusiastic remark. The radiant and sylph-like Mrs. T. wore hoops. She showed to great advantage, and created a sensation wherever she appeared. She was the gayest of the gay. Miss C. L. B. had her fine nose elegantly enamelled, and the easy grace with which she blew it firom time to time marked her as a cultivated and accomplished woman of the world ; its exquisitely modulated tone excited the admiration of all who had the happiness to hear it Being offended with Miss X., and our acquaintance having ceased permanently, I will take this opportunity of observing to her that it is of no use for her to be prancing ofif to every ball that takes place, and flou- rishing around with a brass oyster-knife skewered through her waterfall, and smiling her sickly smile through her decayed teeth, with her dismal pug-nose in the air. There is no use in it — she don't deceive anybody, •AFTER* JENKINS. 101 Eveiybody knows she is old ; everybody knows she is repaired (you might almost say built) with artificial bones and hair and muscles and things, firom the ground up^ put together scrap by scrap; and everybody knows, also, that all one would have to do would be to pull out her key-pin, and she would go to pieces like a Chinese puzzle. I ^body, ANSWER TO AN INQUIRY FROM THE COMING MAN. "YouNO Author." — ^Yes, Agassiz does recommend authors to eat fish, because the phosphorus in it makes brains. So far you are correct. But I cannot help you to a decision about the amount you need to eat— at least, not with certainty. If the specimen composition you send is about yoiu: fair usual average, I should judge that perhaps a couple of whales would be all you would want for the present. Not the largest kind, but simply good middling-sized whales. \ V » HE aend lakes you least, send that want i;ood CONCERNING CHAMBERMAIDS. Against all chambermaids, of whatsoever age or na* tionality, I launch the curse of bachelordom ! Because : They always put the pillows at the opposite end of the bed from the gas-burner, so that while you read and smoke before sleeping (as is the ancient and honoured custom of bachelors), you have to hold your book aloft, in an uncomfortable position, to keep the light from daz- zling your eyes. When they find the pillows removed to the other end of the bed in the morning, they receive not the sugges- tion in a friendly spirit ; but, glorying in their absolute sovereignty, and unpitying your helplessness, they make the bed just as it was originally, and gloat in secret over the pang their tyranny will cause you. Always after that, when they f'nd you have transposed the pillows, they undo your work, and thus defy and seek to embitter the life that God has given you. If they cannot get the light in an inconvenieikt posi- tion any other way, they move the bed. If you pull your trunk out six inches firom the wall, so that the lid will stay up when you open it, they always shove that trunk back again. They do it on purpose. If you want the spittoon in a certain spot, where it will be handy, they don't, and so they move it ttrary just as ca'ro and collected as a heaise-horse ; said he judged i < I ( li r b THE UNDERTAKEFfS CHAT, "S r, sig- you igas >rpse his cing ^ome and 1st as Iged that whet' he was going to a body would find it consider- able better to attract attention by a picturesque moral character than a natty burial case with a swell door-plate on it ''Splendid man, he was. I'd druther do for a corpse like that 'n any Tve tackled in seven year. There's some satisfaction in buryin' a man like that You feel that what you're doing is appreciated. Lord bless you, so's he got planted before he sp'iled, he was perfectly satisfied; said his relations meant well, /^rfectly well, but all them preparations was bound to delay the thing more or lessy and he didn't wish to be kept layin' around. You never see such a clear head as what he had — ^and so ca'm and so cooL Just a hunk of brains — that is what he was. Perfectly awful. It was a ripping distance from one end of that man's head to t'other. Often and over again he's had brain fever a-raging in one place, and the rest of the pUe didn't know anything about it — didn't affect it any more than an Injun insurrection in Arizona affects the Atlantic States. "Well, the relations they wanted a big funeral, but corpse said he was down on flummery— didn't want any procession — fill the hearse full of mourners, and get out a stem line and tow him behind. He was the most down on style of any remains I ever struck. A beautiful simple- minded creature — it was what he was, you can depend on that He was just set on having things the way he wanted them, and he took a solid comfort in laying his little plans. He had me measure him and take a whole raft of directions j then he had the minister stand up behind a long box with a table-doth over it, to represent H 2 Ii6 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. the coffin, and read his funeral sermon, saying 'Angcore, angcore 1 ' at the good places, and making him scratch out eveiy bit of brag about him, and all the hifalutin ; and then he made them trot out the choir so's he could help them pick out the tunes for the occa- sion, and he got them to sing * Pop Goes the Weasel,' because he'd always liked that tune when he was down- hearted, and solemn music made him sad ; and when they sung that with tears in their eyes (because they all loved him), and his relations grieving around, he just laid there as happy as a bug, and trying to beat time and showing all over how much he enjoyed it ; and presently he got worked up and excited, and tried to join in, for mind you he was pretty proud of his abilities in the singing line ; but the first time he opened his mouth and was just going to spread himself his breath took a walk. " I never see a man snuffed out so sudden. Ah, it was a great loss — ^it was a powerful loss to this poor little one-horse town. Well, well, well, I hain't got time to be palavering along here — got to naU on the lid and mosey along with him ; and if you'll just give me a lift we'll skeet him into the hearse and meander along. Relations bound to have it so — don't pay no attention to dying injunctions, minute a corpse's gone ; but, if I had my way, if I didn't respect his last wishes and tow him behind the hearse 7^11 be cuss'd. I consider that whatever a corpse wants done for his comfort is little enough matter, and a man hain't got no right to deceive him or take advantage of him ; and whatever a corpse trusts me to do I'm a- going to dOf you know, even if it's to stuff him and paint him yaller and keep him for a keepsake — ^you hear met** THS UNDERTAKERS CHAT, 117 • 1 He cracked his whip and went lumbering away with his ancient ruin of a hearse, and I continued my walk with a valuable lesson learned — that a healthy and whole- some cheerfuhiess is not necessarily impossible to any occupation. The lesson is likely to be lasting, for it will take many months to obliterate the memory of the re- marks and drcumstancei that impressed it Ah, it little to be losey we'U .tions |dymg way, id the >rpse mda itage 'ma- Ipaint THE PETRIFIED MAN. Now, to show how really hard it is to foist a moral or a truth upon an unsuspecting public through a burlesque without entirely and absurdly missing one's mark, I will here set down two experiences of my own in this thing. In the fall of x86a, in Nevada and California, the people got to running wild about extraordinary petrifactions and other natural marvels. One could scaicely pick up a paper without finding in it one or two glorified discoveries of this kind. The mania was becoming a little ridicu- lous. I was a bran-new local editor in Viiginia City, and I felt called upon to destroy this growing evil ; we all have our benignant fatherly moods at one time or another, I suppose. I chose to kill the petrifaction mania with a delic .a, a very delicate satire. But maybe it was altogether .00 delicate, for nobody ever perceived the satire part of it at all. I put my scheme in the shape of the discovery of a remarkable petrified man. I had had a temporary falling out with Mr. Sewall, th- new coroner and justice of the peace of Humboldt, and thought I might as well touch him up a little at the same time and male Km ridiculous, and thus combine pleasure with business. So X told, in patient belief-compelling detail, all about the LnC\ii,^/ of apr^trified man at Gravelly 3 THE PETRIFIED MAN, 119 idicu- City, I; we ne or ania was the e of th and same isure filing reUy i Ford (exactly a hundred and twenty miles, over a break- neck mountain trail, from where Sewall lived) ; how iSl the savants of the immediate neighbourhood h< ^ been to examine it (it was notorious that there was not a living creature vnHtiin fifty miles of there, except a few starving Init I) % '\\t crippled grasshoppers, and four or five buzzaids oi't of meat and too feeble to get away) ; how U:o^ iavants all pronounced the petrified man to have been in a sute of complete petrifaction for over ten gene rations ; and then, with a seriousness that I ought to have been ashamed to assume, I stated that as soon as Mr. Sewall heard the news he summoned a jury, mounted his mule, and posted off, with noble reverence for official duty, on that awfiil five days' journey, through alkali, sage- brush, peril of body, and imminent starvation, to hoid an inquest on this man that had been dead and turned to everlasting stone for more than three hundred years! And then, my hand being " in," so to speak, I went on, with the same unflinching gravity, to state that the jury returned a verdict that deceased came to his death from protracted exposure. This only moved me to higher flights of imagination, and I said that the jury, with that charity so characteristic of pioneers, then dug a grave, and were about to give the petrified man Christian burial, when they found that for ages a limestone sediment had been trickling down the face of the stone against which he was sitting, and this stuff had run under him and cemented him fast to the " bed-rock ; " that the jury (they were all silver-miners) canTa&«ied the difficulty a moment, and then got out their powder and fuse, and proceeded to drill a hole under hinin in order to blast him from Ais position, 120 MARK TIVAIN*S SKETCHES, when Mr. Sewall, '' with that delicacy so characteristic of him, forbade them, observing that it would be little less than sacrilege to do such a thing." From beginning to end the " PetrilEied Man " f quib was a string of roaring absurdities, albeit they were told with an unfair pretence of truth that even imposed upon me to some extent, and I was in some danger of believing in my own fraud. But I really had no desire to deceive anybody, and no expectation of doing it I depended on the way the petrified man was sitting to explain to the public that he was a swindle. Yet I purposely mixed that up with other things, hoping to make it obscure — and I did. I would describe the position of one foot, and then say his right thumb was against the side of his nose ; then talk about his other foot, and presently come back and say the fingers of his right hand were spread apart ; then talk about the back of his head a little, and return and say the left thumb was hooked into the right little finger ; then ramble off about something else, and by-and-by drift back again and remark that the fingers of the left hand were spread like those of the right But I was too ingenious. I mixed it up rather too much ; and so all that description of the attitude, as a key to the humbuggery of the article, was entirely lost, for nobody but me ever discovered and comprehended the peculiar and suggestive position of the petrified man's hands. As a satire on the petrifaction mania, or anything else, my Petrified Man was a disheartening failure ; for every- body received him in innocent good faith, and I was stunned to see the creature I had begotten to pull down the wonder-business with, and bring derision upon il^ THE PETRIFIED MAN, 121 calmly exalted to the grand chief place in the list of the genuine marvels our Nevada had produced. I was so disappointed at the curious miscarriage of my scheme that at first I was angry, and did not like to think about it; but by-and-by, when the exchanges began to come in with the Petrified Man copied and guilelessly glorified, 1 began to feel a soothing secret satisfaction ; and as my gentleman's field of travel broadened, and by the ex- changes I saw that he steadily and implacably penetrated territory after territory. State after State, and land after land, till he swept the great globe and culminated in sublime and unimpeached legitimacy in the august Lon- don Lancet^ my cup was fiill, and I said I was glad I had done it. I think that for about eleven months, as nearly as I can remember, Mr. Sewall's daily mail-bag continued to be swollen by the addition of half a bushel of news- papers hailing from many climes with the Petrified Man in them, marked around with a prominent belt of ink. I sent them to him. I did it for spite, not for fun. He used to shovel them into his back yard and curse. And every day during all those months the miners, his con- stituents (for miners never quit joking a person when they get started), would call on him and ask if he could tell them where they could get hold of a paper with the Petrified Man in it. He could have accommodated a continent with them. I hated Sewall in those days, and these things pacified me and pleased me. I could not have gotten more real comfort out of him without killing him. ^-^.-c ,:■ I - MARVELLOUS "BLOODY MASSACRE." The other burlesque I have referred to was my fine satire upon the financial expedient of "cooking divi- dends," a thing which became shamefully frequent on the Pacific coast for a while. Once more, in my self-com- placent simplicity, I felt that the time had arrived for me to rise up and be a reformer. I put this reformatory satire in the shape of a fearful "Massacre at Empire City." The San Francisco papers were making a great outcry about the iniquity of the Daney Silver-Mining Company, whose directors had declared a " cooked " or &lse dividend, for the purpose of increasing the value of their stock, so that they could sell out at a comfortable figure, and then scramble from under the tumbling con^ cem. And while abusing the Daney, those papers did not forget to urge the public to get rid of all their silver stocks and invest in sound and safe San Francisco stocks, such as the Spring Valley Water Company, etc. But right at this unfortunate juncture, behold the Spring Valley cooked a dividend too ! And so, under the in- sidious mask of an invented "bloody massacre," I stole upon the public unawares with my scathing satire upon the dividend-cooking system. In about half a column of imaginary inhuman carnage I told how a citizen had MARVELLOUS **BLOODY MASSACRE* 123 or of of id murdered his wife and nine children, and then committed suicide. And I said slyly, at the bottom, that the sudden madness of which this melancholy massacre was the re- sult, had been brought about by his having allowed himself to bs persuaded by the California papers to sell his sound and lucrative Nevada silver stocks, and buy into Spring Valley just in time to get cooked along with that company's fancy dividend, and sink every cent he had in the world. Ah, it was a deep, deep satire, and most ingeniously contrived. But I made the horrible details so carefully and conscientiously interesting that the public simply devoured them greedily, and wholly overlooked the fol- lowing distinctly stated facts, to wit : — The murderer was perfectly well known to every creature in the land as a bachelor^ and consequently he could not murder his wife and nine children ; he murdered them " in his splendid dressed-stone mansion just in the edge of the great pine forest between Empire City and Dutch Nick's," when even the very pickled oysters that came on our tables knew that there was not a " dressed-stone mansion " in all Nevada Territory ; also that, so far from there being \ "great pine forest between Empire City and Dutch Nick's," there wasn't a solitary tree within fifteen miles of either place ; and, finally, it was patent and notorious that Empire City and Dutch Nick's were one and the same place, and contained only six houses anyhow, and consequently there could be no forest between them ; and on top of all these absurdities I stated that this diabolical murderer, after inflicting a wound upon himself that the rtader ought to have seen would have killed an elephant 134 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, in the twinkling of an eye, jumped on his horse and rode four miUsy waving his wife's reeking scalp in the air, and thus performing entered Carson City with tremendous icktty and dropped dead in front of the chief saloon, the envy and admiration of all beholders. Well, in all my life I never saw anything like the sen- sation that little satire created. It was the talk of the town, it was the talk of the Territory. Most of the citizens dropped gently into it at breakfast, and they never finished their meal. There was something about those minutely faithful details that was a sufficing substi- tute for food. Few people that were able to read took food that morning. Dan and I (Dan was my reportorial associate) took our seats on either side of our customary table in the " Eagle Restaurant," and, as I unfolded the shred they used to call a napkin in that establishment, I saw at the next table two stalwart innocents with that sort of vegetable dandruff sprinkled about their clothing which was the sign and evidence that they were in from the Truckee with a load of hay. The one facing me had the morning paper folded to a long narrow strip, and I knew, without any telling, that that strip represented the column that contained my pleasant financial satire. From the way he was excitedly mumbling, I saw that the heed- less son of & hay-mow was skipping with all his might, in order to get to the bloody details as quickly as possible ; and so he was missing the guide-boards I had set up to warn him that the whole thing was a fraud. Presently his eyes spread wide open, just as his jaws swung asunder to take in a potato approaching it on a fork ; the potato halted, the face lit up redly, and the whole man was on i! MARVELLOUS ""BLOODY MASSACRE? ia$ in to |tly ler ito fire with excitement Then he broke into a disjointed checking-off of the particulars — his potato cooling in mid- air meantime, and his mouth making a reach for it occa- sionally, but always bringing up suddenly against a new and still more direful performance of my hero. At last he looked his stunned and rigid comrade impressively in the face« and said, with an expression of concentrated awe — ''Jim, he b'iled his baby, and he took the old 'oman's skelp. Cuss'd if / want any breakfast ! " And he laid his lingering potato reverently down, and he and his friend departed from the restaurant empty but satisfied. He never got down to where the satire part of it began. Nobody ever did. They found the thrilling particulars sufficient. To drop in with a poor little moral at the fag-end of such a gorgeous massacre, was to follow the expiring sun with a candle and hope to attract the world's attention to it The idea that anybody could ever take my massacre for a genuine occurrence never once suggested itself to me, hedged about as it was by all those tell-tale absurdi- ties and impossibilities concerning the ''great pine forest," the " dressed-stone mansion," etc. But I found out then, and never have forgotten since, that we never read the dull explanatory surroundings of marvellously exciting things when we have no occasion to suppose that some irresponsible scribbler is trying to defiraud us ; we skip all that, and hasten to revel in the blood-curdling particulars and be happy. Therefore, being bitterly experienced, I tried hard to 136 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, word that agricultural squib of mine m such a way as to deceive nobody ; and I pardy succeeded, but not entirely. However, I did not do any harm with it any way. In order that parties who have lately written me about vege- tables and things may know that there was a time when I would have answered their questions to the very best of my ability, and considered it my imperative duty to do it, I refer them to the narrative of my one week's expe> rience as an agricultural editor, which will be found m this Memoranda next montk r I •JO f' n e- St lo «- m JOURNALISM IN TENNESSEE. [From the Bunkum Express,'] " The editor of the Memphis Avalanche swoops thus mildly down apon a correspondent who posted him as a Radical : — ' While he was writing the first word, the middle, dotting his i's, crossing his t's, and punching his period, the black-hearted reptile knew he was concocting a sentence that was saturated with infamy and rotten with falsehood.' " — Exchange. I WAS told by the physician that a Southern climate would improve my health, and so I went down to Ten- nessee, and got a berth on the Morning Glory and John- son County War- Whoop as associate editor. When I went on duty, I found the chief editor sitting tilted back in a three-legged chair, with his feet on a pine table. There was another pine table in the room, and another afflicted chair, and both were half buried under news- papers and scraps and sheets of manuscript. There was a wooden box of sandp sprinkled with cigar stubs and « old soldiers," and a stove whose door was hanging by its upper hinge. The chief editor had a long-tailed black cloth frock coat on, and white linen pants. His boots were small and neatly blacked. He wore a ruffled shirt, a large seal ring, a standing collar of obsolete pattern, and a checkered neckerchief with the ends I !« laS MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. hangiug down. Date of costume about 1848. He was smoking a cigar, and trying to think of a word, and in pawing his hair he had rumpled his locks a good deal He was scowling fearfully, and I judged that he was concocting a particularly knotty editorial. He told me to take the exchanges and skim through th .n and write up the " Spirit of the Tennessee Press," condensing into the article all of their contents that seemed of interest I wrote as follows : — "SPIRIT OF THE TENNESSEE PRESS "The editors of the Semi- Weekly Earthquake evidently labour under a misapprehension with regard to the Ballyhack Railroad. It is not the object of the company to leave Buzzardville off to one side. On the contrary, they consider it one of the most important points along the line, and, consequently, can have no desire to slight it. The gentlemen of the Earthquake will, of course, take pleasure in making the correction. "John W. Blossom, Esq., the able editor of the Higginsville Thunderbolt and Battle- Cry of Freedom^ arrived in the city yesterday. He is stopping at the Van Buren House. " We observe that our contemporary of the Mud Springs Morning Hffwl has fallen into the error of supposing that the election of Van Werter is not an established fact, but he will have discovered hit mistake before this reminder reaches him, no doubt He was, doubtless, misled by incomplete election returns. "It is pleasant to note that the city of Blathersville is endeavouring to contract with some New York gentleman to pave its well-nigh impassable streets with the Nicholson pavement. But it is difficult to accomplish a desire like this since Memphis got some New Yorken to do a like service for her and then dedined to pay for it. How* ever, the DaUy Hurrah still urges the measure with ability, and seems confident of ultimate success. " We are pained to learn that Colanel Bascom, chief editor ttring -nigh ^fficult jrkers iHow* and the I passe " 1 / manu^icript over to the chief editor for acceptance, alteration, or destruction. He glanced at it, and his face clouded. He ran his eye down the pages, and his countenance grew portentous. It was easy to see that something was wrong. Presently he sprang up and said — « Thunder and lightning I Do you suppose I am go- ing to speak of those cattle that way ? Do you suppose my subscribers are going to stand such gruel as that? Give me the pen ! " I never saw a pen scrape and scratch its way so viciously, or plough through another man's verbs and adjectives so relentlessly. While he was in the midst of his work somebody shot at him through the open win- dow, and marred the symmetry of his ear. '' Ah," said he, " that is that scoundrel Smith, of the Moral Vclcano — ^he was due yesterday." And he snatched a navy revolver from his belt and fired. Smith dropped, shot in the thigh. The shot spoiled Smith's aim, who was just taking a second aim, and he crippled a stranger* It was me. Merely a finger shot o£ Then the chief editor went on witK his erasures and interlineations. Just as he finished them a hand-grenade came down the stove pipe, and the explosion shivered the stove into a thousand firagments. However, it did I 130 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, no further damage, except that a vagrant piece knocked a couple of my teeth out ** That stove is utterly ruined," said the chief editor. I said I believed it was. "Well, no matter— don't want it this kind of weather. I know the man that did it I'll get him. Now, here is the way this stuff ought to be written." I took the manuscript It was scarred with erasures and interlineations till its mother wouldn't have knowp it if it had one. It now read as follows : — "SPIRIT OF THE TENNESSEE PRESS. " The inveterate liars of the Semi- Weekly Earthquake txt evidently endeavouring to palm off upon a noble and chivalrous people an- other of their vile and brutal falsehoods with regard to that most glorious conception of the nineteenth century, the Ballyhack Rail- road. The idea that Buzzardville was to be left oS at oie side originated in their own fulsome brains — or rather iu the settlings which tk^ regard as brains. They had better swallow this lie if they want to save their abandoned reptile carcasses the cowhiding they so richly deserve. "That ass, Blossom, of the Higginsville Thunderbolt and Battle- Cry o/E^eedom^ is down here again bumming at the Van Buren. "We observe that the besotted blackguard of the Mud Springs Morning Howl is giving out, with his usual propensity for lying, that Van Werter is not elected. The heaven-bom mission of journalism is to disseminate truth ; to eradicate error ; to educate, refine, and elevate the tone of public morals and manners, and make all men more gentle, more virtuous, more charitable, and in all ways better, and holier, and happier ; and yet this black-hearted villain degrades his great office persistently to the dissemination of falsehood, calumny, vituperation, and degrading vulgarity. " Blathersville wants a Nicholson pavement— -it wants a jail and % poorhouse more. The idea of a pavement in a one-horse town yOURNALTSM IN TENNESSEE. sji en. lail and tows with two gin-mills and a blacksmith's shop in it, and that mustard* plaster of a newspaper, the Daily Hurrah I Better borrow of Memphis, where the article is cheap. The crawling insect, Buckner, who edits the Hurrah^ is braying about this business with his cus- tomary imbecility, and imagining that he is talking sense." " Now that is the way to write — peppery and to the point Mush-and-milk journalism gives me the fan- tods." About this time a brick came through the window with a splintering of a crash, and gave me a considerable of a jolt in the back. I moved out of range — I began to feel in the way. The chief said, " That was the Colonel, likely. I've been expecting him for two days. He will be up, now, right away." He was correct. The Colonel appeared in the dooi a moment afterward, with a dragoon revolver in his hand. He said, "Sir, I have the honour of addressing the poltroon who edits this mangy sheet ? " " You have. Be seated, sir. Be careful of the chair, one of its legs is gone. I believe I have the honoiu* of addressing the blatant scoundrel Col. Blatherskite Te- cumseh ? " "That's me. I have a little account to settle with you. If you are at leisure we will begin." " I have an article on the ' Encouraging Progress of Moral and Intellectual Development in America' to finish, but there is no hurry. Begin." Both pistols rang out their fierce clamour at the same instant* The chief lest a lock of his hair, and the I a IJ« MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, Colonert bullet ended iti career in the fleshy part of my thigh. The Colonel's left shoulder was clipped a little. They fired again. Both missed their men this time, but I got my share, a shot in the arm. At the third fire both gentlemen were wounded slightly, and I had a knuckle chipped. I then said, I believed I would go out and take a walk, as this was a private interview, and I had a delicacy about participating in it further. But both gentlemen begged me to keep my seat, and assured me that I was not in the way. I had thought difiierently up to this time. They then talked about the elections and the crops a while, and I fell to tying up my wounds. But pre- sently they opened fire again with animation, and every shot took effect — but it is proper to remark that five out of the s^ fell to my share. The sixth one mortally wounded the Colon^^l, who remarked, with fine humour, that he would have to say good morning now, as he had business up town. He then inquired the way to the undertaker's, and left. The chief turned to me and said, " I am expecting company to dinner, and shall have to get ready. It will be a £Eivour to me if you will read proof and attend to the customers." I winced a little at the idea of attending to the cus- tomers, but I was too bewildered by the fusillade that was still ringing in my eais to think of anything to say. He continued, "Jones will be here at 3— cowhide him. Gillespie will call eailier, perhaps — throw him out of the window. Ferguson will be aJong about 4— kill him. That is all for to-day, I believe. If you have any yOURNAUSM IN TENNESSEE. 133 :ting [twill id to cus- that say. irhide out ■kill any odd timt , you mav write a blistering article on the police —give the Chief Inspector rats. The cowhides are under the table; weapons in the drawer — ammunition there in the comer — lint and bandages up there in the pigeon-holes. In case of accident, go to Lancet, the surgeon, downstairs. He advertises—we take it out in trade." He was gone. I shuddered. At the end oi the next three hours I had been through perils so awful that all peace of mind and all cheerfulness had gone from me. Gillespie had called and thrown m« out of the window. Jones arrived promptly, and when I got ready to do the cowhiding he took the job off my hands. In an en- counter with a stranger, not in the bill of fare, I had lost my scalp. Another stranger, by the name of Thompson, left me a mere wreck and ruin of chaotic rags. And at last, at bay in the comer, and beset by an infuriated mob of editors, blacklegs, politicians, and desperadoes, who raved and swore and flourished their weapons about my head till the air shimmered with glancing flashes of steel, I was in the act of resigning my berth on the paper when the chief arrived, and with him a rabble of charmed and enthusiastic friends. Then ensued a scene of riot and carnage such as no human pen, or steel one either, could describe. People were shot, probed, dismembered, blown up, thrown out of the window. There was a brief tor- nado of murky blasphemy, with a confused and frantic war-dance glimmering through it, and then all was over. In five minutes there was silence, and the gory chief and I sat alone and surveyed the sanguinary ruin that strewed the floor around us. '34 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, He said, " You'll like this place when you get used to it" I said, " I'll have to get you to excuse me, I think — maybe, I might write to suit you after a while ; as soon as I had had some practice and learned the language I am confident I could. But, to speak the plain truth) that sort of energy of expression has its inconveniences, and a man is liable to interruption. You see that your- self. Vigorous writing is calculated to elevate the public, no doubt, but then I do not like to attract so much attention as it calls forth. I can't write with comfort when I am interrupted so much as I have been to-day. I like this berth well enough, but I don't like to be left here to wait on the customers. The experiences are novel, I grant you, and entertaining, too, after a fashion, but they are not judiciously distributed. A gentleman shoots at you through the window and cripples me; a bomb-shell comes down the stove pipe for your gratifica- tion, and sends the stove door down my throat ; a friend drops in to swap compliments with you, and freckles me with bullet-holes till my skin won't hold my principles ; you go to dinner, and Jones comes with his cowhide ; Gillespie throws me out of the window, Thompson tears all my clothes ofif, and an entire stranger takes my scalp with the easy freedom of an old acquaintance ; and in less than five minutes all the blackguards in the country arrive in their war paint, and proceed to scare the rest of me to death with their tomahawks. Take it altogether, I never had such spirited my had to-day. No ; I like you, and I like your calm un- ruffled way of explaining things to the customers, but ( JOURNAUSM IN TENNESSEE, 135 you see I am not used to it The Southern heart is too impulsive^ Southern hospitality is too lavish with the stranger. The paragraphs which I have written to-day, and into whose cold sentences your masterly hand has infused the fervent spirit of Tennesseean journalism, will wake up another nest of hornets. All that mob of edi- tors will come — ^and they will come hungry, too, and want somebody for breakfast I shall have to bid you adieu. I decline to be present at these festivities. I came South for my health, I will go back on the same errand, and suddenly. Tennessee journalism is too stir- ring for me." After which we parted with mutual regret, and I took apartments at the hospital. , > ': -^ m THE NEW CRIME. \ LEGISLATION NEEDED. This country, during the last thirty or forty years, has produced some of the most remarkable cases of insanity of which there is any mention in history. For instance, there was the Baldwin case, in Ohio, twenty-two years ago. Baldwin, from his boyhood up, had been of a vin- dictive, malignant, quarrelsome nature. He put a boy's eye out once, and never was heard upon any occasion to utter a regret for it He did many such things. But at last he did something that was serious. He called at a house just after dark, one evening, knocked, and when the occupant came to the door, shot him dead, and then tried to escape, but was captured. Two days before, he had wantonly insulted a helpless cripple, and the man he afterward took swift vengeance upon with an assassin bullet had knocked him down. Such was the Baldwin case. The trial was long and exciting : the community was fearfully wrought up. Men said this spiteful, bad- hearted villain had caused grief enough in his time, and now he should satisfy the law. But they were mistaken ; Baldwin was insane when he did the deed — they had not thought of that By the arguments of counsel it was shown that at half-past ten in the morning on the day of )\ THE NEW CHIME. 137 i the murder, Baldwin became insane, and remained so for eleven hours and a half exactly. This just covered the case comfortably, and he was acquitted. Thus, if an unthinking and excited community had been listened to instead of the arguments of counsel, a poor crazy creature would have been held to a fearful responsibility for a mere freak of madness. Baldwin went clear, and although his relatives and friends were naturally incensed against the community for their injurious suspicions and remarks, they said let it go for this time, and did not prosecute. The Baldwins were very wealthy. This same Baldwin had momentary fits of insanity twice afterward, and on both occasions killed people he had grudges against And on both these occasions the circumstances of the killing were so aggravated, and the murders so seemingly heartless and treacherous, that if Baldwin had not been insane he would have been hanged without the shadow of a doubt As it was, it required all his poli- tical and family influence to get him clear in one of the cases, and cost him not less than 10,000 dollars to get clear in the other. One of these men he had noto- riously been threatening to kill for twelve years. The poor creature happened, by the merest piece of ill-for- tune, to come along a dark alley at the very moment that Baldwin's insanity came upon him, and so he was shot in the back with a gun loaded with slugs. Take the case of Lynch Hackett,^ of Pennsylvania. Twice, in public, he attacked a German butcher by the name of Bemis Feldner, with a cane, and both times Feldner whipped him with his fists. Hackett was a vain, wealthy, violent gentleman, who held his blood and 138 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. family in high esteem, and believed that a reverent respect was due to his great riches. He brooded over the shame of his chastisement for two weeks, and then, in a momentary fit of insanity, armed himself to the teeth, rode into town, waited a couple of hours until he saw Feldner coming down the street with his wife on his arm, and then, as the couple passed the doorway in which he had partially concealed himself, he drove a knife into Feldner's neck, killing him instantly. The widow caught the limp form and eased it to the earth. Both were drenched with blood. Hackett jocosely remarked to her that as a professional butcher's recent wife she could appreciate the artistic neatness of the job that left her in a condition to marry again, in case she wanted to. This remark, and another which he made to a friend, that his position in society made the killing of an obscure citizen simply an " eccentricity " instead of a crime, were shown to be evidences of insanity, and so Hackett escaped punishment The jury were hardly inchned to accept these as proofs, at first, inasmuch as the prisoner had never been insane before the murder, and under the tranquillizing effect of the butchering had immediately regained his right mind ; but when the defence came to show that a third cousin of Hackett's wife's stepfather was insane, and not only insane, but had a nose the very counterpart of Hackett's, it was plain that insanity was hereditary in the family, and Hackett had come by it bj legitimate inheritance. Of course the jury then acquitted him. But it was a merciful providence that Mrs. H.'s people had been afflicted as shown, else Hackett would certainly have been hanged. THE NEW CRIME, 139 However, it is not possible to recount all the marvel- lous cases of insanity that have come under the public notice in the last thirty or forty years. There was the Durgin case in New Jersey three years ago. The servant girl, Bridget Durgin, at dead of night, invaded her mistress' bedroom and carved the lady literally to pieces with a knife. Then she dragged the body to the middle of the floor, and beat and banged it with chairs and such things. Next she opened the feather beds, and strewed the contents around, saturated everything with kerosine, and set fire to the general wreck. She now took up the young child of the murdered woman in herblood-smeazed hands, and walked off, through the snow, with no shoes on, to a neighbour's house a quarter of a mile off, and told a string of wild, incoherent stories about some men coming and setting fire to the house ; and then she cried piteously, and without seeming to think there was any* thing suggestive about the blood upon her hands, her clothing, and the baby, volunteered the remark that she was afraid those men had murdered her mistress 1 After- ward, by her own confession and other testimony, it was proved that the mistress had always been kind to the girl, consequently there was no revenge in the murder j and it was also shown that the girl took nothing away from the burning house, noi even her own shoes, and consequently robbery was not the motive. Now, the reader says, " Here cc>a)\ss that same Qld plea of insanity again." But the reader has deceived himself this time. No such plea was offered in her defence. The judge sentenced her, nobody persecuted the Governor with petitions for her pardon and she was promptly hanged. I40 MARK TWAIN*S SKETCHES, There was that youth in Pennsylvania, whose curious confession was published a year ago. It was simply a conglomeration of incoherent drivel from beginning to end, and so was his lengthy speech on the scaffold after- ward. For a whole year he was haunted with a desire to disfigure a certain young woman, so that no one would many her. He did not love her himself, and did not want to marry her, but he did not want anybody else to do it. He would not go anywhere with her, and yet was opposed to anybody else's escorting her. Upon one occasion he declined to go to a wedding with her, and when she got other company, lay in wait for the couple by the road, intending to make them go back or kill the escort After spending sleepless nights over his ruling desire for a full year, he at last attempted its execution — that is, attempted to disfigure the young woman. It was a success. It was permanent In trying to shoot her cheek (as she sat at the supper table with her parents and brothers and sisters) in such a manner as to mar its comeliness, one of his bullets wandered a little out of the course, and she dropped dead. To the very last moment of his life he bewailed the ill luck that made her move her face just at the critical moment And so he died, apparently about half persuaded that somehow it was chiefly her own fault that she got killed. This idiot wa. hanged. The plea of insanity was not offered. Insanity certainly is on the increase in the world, and /rime is dying out There are no longer any murders — none worth mentioning, at any rate. Formerly, if you killed a man, it was possible that you were insane — but now, if you, having friends and money, kill a man it is THE NEW CRIME. I4» tviderue that you are a lunatic. In these days, too, if a person of good family and high social standing iiteals anything, they call it kleptomania^ and send him to the lunatic asylum. If a person of high standing squanders his fortune in dissipation, and closes his career with strychnine or a bullet, " Temporary Aberration " is what was the trouble with him. Is not this insanity plea becoming rather common ? Is it not so common that the reader confidently expects to see it ofiered in every criminal case that comes before the courts? And is it not so cheap, and so common, and often so trivial, that the reader smiles in derision when the newspaper mentions it? And is it not curious to note how very often it wins acquittal for the prisoner? Lately it does not seem possible for a man to so conduct himself, before killing another man, as not to be mani- festly insane. If he talks about the stars, he is insane. If he appears nervous and uneasy an hour before the killing, he is insane. If he weeps over a great grief, his friends shake their heads, and fear that he is ''not right" If, an hour after the murder, he seems ill at ease, pre-occupied and excited, he is unquestionably iasane. Really, what we wan; now, is not laws against crime, but a law against insanity. There is where the true evil lies. LIONIZING MURDERERS. I HAD heard so much about the celebrated fortune- teller, Madame y that I went to see her yesterday. She has a dark complexion naturally, and this effect is heightened by artificial aids which cost her nothing. She wears curls — ^very black ones, and I had an impres- sion that she gave their native attractiveness a lift with rancid butter. She wears a reddish check handkerchief cast loosely around her neck, and it was plain that her other one is slow getting back from the wash. I pre- sume she takes snuff. At any rate, something resem- bling it had lodged among the hairs sprouting from her upper lip. I know she likes garlic — I knew that as soon as she sighed. She looked at me searchingly for nearly a minute, with her black eyes, and then said — " It is enough. Come 1 " She started down a very dark aud dismal corridor. I stepping close after her. Presently she stopped, and said that, as the way was crooked and so dark, perhaps she had better get a light. But it seemed ungallant to allow a woman to put herself to so much trouble foi me, and so I said — " It is not worth while, madam. If you will heave another sigh, I think I can follow it" UONIZING MURDERERS, t4S So we got along all I'ght Arrived her official and mysterious den, she asked me to tell her the date of my birth, the exact hour of that occurrence, and the colour of my grandmother's hair. I answered as accurately as I could. Then she said — *' Young man, summon your fortitude— do not tremble. I am about to reveal the past" '' Infonnation concerning the future would be, in a general way, more " " Silence 1 You have had much trouble, some joy, some good fortune, some bad. Your great grandfather was hanged." "That is a 1—" "Silence! Hanged, su*. But it was not his fault He could not help it" " I am glad you do him justice." "Ah — ^grieve, rather, that the jury did. He was hanged. His star crosses yours in the fourth division, fifth sphere. Corjsequently you will be hanged also." " In view of this cheerful " "I must have silence. Yours was not, in the be- ginning, a criminal nature, but circumstances changed it At the age of nine you stole sugar. At the age of fifteen you stole money. At twenty you stole horses. At twenty-five you committed arson. At thirty, hardened in crime, you became an editor. You are now a public lecturer. Worse things are in store for you. You will be sent to Congress. Next, to the penitentiary. Finally, happiness will come again — all will be well — you wili De hanged." I was now in tears. It seemed hard enough to go to f- 144 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. I Congress; but to be hanged — this was too sad, too dreadful. The woman seemed surprised at my grief. I told her the thoughts that were in my mind. Then she comforted me. "Why, man,"* she said, "hold up your head— ^'W * In this paragraph the fortune'teller details the exact history of the Pike*Brown assassination case in New Hampshire, from the suc- couring and saving of the stranger Pike by the Browns, to the sub- sequent hanging and coffining of that treacherous miscreant. She adds nothing, invents nothing, exaggerates nothing (see any New England paper for November, 1869). This Pike-Brown case is selected merely as a type, to illustrate a custom that prevails, not in New Hampshire alone, but in every State in the union, — I mean the sentimental custom of visiting, petting, glorifying, and snuffling over murderers like this Pike, from the day they enter the jail under sentence of death until they swing from the gallows. The following extract from TempU Bar (1866) reveals the fact that this custom is not confined to the United States :— " On December 31st, 1841, a man named John Johnes, a shoemaker, murdered his sweetheart, Mary Hallam, the daughter of a respectable labourer, at Mansfield, in the county of Nottingham. He was executed on March 23rd, 1843. He was a man of unsteady habits, and gave way to violent fits of passion. The girl declined his addresses, and he said if he did not have her no one else should. After he had inflicted the first wound, wnich was not immediately fatal, she begged for het life, but seeing him resolved, asked for time to pray. He said that he would pray for both, and completed the crime. The wounds were inflicted by a shoemaker's knife, and her throat was cut bar- barously. After this he dropped on his knees some time, and prayed God to have mercy on two unfortunate lovers. He made no attempt to escape, and confessr ? the crime. After his imprisonment he behaved in the most decorous manner; he won upon the good opinion of the jail chaplain, and he was visited by the Bishop of Lincoln. It does not appear that he expressed any contrition for the crime, but seemed to pass away with triumphant certainty that LIONIZING MURDERERS, US 1, too ef. I Bnshe istory of Lhe ittc- tkd sub- it. She ny New I case is is, not in -I mean snuffling ail under following lustom if 1841, a eetheart, ansfield, :h 23rd, violent id if he licted the for het said that wounds cut bar' prayed attempt tment he [he good iishop of Ltion for inty thai have nothing to grieve about Listen. You will live in New Hampshire. In your sharp need and distress the Brown family will succour you — such of them ai Pike the a.<ut ap- ice dr. me A CAUFORNIAN ALMANAC, ISS Nw. 7.— Shed ! Nw, 8. — ^The sun will rise as usual, perhaps ; but, if he does, he will doubtless be staggered somewhat to find nothing but a laige round hole eight thousand miles in diameter in the place where he saw this world serenely spinning the day before. led in 5S, les MY WATCH— AN INSTRUCTIVE LITTLE TALE. My beautiful new watch had run eighteen months without losing or gaining, and without breaking any part of its machinery or stopping. I had come to believe it infallible in its judgments about the time of day, and to consider its constitution and its anatomy imperishable. But at last, one night, I let it run down. I grieved about it as if it were a recognised messenger and fore- runner of calamity. But by-and-by I cheered up, set the watch by guess, and commanded my bodings and superstitions to depart. Next day I stepped into the chief jeweller's to set it by the exact time, and the head of the establishment took it out of my hand and pro- ceeded to set it for me. Then he said, ** She is four minutes slow — ^regulator wants pushing up." I tried to stop him — tried to make him understand that the watch kept perfect time. But no; all this human cabbage could see was that the watch was four minutes slow, and the regulator must be pushed up a little ; and so, while I danced around him in anguish, and beseeched him to let the watch alone, he calmly and cruelly did the shameful deed. My watch began to gain. It gained faster and faster day by day. Within the week it sickened to a AN INSTRUCTIVE LITTLE TALE, 157 raging fever, and its pulse went up to a hundred and fifty in the shade. At the end of two months it had left all the timepieces of the town far in the rear, and was a fraction over thirteen days ahead of the almanac, It was away into November enjoying the snow, while the October leaves were still turning. It hurried up house* lent, bills payable, and such things, in such a ruinous way that I could not abide it I took it to the watch- maker to be regulated. He asked me if I had ever had it repaired. I said no, it had never needed any repair- ing. He looked a look of vicious happiness and eagerly pried the watch open, and then put a small dice box into his eye and peered into its machinery. He said it wanted cleaning and oiling, besides regulating-'Come in a week. After being cleaned, and oiled, and regu- lated, my watch slowed down to that degree that it ticked like a tolling bell. I began to be left by trains, I failed all appointments, I got to missing my dinner ; my watch strung out three days' grace to four and let me go to protest; I gradually drifted back into yesterday, then day before, then into last week, and by-and-by the comprehension came upon me that all solitary and alone I was lingering along in week before last, and the world was out of sight I seemed to detect in myself a sort of sneaking fellow-feeling for the mummy in the mdseum, and a desire to swap news with him. I went to a watchmaker again. He took the watch all to pieces while I waited, and then said the barrel was " swelled." He said he could reduce it in three days. After this the watch averaged well, but nothing more. For half a day it I$« MARK TWA1N*S SKETCHES, would go like the very mischief, and keep up such a barking and wheezing, and whooping and sneezing and snorting, that I could not hear myself think for the disturbance ; and as long as it held out there was not a watch in the land that stood any chance against it But the rest of the day it would keep on slowing down and fooling along until all the clocks it had left behind caught up again. So at last, at the end of twenty-four hours, it would trot up to the judges' stand all right and just in time. It would show a fair and square average, and no man could say it had done more or less than its duty. But a correct average is only a mild virtue in a watch, and I took this instrument to another watch- maker. He said the kingbolt was broken. I said I was glad it was nothing more serious. To tell the plain truth, I had no idea what the kingbolt was, but I did not choose to appear ignorant to a stranger. He repaired the kingbolt, but what the watch gained in one way it lost in another. It would run awhile and then stop a while, and then run a while again, and so on, using its own discretion about the inter- vals. And every time it went off it kicked back like a musket I padded my breast for a few days, but finally took the watch to another watchmaker. He picked it all to pieces, and turned the ruin over and over under his glass ; and then he said there appeared to be something the matter with the hair-trigger. He fixed it, and gave it a fresh start It did well now, except that always at ten minutes to ten the hands would shut together like a pair of scissors, and from that time forth they would travel together. The oldest man in the AN INSTRUCTIVE LITTLE TALE. 159 world could n : make head or tail of the time of day by such a watch, and so I went again to have the thing repaired. This person said that the crystal had got bent, and that the mainspring was not straight He also remarked that part of the works needed half-soling. He made these things all right, and then my timepiece performed unexceptionably, save that now and then, after working along quietly for nearly eight hours, everything inside would let go all of a sudden and begin to buzz like a bee, and the hands would straightway begin to spin round and round so fast that their individuality was lost completely, and they simply seemed a delicate spider's web over the face of the watch. She would reel ofi the next twenty-four hours in six or seven minutes, and then stop with a bang. I went with a heavy heart to one more watchmaker, and looked on whfle he took her to pieces. Then I prepared to cross- question him rigidly, for this thing was getting serious. The watch had cost two hundred dollars originally, and I seemed to have paid out two or three thousand for repairs. While I waited and looked on I presently recognised in this watchmaker an old acquaintance — 9. steamboat engineer of other days, and not a good en- gineer either. He examined all the parts carefully, just as the other watchmakers had done, and then delivered his verdict with the same confidence of manner. He said — " She makes too much steam — you want to hang the monkey-wrench on the safety-valve ! " I brained him on the .spot, and had him buried at my own expense. i6o MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, My uncle William (now deceased, alai 1) uied to say that a good hone was a good hone until it had run away once, and that a good watch was a good watch until the repairen got a chance at it And he used to wonder what became of all the unsuccessful tinkers, and gunsmiths, and shoemakers, and blacksmiths ; but nobody could ever tell him. run atch used ken, but w AN ENTERTAINING ARTICLE. I TAKE the following paragraph from an article m the Boston Advertiser: — An English Critic on Mark Twain.— Perhaps the most successful flights of the humour of Mark Twain have been descHp* tions of the persons who did not appreciate his humour at ili. We have become familiar with the Califomians who were thruled with terror by his burlesque of a newspaper reporter's way of telling a story, and we have heard of the Pennsylvania clergy* man who sadly returned his "Innocents Abroad" to the book* agent with the remark that " the man who could shed tears over the tomb of Adam must be an idiot" But Mark Twain may now add a much more glorious instance to his string of trophies. The Saturday HevitiVf in its number of October 8, reviews his book of travels, which has been republished in England, and reviews it seriously. We can imagine the delight of the humorist in reading ]this tribute to his power; and, indeed, it is so amusing in it >'f that he can hardly do better than reproduce the article in ioJ; ia his next monthly Memoranda, [Publishing the above paragraph thus» gives me a sort of authority for reproducing the Saturday Revieitfs article in full in these pages. I dearly want to do it, for none of the magazine's funny correspondents have furnished me anything quite as funny as this during the month. If I had a Ci.;(-iron dog that CQuld read this English critic 1^ l63 AfAUX TWAIN'S SKETCHES, cism end preserve his austerity, I would drive him off the doorstep. — Editor Memoranda.] [From the London Saturday Eeview,^ REVIEWS OF NEW BOOKS. ***' apprenticeship, if he^"S .« .' """' ''*°"" '"-Paid doctor he would have 6^1 !,J° ''''°"' « Wer or a "O'hmg at all during hTs2 "'' '^' ""^ '^<""d get add,tio„ would bavetopL?k "PP'^^^^eship, and in have the privilege of bo" r*' \S. T '"^ """o"- -<< '■temo, aspirant knows all Z and ?'."^ ''™^^"- The hood to present himself for r;=cl.^'* ^"^ ^ *e hardi- P"ld, and ask to share its hLh^?""" ""° ** '"eraor ^thout a single twelvemonSann ""^ "" emolument «cuse for his presumptTo " nfru ""'P '° *'"' « tf he were asked to micelL !! 7°f ^""^ P'easantly «« tin dipperwithoutpIeWot "*"*»«*' a, en^ "«, all green and ignoran^r ? '"''™«'on in the art ■ -ng^mmatical, a„d~;Z^5r"P0"% assertive,' men and the world acquL^^„' tTT '"'"''^^Se o he wiU serenely take up so dan^! ^ """""^ ^'"age, and attack the most fo™SafcrrT° "» A "erce. war, or politics can fumiS i *"' '''""'«. =om- be laughable if it „ere not so ^^'"'"'^"hal. It would poor fellow would not int^lrupX^L^'h*- ''"^ Pon the tin shop without ifai 178 MARK TWAIN*S SKETCHES, an apprenticeship, but is willing to seize and wield with unpractised hand an instrument which is able to over- throw dynasties, change religions, and decree the weal or woe of nations. If my correspondent will write free of charge for the newspapers of his neighbourhood, it will be one of the strangest things that ever happened if he does not get all the employment he can attend to on those terms. And as soon as ever his writings are worth money plenty of people will hasten to offer it And, byway of serious and well-meant encouragement, I wish to urge upon him once more the truth, that accept- able writers for the press are so scarce that book and periodical publishers are seeking them constantly, and with a vigilance that never grows heedless for a moment u y*'i ' ' -. i^-. THE LATE BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. [" Never put oiT till to-morrow what yoa can do day after to- morrow just as well." — B. F.] This party was one of those persons whom they call Philosophers. He was twins, being bom simultaneously in two different houses in the city of Boston. These houses remain unto this day, and have signs upon them worded in accordance with the facts. The signs are con- sidered well enough to have, though not necessary, because the inhabitants point out the two birth-places to the stranger anyhow, and sometimes as ofrm as several times in the same day. The subject of this memoir was of a vicious disposition, and early prostituted his talents to the invention of maxims and aphonsnis calculated to inflict suffering upon the rising generation of all subse- quent ages. His simplest acts, also, were contrived with a view to their being held up for the emulation of boys for ever — boys who might otherwise have been happy. It was in this spirit that he became the son of a soap-boiler, and probably for no other reason than that the efforts of all future boys who tried to be anything might be looked upon with suspicion unless they were the sons of soap- boilers. With a malevolence which is without parallel in history, he would work all day, and then sit up nights, U 2 i8o MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. and let on to be studying algebra by the light of a smouldering fire, so that all other boys might have to do that also, or else have Benjamin Franklin thrown up to them. Not satisfied with these proceedings, he had a fashion of living wholly on bread and water, and studying astronomy at meal time — a thing which has brought afflic" tion to millions of boys since, whose fathers had read Franklin's pernicious biography. His maxims were full of animosity toward boys. Nowadays a boy cannot follow out a single natural instinct without tumbling over some of those everlasting aphorisms and hearing from Franklin on the spot. If he buys two cents' worth of peanuts, his father says, " Re" member what Franklin has said, my son — *A groat a day's a penny a year ; ' " and the comfort is all gone out of those peanuts. If he wants to spin his top when he is done work, his father quotes, " Procrastination is the thief of time." If he does a virtuous action, he never gets any- thing for it, because " Virtue is its own reward." And that boy is hounded to death and robbed of his natural rest, because Franklin said once, in one of his inspired flights of malignity — ** Early to bed and early to rise Makes a man healthy and wealthy and wise." As if it were any object to a boy to be healthy and wealthy and wise on such terms. The sorrow that that maxim has cost me through my parents' experimenting on me with it, tongue cannot tell. The legitimate result is my present state of general debility, indigence, and mental aberration. My parents used to have me up be- THE LATE BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, i8i my- id fchat Isult md 1 be- fore nine o'clock in the morning, sometimes, when I was a boy. If they had let me take my natural rest, where would I have been now ? Keeping store, no doubt, and respected by all And what an adroit old adventurer the subject of thia memoir was ! In order to get a chance to fly his kite on Sunday he used to hang a key on the string and let on to be fishing for lightning. And a guileless public would go home chirping about the " wisdom " and the " genius " o^ the hoary Sabbath-breaker. If anybody caught him play- ing " mumble-peg " by himself, after the age of sixty, he would immediately appear to be ciphering out how the grass grew — as if it was any of his business. My grand- father knew him well, and he says Franklin was always fixed — always ready. If a body, during his old age, happened on him unexpectedly when he was catching flies, or making mud pies, or sliding on a cellar-door, he would immediately look wise, and rip out a maxim, and walk off with his nose in the air and his cap turned wrong side before, trying to appear absent-minded and eccentric He was a hard lot. He invented a stove that would smoke your head off in four hours by the clock. One can see the almost devilish satisfaction he took in it by his giving it his name. He was always proud of telling how he entered Phila- delphia for the first time, with nothing in the world but two shillings in his pocket and four rolls of bread under his arm. But really, when you come to ex* amine it critically, it was nothing. Anybody could have done it 1 82 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, To the subject of this memoir belongs the honour of recommending the army to go back to bows and arrows in place of bayonets and muskets. He observed, with his customary force, that the bayonet was very well under some circumstances, but that he doubted whethei it could, be used with accuracy at long range. Benjamin Franklin did a great many notable things for his country, and made her young name to be honoured in mai^y lands as the mother of such a son. It is not the idea of this memoir to ignore that or cover it up. No ^ ihrj simple idea of it is to snub those pretentious maxims of V^*«!, which he worked up with a great show of origi- nal ity out of truisms that had become wearisome plati- tudes as early as the dispersion from Babel ; and also to snub his stove, and his military inspirations, his unseemly endeavour to make himself conspicuous when he entered Philadelphia, and his flying his kite and fooling away his time in all sorts of such ways when he ought to have been foraging for soap-fat, or constructing candles. I merely desired to do away with somewhat of the preva- lent calamitous idea among heads of families that Franklin acquired his great genius by working for nothing, studying by moonlight, and getting up in the night instead of waiting till morning like a Christian ; and that this pro- gramme, rigidly inflicted, .ill ruake a Franklin of every father's fool. It is time these gentlemen ^ ere finding out that these execrable eccentricities of instinct and conduct are only the evidences of genius, not the creators of it. I wish I had been the father of my parents long enough to make them comprehend this truth, and thus prepare them to let their son have an easier time of it. When I was a THE LATE BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, 183 child I had to boil soap, notwithstanding my father was wealthy, and I had to get up early and study geometry at breakfast, and peddle my own poetry, and do eveiything just as Franklin did, in the solemn hope that I would be a Franklin some day. And here I am. 'Cf Ir:, ;5I H ■I FASHION ITEM. ii!i 11 !i !! The Lieutenant of Marines attends one of General Grant's levees, and writes thus instructively of it It will interest the lady readers of the Galaxy : — At General Grant's reception, the other night, the most fashionably dressed lady was Mrs. G. C. She wore a pink satin dress, plain in front, but with a good deal of rake to it— to the train, I mean ; it was said to be two or three yards long. One could see it creeping along the floor some little time after the woman was gone. Mrs. C. wore also a white bodice, cut bias, with Pompadour sleeves, flounced with ruches ; low neck, with the inside handkerchief not visible, with white kid gloves. She had on a peari necklace, which glinted lonely, high up the midst of that barren waste of neck and shoulders. Her hair was frizzled into a tangled chapparel, forward of her tars ; aft it was drawn together, and compactly bound and plaited into a stump like a pony's tail, and furthermore was canted upward at a sharp angle, and ingeniously sup- ported by a red velvet crupper, whose forward extremity was made fast with a half-hitch around a hair-pin on the top of her head. Her whole top hamper was neat and becoming. She had a beautiful complexion when she first came, but it faded out by degrees in a most un- jr IT FASHION ITEM, iS$ accountable way. However, it is not lost for good. I found the most of it on my shoulder afterward. (I had been standing near the door when she had been squcez- mg out with the throng.) There were other fashionable ladies present, of course, but I only took notes of one as a specimen. The subject is one of great interest to hdies, and I would gladly enlarge upon it were I able to do it justice. )' ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS. I : i i I' ii " Moral Statistician." — I don't want any of your statistics. I took your whole batch and lit my pipe with it. I detest your kind of people. You are always ciphering out how much a man's health is injured, and how much his intellect is impaired, and how many piti- ful dollars and cents he wastes in the course of ninety- two years' indulgerx e in the fatal practice of sn^oking ; jnd in the equally Mad practice of drinking coffee; and in playing billiards occasionally ; and in taking a glass of mne at dinner, &c. &c. &c. And you are always figuring out how many women have been burned to death because of the dangerous fashion of wearing ex- pansive hoops, &c. &c. &c. You never see more than one side of the question. You are blind to the fact that most old men in America smoke and drink coffee, although, according to your theory, they ought to have died young ; and that hearty old Englishmen drink wine and survive it, and portly old Dutchmen both drink and smoke freely, and yet grow older and fatter all the tima And you never try to find out how much solid comfort, relaxation, and enjoyment a man derives from smoking in the course of a lifetime (which is worth ten times the ANSIVERS TO CORRESPONDENTS, 187 money he would save by letting it alone), nor the appal- ling aggregate of happiness lost in a lifetime by your kind of people from not smoking. Of course you can save money by denying yourself all the little vicious enjoyments for fifty years; but then can you do with it ? What use can you put it ey can't •ave your infinitesimal soul. All the i oney can be put to is to purchase comfort and Ciijoynent in this life; therefore, as you are an enemy to comfort and enjoyment, where is the use in accumulating cash ? It won't do for you to say that you can use it to better pur- pose in furnishing a good table, and in charities, and in supporting tract societies, because you know yourself that you people who have no petty vices never give away a cent, and that you stint yourselves so m the matter of food that you are always feeble and hungry. And you never dare to laugh in the daytime for fear some poor wretch, seeing you in a good humour, will try to borrow a dollar of you ; and in church you are always down on your knees, with your eyes buried in the cushion, when the contribiJtion-box comes around ; and you never give the revenue officers a true statement of your income. Now you know all these things yourself, don't you ? Very well, then, what is the use of your stringing out your miserable lives to a lean and withered old age ? What is the use of your saving money that is so worthless to you ? In a word, why don't you go off somewhere and die, and not be always trying to seduce people into be- coming as disagreeable as you are yourselves, by your tiresome " mo? al statistics " ? Now, I don't approve of dissipation, and I don't indulge in it either; but 1 IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) -c^ A 1.0 I.I KA IM |2.5 Uuu 1.8 L25 iJ^ i^ v: /^ r '/ Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716)S73-4S93 ^ ^ ;\ \ 6^ i88 MARK TIVAIN*S SKETCHES, haven't any confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices, and so I don't want to hear from you any more. I think you are the very same man who read me a long lecture last week about the degrading vice of smoking cigars, and then came back, in my absence, with your reprehensible fire-proof gloves on, and carried ofif my beautifiil parlour stove. ''Simon Wheeler," Sonora. — ^The following sim^ile and touching remarks and accompanying poem have just come to hand from the rich gold-mining region of Sonora : — " To Mr. Mark Twain : The within parson, which I have sot to poetry under the name and style of ' He Done His Level Best,' was one among the whitest men I ever see, and it u^'t every man that knowed him that can find it in his heart to say he's glad the poor cuss is busted and gone home to the States. He was here in an early day, and he was the handyest man about takin' holt of acy* thing that come along you most ever aect I judge. He was a cheer- ful, stirrin' cretur*, always doin' something, and no man can say he ever see him do anything by halvers. Preachin' was his natural gait, but he wam't a man to lay back and twidle his thums because there didn't happen to be nothin' doin' in his own espeshial line — no, sir, he was a man who would meander forth and stir up something for hisself. His last acts was to go his pile on ' kvngs-and* (calklatin' to fill, but which he didn't fill), when there was a ' flush ' out agin him, and naturally, you see, he went under. And so he was cleaned out, as you may say, and he struck the home-trail, cheerful but flat broke. I knowed this talonted man in Arkansaw, and if you would print this humbly tribute to his gorgis abillities, you would greatly oUeege his onhappy firiend. ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS. i99 «< HE DONS HIS LKVBL BKST. Was he mining on the flat- He done it with a xest ; Was he a leading of the choir- He done his level best If he'd a regular task to do, He never took no rest ; Or if 'twas ofif-and-on — the same — He done his level best If he was preachin' on his beat, He'd tramp from east to west, And north to south — in cold and heat He dono his level best He'd yank a sinner oaten (Hades),* And land him with the blest ; Then snatch a prayer 'n waits in again, And do hu level best. He'd cuss and sing and howl and pray, And dance and drink and jest. And lie and steal — all one to him — He do ae his level best sir. Whate'er this num was sot to do^ He done it with a zest ; No matter what his contract was, He'd do his level best. " Cktober, 1865." * Here I have taken a slight liberty with the original MS. ** Hades " does not make such good metre as the other word of oae qrUable^ but it sounds better. il ffO MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. Verily, this man w cause, as I said before, the intention constitutes the crime. It is as clear as day that Edwitha is your wife, and your redress lies in takini^ a club and mutilating Jones with it as much as you can. Any man has a right, to protect kis own wife from the advances of other men. But you have another alternative — you were married to Edwitha Urstf because of your deliberate intention, and now yoa can prosecute her for bigamy, in subsequently marrying Jones. But there is another phase in this complicated case : You intended to marry Edwitha, and consequently, according to law, she is your v/ife — there is no getting around that; but she didn't marry you, and if she neim intended to marry you, you are not her husband^ of coune. Ergo, in marrying Jones, she was guilty of bigamy, be cause she was the wife of another man at the time; which is all very well as far as it goes — but then, don't you see, she had no other husband when she married Jones, a&d consequently she was not guilty of bigamy. TW" 19s MARK TWAIN*S SKETCHES, Sow, according to this view of the case, Jones married a spinstetf who was a widow at the same time and another man's wife at the same time, and yet who had no husband and never had one^ and never had any intention of getting married, and therefore, of course, never had been married ; and by the same reasoning you are a bachdor, because you have never been any one's husband; and a married man, because you have a wife living ; and to all intents and purposes a widower, because you have been de- prived of that wife ; and a consummate ass for going off to Benicia in the first place, while things were so mixed And by this time I have got myself so tangled up in the intricacies of this extraordinary case that I shall have to give up any further attempt to advise you — I might get confused and fail to make myself understood. I think I could take up the argument where I left off, and by following it closely awhile, perhaps I could prove to your satisfaction, either that you never existed at all, or that you are dead now, and consequently don't need the faithless Edwitha — I think I could do that, if it would afford you any comfort " Young Mother." — ^And so you think a baby is a thing of beauty and a joy for ever ? Well, the idea is pleasing, but not original ; every cow thinks the same of its own cal£ Perhaps the cow may not think it so ele- gantly, but still she thinks it, nevertheless. I , honour the cow for it We all honour this touching maternal instinct wherever we find it, be it in the home of luxury or in the humble cow-shed. But really, madam, when I ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS, 193 the lis a ta is lie of ele- lour Imal tury come to examine the matter in all its bearings, I find that the coxrectness of your assertion does not manifest itself in all cases. A soiled baby, with a neglected nose, cannot be conscientiously regarded as a thing of beauty ; and as inasmuch as babyhood spans but three short years, no baby is competent to be a joy ** for ever." It pains me thus to demolish two-thirds of your pretty sentiment in a single sentence ; but the position I hold in this chair requires that I shall not permit you to deceive and mislead the public with your plausible figures of speech. I know a female baby, aged eighteen months, in this city, which cannot hold out as a " joy " twenty-four hours on a stretch, let alone "for ever." And it possesses some of the most remarkable eccen- tricities of character and appetite that have ever fallen under my notice. I will set down here a statement of this infant's operations (conceived, planned, and carried out by itself, and without suggestion or assistance firom its mother or anyone else), during a single day; and what I shall say can be substantiated by the sworn testi- mony of witnesses. It commenced by eating one dozen large blue-mass pills, box and all ; then it fell down a flight of stairs, and arose with a bruised and piurple knot on its forehead, after which it proceeded in quest of further refreshment and amusement. It found a glass trinket ornamented with brass-work — smashed up and ate the glass, and then twallowed the brass. Then it draiik about twenty drops of laudanum, and more than a dozen tablespoonfiils of strong spirits of camphor. The reason why it took no more laudanum was because there was no more to take. H w MARK TWAIN*S SKETCHES, After this it laid down on its back, and shoved five or six inches of a silver-headed whalebone cane down its throat ; got it fast there, and it was all its mother could do to pull the cane out again, without pulling out some of the child with it Then, being hungiy for glass again, it broke up several wine-glasses, and fell to eating and swallowing the fragments, not minding a cut or twa Then it ate a quantity of butter, pepper, salt, and Cali- fornia matches, actually taking a spoonful of butter, a spoonful of salt, a spoonful of pepper, and three or four lucifer matches at each mouthful. (I wiU remark here^ that this thing of beauty likes painted German lucifers, and eats all she can get of them ; but she infinitelji pre- fers California matches, which I regard as a compliment to our home manufactures of more than ordinary value, coming, as it does, from one who is too young to flatter.) Then she washed her head with soap and water, and afterwards ate what soap was left, and drank as much of the suds as she had room for; after which she sallied forth and took the cow fiamiliarly by the tail, and got kicked heels over head. At odd times during the day, when this joy for ever happened to have nothing partk cular on hand, she put in the time by climbing up on places, and falling down off them, uniformly damaging herself in the operation. As young as she is, she speaks many words tolerably distinctly ; and being plain- spoken in other respects, blunt and to the point, she opens conversation with all strangers, male or female, with the same formula^ **How do, Jim?" Not being familiar with the ways of children, it is possible that I have been magnifying into matter of surprise things which may not ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS, 19$ ol lied got on ing she }en8 the strike anyone who is familiar with infancy as being at all astonishing. However, I cannot believe that such ii the case, and so I repeat that my report of this baby's performances is strictly true ; and if anyone doubts it, I can produce the child. I will further engage that she will devour anything that is given her (reserving to my- self only the right to exclude anvils), and fall down from any place to which she may be elevated (merely stipu- lating that her preference for alighting on her head shali be respected, and, therefore, that the elevation chosen shall be high enough to enable her to accomplish this to her satisfaction). But I find I have wandered from my subject; so, without further argument, I will reiterate my conviction that not aU babies are things of beauty and joys for ever. sen not N3 LUCRETIA SMITH'S SOLDIER. I AM an ardent admirer of those nice, sickly war stories which have lately been so popular, and for the last three months I have been at work upon one of that character, which is now completed. It can be relied upon as true in every particular, inasmuch as the facts it contains were compiled from the official records in the War Department of Washington. It is but just, also, that I should confess that I have drawn largely on ^^Jominis Art of War," the " Message of the President and Accompanying Documents," and sundry maps and military works, so necessary for reference in building a novel like this. To the accommodating directors of the Overland Telegraph Company I take pleasure in return- ing my thanks for tendering me the use of their wires at the customary rates. And finally, to all those kind fHends who have, by good deeds or encouraging words, assisted me in my labours upon this story of ^' Lucretia Smith's Soldier," during the past three months, and whose names are too numerous for special mention, I take this method of tendering my sincerest gratitude. \ t 1 I h b] hi 01 LUCRETIA SMITH'S SOLDIER, m the res )rds, retia lose this CHAPTER I. On a bahny May morning in z86i, the little village of Bluemass, in Massachusetts, lay wrapped in the splendour of the newly-risen sun. Reginald de Whittaker, con- fidential and only clerk in the house of Bushrod and Feiguson, general drygoods and grocery dealers and keepers of the post-office, rose from his bunk under the counter, and shook himsel£ After yawning and stretching comfortably, he sprinkled the floor and pro- ceeded to sweep it He had only half finished his task, however, when he sat down on a keg of nails and fell into a reverie. " This is my last day in this shanty," said he. ** How it will surprise Lucretia when she hears I am going for a soldier 1 How proud she will be, the little darling I " He pictured himself in all manner of warlike situations ; the hero of a thousand extraordinary adven- tures; the man of rising fame; the pet of Fortune at last ; and beheld himself, finally, returning to his own home, a bronzed and scarred brigadier-general, to cast his honours and his matured and perfect love at the feet of his Lucretia Borgia Smith. At this point a thrill of joy and pride sufiused his system ; but he looked down and saw his broom, and blushed. He came toppling down from the clouds he had been soaring among, and was an obscure clerk again, on a salary of two dollars and a half a week. I9l MARK TIVAIN*S SKETCHES. CHAPTER II. At eight o'clock that evening, with a heart palpitating with the proud news he had brought for his beloved, Reginald sat in Mr. Smith's parlour awaiting Lucretia't appearance. , The moment she entered, he sprang to meet her, his face lighted by the torch of love that was blazing in his head somewhere and shining through, and ejaculated, " Mine own 1 " as he opened his arms to receive her. " Sir ! " said she, and drew herself up like an offended queen. Poor Reginald was stricken dumb with astonishment This chilling demeanour, this angry rebuff, where he had expected the old, tender welcome, banished the gladness from his heart as the cheerful brightness is swept from the landscape when a dark cloud drifts athwart the face of the sun. He stood bewildered a moment, with a sense of goneness on him like one who finds himself suddenly overboard upon a midnight sea, and beholds the ship pass into shrouding gloom, while the dreadfiil conviction falls upon his soul that he has not been missed. He tried to speak, but his pallid lips refused their office. At last he murmured — " O Lucretia 1 what have I done? what is the matter? why this cruel coldness? Don't you love your Reginald anymore?" Her lips curled in bitter scorn, and she replied, in mocking tone»~ LUCRETIA SMITH*S SOLDIER, 199 ided " Don't I love my Reginald any more ? No» I dorCt love my Reginald any more I Go back to your pitiful iunk-shop and grab your pitiful yard-stick, and stuff cotton in your ears, so that you can't hear your country shout to you to fall in and shoulder arms. Go i " And then, unheeding the new light that flashed fiom his eyes, she fleJ from the room and slammed the door behind her. Only a moment more i Only a single moment more, he thought, and he could have told her how he had already answered the summons and signed the muster- roll, and all would have been well ; his lost bride would have come back to his arms with words of praise and thanksgiving upon her lips. He made a step forward, once, to recall her, but he remembered that he was no longer an effeminate drygoods student, and his warrior soul scorned to sue for quarter. He strode from the place with martial firmness, and never looked behind him. lolds adful been ;{used itter? inald id, in CHAPTER HI. When Lucretia awoke next morning, the faint music of a fife and the roll of a distant drum came floating up on the soft spring breeze, and as she listened the sounds grew more subdued, and finally passed out of heann^ She lay absorbed in thought for many minutes, and then she sighed, and said, " Oh 1 if he were only with that band of brave fellows, how I could love hiro 1. " 100 MARK TWAIN*S SKETCHES, In the course of the day a neighbour dropped in, and when the conversation turned upon the soldiers, the visitor said — *' Reginald de Whittaker looked rather down-hearted, and didn't shout when he marched along with the other boys this morning. I expect it's owing to you, Miss Loo, though when I met him coming here yesterday evening to tell you he'd enlisted, he thought you'd like it and be proud of Mercy I what in the nation's the matter with the girl ? " Nothing, only a sudden misery had fallen like a blight upon her heart, and a deadly pallor telegraphed it to her countenance. She rose up without a word, and walked with a firm step out of the room ; but once within the sacred seclusion of her own chamber her strong will gave way, and she burst into a flood of passionate tears. Bitterly she upbraided herself for her foolish haste of the night before, and her harsh treatment of her lover at the very moment that he had come to anticipate the proudest wish of her heart, and to tell her that he had enrolled himself under the battle-flag, and was going forth to fight as her soldier. Alas ! other maidens would have soldiers in those glorious fields, and be entitled to the sweet pain of feeling a tender solicitude for them, but she would be umepresented. No soldier in all the vast armies would breathe her name as he breasted the crimson tide of war i She wept again — or rather, she went on weeping where she left off a moment before. In her bitterness of spirit she almost ciursed the precipitancy that had brought all this sorrow upon her young life. For weeks she nursed her grief in silence, while the LUCRETIA SMITirS SOLDIER. 961 V roses faded from her cheeks. And tlirough it all she dung to Ihe hope that some day the old love would bloom again in Reginald's heart, and he would write to her ; but the long summer days dragged wearily along, and still no letter came. The newspapers teemed wiUi stories of battle and carnage, and eagerly she read them, but always with the same result : the tears welled up and blurred the closing lines — the name she sought was looked for in vain, and the dull aching returned to her sinking heart Letters to the other girls sometimes con- tained brief mention of him, and presented always the same picture of him — a morose, unsmiling, desperate man, always in the thickest of the fight, begrimed with powder, and moving calm and unscathed through tempests of shot and shell, as if he bore a charmed life. But at last, in a long list of maimed and killed, poor Lucretia read these terrible words, and fell fainting to the floor : — "i?. D. Whitiaker, private soldier ^ desperately woi'nded / " the CHAPTER IV. On a couch in one of the wards of a hospital at Washington lay a wounded soldier; his head was so profusely bandaged that his fes^tures were not visible : but there was no mistaking the happy face of the young girl who sat beside him — it was Lucretia Borgia Smith's. She had hunted him out several weeks before, and since that time she had patiently watched by him and nursed MAJiir TWAIN'S SKETCHES, him, coming in the morning as soon as the suigeon had finished dressing his wounds, and never leaving him until relieved at nightfall A ball had shattered his lower jaw, and he could not utter a syllable ; through all her weaiy vigils she had never once been blessed with a grateful word from his dear lips j yet she stood to her post bravely and without a murmur, feeling that when he did get well again she would hear that which would more than reward her for all her devotion. At the hour we have chosen for the opening of this chapter, Lucretia was in a tumult of happy excitement; for the surgeon had told her that at last her Whittaker had recovered sufficiently to admit of the removal of the bandages firom his head, and she was now waiting with feverish impatience for the doctor to come and disclose the loved features to her view. At last he came, and Lucretia, with beaming eyes and fluttering heart, bent over the couch with anxious expectancy. One bandage was removed, then another and another, and lo I the poor wounded face was revealed to the light of day. " O my own dar ^" What have we here! What is the matter 1 Alas! it was the face of a stranger ! Poor Lucretia ! With one hand covering her tq;>tumed eyes, she staggered back with a moan of anguish. Then a spasm of fury distorted her countenance as she brought her fist down with a crash that made the medicine bottles on the table dance again, and exclaimed— " Oh ! confound my cats, if I haven't gone and fooled away three moital weeks here, snuffling over the wrong loldierl'' LUCRETIA SAfiriPS SOLD/EH. 203 it It was a sad, sad truth. The wretched but innocent and unwitting impostor was R. D., or Richard Dilworthy Whittaker, of Wisconsin, the soldier of dear little Eugenie Le Mulligan, of that State, and utterly unknown to our unhappy Lucretia R Smith. Such is life, and the trail of the serpent is over us all Let us draw the curtain over this melancholy history — for melancholy it must still remain, during a season at least, for the real Reginald de Whittaker has not turned up yet. % ! .'ll ii THE ENTERTAINING HISTORY OF THE SCRIPTURAL PANORAMIST. [I GIVE the histoiy in Mr. Nickerson's own language.] There was a fellow travelling around, in that country (said Mr. Nickerson), with a moral religious show — a sort of a scriptural panorama — and he hired a simple old creature to play the piano for him. Afler the first night's performance, the showman says : — My friend, you seem to know pretty much all the tunes there are, and you worry along first-rate. But then didn't you notice that sometimes last night the piece you happened to be playing was a little rasping on the proprieties, so to speak — didn't seem to jibe with the general gait of the picture that was passing at the time as it were — ^was a little foreign to the subject, you know —as if you didn't either trump or follow suit, you under- stand?" "Weil, no," the fellow said; he hadn't noticed, but it might be ; he had played along just as it came handy. So they put it up that the poor old dummy was to keep his eye on the panorama after that, and as soon as a smart picture was reeled out he was to fit it to a dot with a piece of music that would help the audience to get the idea of the subject, and warm them up to an SCRIPTURAL PANORAMIST, 90s appreciation of it That sort of thing would capture their sympathies t]\e shovmian said. There was a big audience that night The showman began to swell himself up for his lecture, the old pianist ran his fingers up and down his instrument once or twice to see that it was all right, and the supes behind the curtain commenced to unwind the panorama. The showman balanced his weight on his right foot, and propped his hands on his hips, and flung his eye over his shoulder at the scenery, and says — " Ladies and gentlemen, the painting now before you illustrates the beautiful and touching parable of the Pro- digal Son. Observe the happy expression just breaking over the features of the poor, suflfering youth — so worn and weary with his long march ; note also the ecstasy beaming from the uplifted countenance of the aged father, and the joy that sparkles in the eyes of the ex- cited group of youths and maidens, and seems ready to burst in a welcoming chorus from their lips. The lesson, my friends, is as solemn and instructive as the story is tender and beautiful" The musician was all ready, and the second the speech was finished he struck up — " Oh I we'U all get blind drank When Johnny comes marching home I** Some of the people giggled, and some groaned a little. The showman couldn't say a word. He looked at the pianist, but he was all lovely and serene — A< didn't know there was anything out of gear. un 906 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, The tK>Jiorama moved on, and the showman drummed up his pluck and began again :— ** Ladies and gentlemen, the fine picture now unfold- ing itself to your gaze exhibits one of the most notable events in Bible histoiy — our Saviour and his disciples upon the Sea of Galilee. How grand, how awe-in- spiring are the reflections which the subject invokes! What sublimity of faith is revealed to us in this lesson from the sacred writings 1 The Saviour rebukes the angiy waves, and walks securely upon the bosom of the deepl" All around the house they were whispering — *^Ohi how lovely 1 how beautiful 1" and the orchestra let him- self out again : — "Oh I a life on the ocean wave^ And a home on the rolling deep ?*' There was a good deal of honest laughter this time, and considerable groaning, and one or two deacons got up and went out The showman gritted his teeth and cursed the piano man to himself; but the fellow sat there like a knot on a log, and seemed to think he was doing first-rate. After things got quiet, the showman thought he would make one more stagger at it, anyhow, though his confi- dence was beginning to get very shaky. The supes started the panorama along again, and he says : — ^* Ladies and gentlemen, this exquisite painting illus- trates the raising of Lazarus firom the dead by ouf Saviour. The subject has been handled with rare ability by the artist, and such touching sweetness and SCRIPTURAL PANORAMIST, 907 got tenderness of expression has he thrown into it^ that I have known peculiarly sensitive persons to be even affected to tears by looking at it Observe the half- confused, half-inquiring look upon the countenance of the awakening Lazarus. Observe, also, the attitude and expression 3f the Saviour, who takes him gently by the sleeve of his shroud with one hand, while he points with the other towards the distant city." Before anybody could get off an opinion in the case, the innocent old muggins at the piano stuck up— - ** Come, rise up, William Ri4-ley, And Go along with me I " My 1 All the solemn old flats got up in a fury to go, and everybody else laughed till the windows rattled. The showman went down and grabbed the orchestra and shook him up, and says But what he said was too vigorous for repetition, and is better left out. sat )uld [pes lus- AN UNBURLESQUABLE THING. There is one other thing which transcends the powers of burlesque, and that is a Fenian ** invasion." First, we have the portentous mystery that precedes it for six months, when all the air is filled with stage whisperings ; when " Councils" meet every night with awful secrecy, and the membership try to see who can get up first in the morning and tell the proceedings. Next, the ex- patriated Nation struggles through a travail of national squabbles and political splits, and is finally delivered of a litter of " Governments," and Presidents McThis and Generals O'That, of several different complexions, politi- cally speaking; and straightway the newspapers teem with the new names, and men who were insignificant and obscure one day find themselves great and famous the next Then the several '' governments," and presidents, and generals, and senates get by the ears, and remain so until the customary necessity of carrying the American city elections with a minority vote comes around and unites them ; then they begin to '' sound the tocsin of war" again — ^that is to say, in solemn whisperings at dead of night they secretly plan a Canadian raid, and publish it in the " World" next morning ; they begin to refer significantly to *' Ridgway," and we reflect bodingly AN UNBURLESQUABLE THING, 109 gs and to igiy that there is no telling how soon that slaughter may be repeated. Presently the " invasion " begins to take tangible shape, and, as no news travels so freely or so fast as the ** secret " doings of the Fenian brotherhood, the land is shortly in a tumult of apprehension. The telegraph announces that "last night 400 men went north from Utica, but refused to disclose their destina- tion — ^were extremely reticent — answered no questions — were not armed or in uniform, but it was noticed that they marched to the depdt in military fashion** — and so on. Fifty such despatches follow each other within two days, evidencing that squads of locomotive mystery have gone north from a hundred different points and rendezvoused on the Canadian border — and that, consequently, a horde of 95,000 invaders, at least, is gathered together ; and then, hunah 1 they cross the line ; hurrah 1 tliey meet the enemy ; hip, hip, hurrah I a battle ensues ; hip — ^no, not hip nor hurrah — for the U. S. Marshal and one man seize the Fenian Geueral-in-Chief on the battle- field, in the midst of his " army," and bowl him off in a carriage and lodge him in a common j&il — and, presto 1 the illustrious "invasion" is at an end ! The Fenians have not done many things that seemed to call for pictorial illustration ; but their first care has usually been to make a picture of any performance of theirs that would stand it as soon as possible after its achievement, and paint ever3rthing in it a violent green, and embellish it with harps and pickaxes, and other emblems of national grandeur, aiid print thousands of them in the severe simplicity of primitive lithography, and hang them above the National Faladium among the o '■1 ft:! i tie MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, decanters. Shall we have a nice picture of the battle of Pigeon Hill and the litde accident to the Commander-in- Chief? No, a Fenian ''invasion" cannot be burlesqued, be- cause it uses up all the material itself. It is harmless fun, this annuflJ masquerading toward the border ; but America should not encourage it, for the reason that it may some time or other succeed in embroiling the country in a war with a friendly power — and such an event as that would be ill compensated by the liberation of even so excellent a people as the Down-trodden Nation. RILEY— NEWSPAPER CORRESPONDENT. One of the best men in Washington — or elsewhere — is Riley, correspondent of the great San Francisco dailies. Riley is full of humour, and has an unfailing vein of irony, which makes his conversation to the last degree entertaining (as long as the remarks are about somebody else). But, notwithstanding the possession ol whese nuali- ties, which should enable a man to write a happy and an appetizing letter, Riley's newspaper letters often display a more than earthly solemnity, and likewise an unimagi- native devotion to petrified facts, which surprise and distress all men who know him in his unofficial character. He explains this curious thing by saying that his em- ployers sent him to Washington to write facts, not fancy, and that several times he has come near losing his situa- tion by inserting humorous remarks which, not being looked for at headquarters, and consequently not under- stood, were thought to be dark knd bloody speeches intended to convey signals and warnings to murderous secret societies, or something of that kind, and so were scratched out with a shiver and a prayer and cast into o a tia MARK TWAIN*S SKETCHES, the itove. Riley says that sometimes he is so afflicted with a yearning to write a sparkling and absorbingly readable letter that he simply cannot resist it, and so he goes to his den and revels in the delight of untrammelled scribbling ; and then, with suffering such as only a mother can know, he destroys the pretty children of his fancy and reduces his letter to the required dismal accuracy. Having seen Riley do this very thing more than once, I know whereof I speak. Often I have laughed with him over a happy passage, and grieved to see him plough his pen through it He would say, « I had to write that or die; and I've got to scratch it out or starve. TTuy wouldn't stand it, you know." I think Riley is about the most entertaining company I ever saw. We lodged together in many places in Washington during the winter of '67-8, moving comfort ably frpjn |>!«cc to place, and attracting attention by paying our board — a course which cannot fail to make a person conspicuous in Washington. Riley would tell all about his trip to California in the early days, by way of the Isthmus and the San Juan river; and about his baking bread in San Francisco to gain a living, and setting up ten-pins, and practising law, and opening oysters, and delivering lectures, and teaching French, and tending bar, and reporting for the newspapers, and keeping dc iic- icg-school, and interpreting Chinese in the cour* < —nhit h latter was lucrative, and Riley was doing handsomely and laying up a little money when people began to find fault becHUS^ his translations were too " free," a thing for which Rile? considered he ought not to be held respon- sible, since he '/id i>ot ko iw a word of the Chinese tongue^ I RILEY— NEWSPAPER COMUgJfPONDEJVT, ai3 Inding 1 dt iic- )mely find igfor kspon- Ingue, and only adopted interpreting as a means of gaining an honest livelihood. Through the tta^ hinations of enemies he was removed from the position of official interp) oter, and a man put in his place who was familiar vii V .ht Chinese language, but did not know any English. And Kiley used to tell about publishing a newspaper up in what is Alaska now, but was only an iceberg then, with a population composed of bears, wabntses, Indians, and other animals ; and how the iceberg got adrift at laFt, and left all his paying subscribers behind, and as soo \ as the commonwealth floated out of the jurisdiction of Russia the people rose and threw off their allegiance and ran up the English flag, calculating to hook on and become an English colony as they drifted along down the British Possessions ; but a land breeze and a crooked current carried them by, and they ran up the Stars and Stripes and steered for California, missed the connection again and swore allegiance to Mexico, but it wasn't any use ; the anchors came home every time, and away they went with the north-east trades drifting off sideways toward the Sandwich Islands, whereupon they ran up the Can- nibal flag and had a grand human barbecue in honour of it, in which it was noticed that the better a man liked a friend the better he enjoyed him j and as soon as they got fairly within the tropics the weather got so fearfully hot that the iceberg began to melt, and it got so sloppy under foot that it was almost impossible for ladies to get about at all ; and at last, just as they came in sight of the islands, the melancholy remnant of the once-majestic iceberg canted first to one side and then to the other, and then plunged under for ever, carrying the national ti4 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. archives along with it — ^and not only the archives and the populace, but some eligible town lots which had increased in value as fast as they diminished in size in the tropics, and which Riley could have sold at thirty cents a pound and made himself rich if he could have kept the province afloat ten hours longer and got her into port And so forth and so on, with all the facts of Riley*8 trip through Mexico, a joiuney whose history his felicitous fancy can make more interesting than any novel that ever was written. What a shame it is to tie Riley down to the dreary mason-work of laying up solemn dead-walls of fact ! He does write a plain, straightforward, and perfectly accurate and reliable correspondence, but it seems to me that I would rather have one chatty paragraph of his fancy than a whole obituary of his facts. Riley is very methodical, untiringly accommodating, never forgets anything that is to be attended to, is a good son, a staunch friend, and a permanent reliable enemy. He viHU put himself to any amount of trouble to oblige a body, and therefore always has his hands full of things to be done for the helpless and the shiftless. And he knows how to do nearly everything, too. He is a man whose native benevolence is a well-spring that never goes dry. He stands always ready to help whoever needs help, as far as he is able — and not simply with his money, for that is a cheap and common charity, but with hand and brain, and fatigue of limb and sacrifice of time. This sort of men is rare. Riley has a ready wit, a quickness and aptness at select- ing and applying quotations, and a countenance that is as RILEY—NEWSPAPER CORRESPONDENT, 21$ land had ze in thirty have >t her Alley's Icitous It ever )wn to trails of jrfectly J to me is fancy idating, good enemy. )blige a things \nd he a man rer goes needs money, h hand e. This It select- It is as solemn and as blank as the back side of a tombstone when he is delivering a particularly exasperating j oke. One night a negro woman was burned to death in a house next door to us, and Riley said that our landlady would be oppres- sively emotional at breakfast, because she generally made use of such opportunities as offered, being of a morbidly sentimental turn, and so we should find it best to let her talk along and say nothing back — it was the only way to keep her tears out of the gravy. Riley said there never was a funeral in the neighbourhood but that the gravy was watery for a week. And, sure enough, at breakfast the landlady was down in the very sloughs of woe — entirely broken-hearted. Everything she looked at reminded her of that poor old negro woman, and so the buckwheat cakes made her sob, the coffee forced a groan, and when the beefsteak came on she fetched a wail that made our hair rise. Then she got to talking about deceased, and kept up a steady drizzle till both of us were soaked through and through. Presently she took a fresh breath and said, with a world of sobs — " Ah, to think of it, only to think of it ! — the poor old faithful creature. For she was so faithful. Would you believe it, she had been a servant in that self-same house and that self-same family for twenty-seven years come Christmas, and never a cross , word and never a lick I And, oh, to think she should meet such a death at last 1 — a sitting over the red-hot stove at three o'clock in the morning and went to sleep and fell on it and was actually roasted I Not just frizzled up a bit, but literally roasted to a crisp ! Poor faithful creature, how she was cooked 1 v1. 9l6 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, I am but a poor woman, but even if I have to scrimp to do ity I will put up a tombstone over that lone sufferer's grave — and Mr. Riley, if you would have the goodness to think up a little epitaph to put on it which would sort of describe the awful way in which she met her^— " " Put it, < Well done, good and faithful servant T " said Kiley, and never smiled. \ THE FACTS CONCERNING THE RECENT RESIGNATION. Washington, Dec a, 1867. I HAVE resigned. The Government appears to go on much the same, but there is a spoke out of its wheel, nevertheless. I was clerk of the Senate Committee on Conchology, and I have thrown up the position. I could see the plainest disposition on the part of the other members of the Government to debar me from having any voice in the counsels of the nation, and so I could no longer hold office and retain my self-respect If I were to detail all the outrages that were heaped upon me during the six days that I was connected with the Go- vernment in an official capacity, the narrative would fill a volume. They appointed me clerk of that Committee on Conchology, and then allowed me no amanuensis to play billiards with. I would have borne that, lonesome as it was, if I had met with that courcesy from the other members of the Cabinet which ^as my due. But I did not Whenever I observed that the head of a depart- ment was pursuing a wrong course, I laid down every- thing and went and tried to set him right, as it was my duty to do ; and I never was thanked for it in a single 3l8 MARK TWAIIPS SKETCHES, instance. I went, with the best intentions in the world, to the Secretary of the Navy, and said — ** Sir, I cannot see that Admiral Farragut is doing any- thing but skirmishing around there in Europe, having a sort of picnic. Now, that may be all very well, but it does not exhibit itself to me in that light If there is no fighting for him to do, let him come home. There is no use in a man having a whole fleet for a pleasure excur- sion. It is too expensive. Mind, I do not object to pleasure excursions for the naval officers — pleasure ex- cursions that are in reason — pleasure excursions that are economical Now, they might go down the Mississippi on a raft " You ought to have heard him storm ! One would have supposed I had committed a crime of some kind. But I didn't mind. I said it was cheap, and full of republican simplicity, and perfectly safe. I said that, for a tranquil pleasure excursion, there was nothing equal to a raft Then the Secretary of the Navy asked me who I was ; and when I told him I was connected with the Govern- ment, he wanted to know in what capacity. I said that, without remarking upon the singularity of such a ques- tion, coming, as it did, from a member of that same Go- vernment, I would inform him that I was clerk of the Senate Committee on Conchology. Then there was a fine storm ! He finished by ordering me to leave the premises and give my attention strictly to my own busi- ness in future. My first impulse was to get him removed. However, that would harm others beside himself and do me no real good, and so I let him stay. THE RECENT RESIGNATION 319 a he isi- I went next to the Secretary of War, who was not m<- clined to see me at all until he learned that I was con- nected with the Government If I had not been on im- portant business, I suppose I could not have got in. I asked him for a light (he was smoking at the time), and then I told him I had no fault to find with his defending the parole stipulations of Gen. Lee and his comrades in arms, but that I could not approve of his method of fighting the Indians on the Plains. I said he fought too scattering. He ought to get the Indians more together — get them together in some convenient place, where he could have provisions enough for both parties, and then have a general massacre. I said there was nothing so convincing to an Indian as a general massacre. If he could not approve of the massacre, I said the next surest thing for an Indian was soap and education. Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run ; because a half- massacred Indian may recover, but if you educate him and wash him, it is bound to finish him some time or other. It undermines his constitution ; it strikes at the foundations of his being. '* Sir," I said, " the time has come when blood-curdling cruelty has become necessary. Inflict soap and a spelling-book on every Indian that ravages the Plains, and let him die ! " The Secretary of War asked me if I was a member of the Cabinet, and I said I was — and I was not one of these ad interim people either. (Severe, but merited.) He inquired what position I held, and I said I was clerk of the Senate Committee on Conchology. I was then ordered under arrest for contempt of ? w i J JUAHfC TWAIN'S SKETCHES. court, and restiained of my liberty for the best part of a day. I almost resolved to be silent thenceforward, and let the Government get along the best way it could. But duty called, and I obeyed. I called on the Secretary of the Treasury. He said^ "What will ^'tf^ have?" The question threw me off my guard. I said, <* Rum punch." He said, " If you have got any business here, sir, state it — and in as few words as possible." I then said that I was sorry he had seen fit to change the subject so abruptly, because such conduct was very offensive to me ; but under the circumstances I would overlook the matter and come to the point I now went into an earnest expostulation with him upon the extra* vagant length of his report I said it was expensive, unnecessary, and awkwardly constructed ; there were no descriptive passages in it, no poetry, no sentiment, — no heroes, no plot, no pictures — ^not even woodcuts. No- body would read it, that was a clear case. I urged him not to ruin his reputation by getting out a thing like that If he ever hoped to succeed in literature, he must throw more variety into his writings. He must beware of dry detail. I said that the main popularity of the almanac was derived from its poetry and conundrums, and that a few conundrums distributed around through his Treasury report would help the sale of it more than all the internal revenue he could put into it. I said these things in the kindest spirit, and yet the Secretary of the Treasury fill into a violent passion. He even THE RECENT RESIGNATION, sst said I was an ass. He abused me in the most vindictive manner, and said that if I came there again meddling with his business, he would throw me out of the window. I said I would take my hat and go, if I could not be treated with the respect due to my office, and I did go. It was just like a new author. They always think they know more than anybody else when they are getting out their first book. Nobody can tell them any- thing. During the whole time that I was connected with the Government it seemed as if I could not do anything in an official capacity without getting myself into trouble. And yet I did nothing, attempted nothing, but what I conceived to be for the good of my country. The sting of my wrongs may have driven me to unjust and harm- ful conclusions, but it surely seemed to me that the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Treasury, and others of my confreres had conspired from the very beginning to drive me from the Adminis- tratioa I never attended but one Cabinet meeting while I was connected with the Government That was sufficient for me. The servant at the White House door did not seem disposed to make way for me until I asked if the other members of the Cabinet had arrived. He said they had, and I entered. They were all there ; but nobody offered me a seat They stared at me as if I had been an intruder. The President said — " Well, sir, who ^xtyou V I handed him my card, and he read — "The Hon. Mark Twain, Clerk of the Senate Committee on Con- chology." Then he looked at me from head to foot, as il MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, H he had never heard of me before. The Secretary of the Treasury said — ''This is the meddlesome ass that came to recom- mend me to put poetry and conunr^rums in my report, as if it were an almanac." The Secretary of War said — " It is the same visionary that came to me yesterday with a scheme to educate a portion of the Indians to death, and massacre the balance." The Secretary of the Navy said — " I recognise this youth as the person who has been interfering with my bu^ness time and again during the week. He is dis- tressed about Admiral Farragut's using a whole fleet for a pleasure excursion, as he terms it His proposition about some insane pleasure excursion on a raft is too absurd to repeat" I said — " Gentlemen, I perceive here a disposition to throw discredit upon every act of my official career ; I perceive, also, a disposition to debar me from all voice in the counsels of the nation. No notice whatever was sent to me to-day. It was only by the merest chance that I learned that there was going to be a Cabinet meeting. But let these things pass. All I wish to know is, is this a Cabinet meeting, or is it not ?" The President said it was. " Then," I said, " let us proceed to business at once, and not fritter away valuable time in unbecoming fault- findings with each other's official conduct" The Secretary of State now spoke up, in his benignant way, and said, " Young man, you are labouring under a mistake. The clerks of the Congressional committees THE RECENT RESIGNATION, lie not members of the Cabinet Neither are the door- keepers of the Capitol, strange as it may seem. There- fore, much as we could desire your more than human wisdom in our deliberations, we cannot lawfully avail ourselves of it The counsels of the nation must proceed without yoa ; if disaster follows, as follow full well it may, be ': aim to your sorrowing spirit, that by deed and voice you did what in you lay to avert it You have my blessing. Farewell" These gentle words soothed my troubled breast, and I went away. But the servants of a nation can know no peace. I had hardly reached my den in the Capitol, and disposed my feet on the table like a representative, when one of the Senators on the Conchological Com- mittee came in in a passion and said — " Where have you been all day ?" I observed that, if that was anybody's affair but my own, I had been to a Cabinet meeting. " To a Cabinet meeting ! I would like to know what business you had at a Cabinet meeting ? " I said I went there to consult — allowing for the sake of argument, that he was in anywise concerned in the matter. He grew insolent then, and ended by saying he had wanted me for three days past to copy a report on bomb-shells, egg-shells, clam-shells, and I don't know what all, connected with conchology, and nobody had been able to find me. This was too much. This ^as the feather that broke the clerical camel's back. I said, " Sir, do you suppose that I am going to work for six dollars a day ? If that is the idea, let me recommend the Senate Committee on It ■/,■ M4 MARK TWAIN*S SKETCHES, Conchology to hire somebody else. I am the slave of no faction I Take back your degrading commission. Give me liberty, or give me death !" From that hour I was no longer connected with the Government. Snubbed by the department, snubbed by the Cabinet, snubbed at last by the chairman of a com- mittee I was endeavouring to adorn, I yielded to perse- cution, cast far from me the perils and seductions of my great office, and forsook my bleeding countxy in the hour of her peril But I had done the State some service, and I sent in my bill: — The United States of America in account with the Hon. Clerk of the Senate Committee on Conchology ^ Dr, To consultation with Secretary of War .... $50 To consultation with Secretary of Navy .... 50 To consultation with Secretary of the Treasury . . 50 Cabinet consultation No charge. To mileage to and from Jerusalem,* vid Egypt, Algiers, GibnJtar, and Cadiz, 14,000 miles, at 20c. a mile . 2,800 To Salary as Clerk of Senate Committee on Conchology, six days, at |6 per day 36 Total $2,986 Not an item of this bill has been paid, except that trifle of 36 dollars for clerkship salary. The Secretaiy of the Treasury, pursuing me to the last, drew his pen through all the other items, and simply marked in the maigin, "Not allowed." So, the dread alternative is * Territorial delegates charge mileage both ways, although they never go back when they get here once. Why my mileage is denied me is more than I can undentand. THE RECENT RESIGNATION, ".%% lOt ion. the I by :om- erse- f my hour nt m kof Ltive 18 ^gh they denied embraced at last. Repudiation has begun ! The nation is lost True, the President promised that he would mention my claim in his Message, and recommend that it be paid out of the first moneys received on account of the Alabama claims j but will he recollect to do it ? And may not I be forgotten when the Alabama claims are paid ? Younger claimants than I am may be forgotten when the Alabama claims are paid. I am done with official life for the present Let those clerks who are willing to be imposed on remain. I know niimbers of them, in the Departments, who are never informed when there is to be a Cabinet meeting, whose advice is never asked about war, or finance, or commerce, by the heads of the nation, any more than if they were not connected with the Government, and who actually stay in their cffices day after day and work I They know their importance to the nation, and they unconsciously show it in their bearing, and the way they order their sustenance at the restaurant — but they work. I know one who has to paste all sorts of little scraps fi:om the newspapers into a scrap-book — sometimes as many as eight or ten scraps a day. He doesn't do it well, but he does it as well as he can. It is very fatiguing. It is exhausting to the intellect Yet he only gets x,8oo dollars a year. With a brain like his, that young man could amass thousands and thousands of dollars in some other pursuit, if he chose to do it But no — his heart is with his country, and he will serve her as long as she has got a scrap-book left And I know clerks that don't know how to write very well, but such knowledge as they possess they nobly lay at the feet of «'r >s6 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. their country, and toil on and suffer for 3,500 dollan a year. What they write has to be written over again by other clerks, sometimes ; but when a man has done his best for his country, should his country complain ? Then there are clerks that have no clerkships, and are waiting, and waiting, and waiting, for a vacancy — waiting patiently for a chance to help their country out — and while they are waiting, they only get barely 3,000 dollars a year for it It is sad — it is very, very sad. When a member of Congress has a friend who is gifted, but has no employ- ment wherein his great power? may be brought to bear, he confers him upon his country, and gives him a clerk* ship in a Department And there that man has to slave his life out fighting documents for the benefit of a nation that never thinks of him, never sympathises with him — and all for 2,000 or 3,000 dollars a year. When I shall have completed my list of all the clerks in the several departments, with my statement of what they have to do, and what they get for it, you will see that there are not half enough clerks, and that what there are do not get lialf enough pay. * ( % I A DARING ATTEMPT AT A SOLUTION - OF IT do, re not get Thx Fenian invasion failed because George Francis Train was absent There was no lack of men, arms, or ammunition, but there was sad need of Mr. Train's organising power, his coolness and caution, his tranquil- lity, his strong good sense, his modesty and reserve, his secrecy, his taciturnity, and above all his frantic and bloodthirsty courage. Mr. Train and his retiring and diffident private secretary were obliged to be absent, though the former must certainly have been lying at the point of death, else nothing could have kept him from hurrying to the front, and offering his heart's best blood for the Down-trodden People he so loves, so worships, so delights to champion. He must have been in a disabled condition, else nothing could have kept him from invad- mg Canada at the head of his " children." And, indeed, this modem Samson, solitary and alone, with his formidable jaw, would have been a more trouble- some enemy than five times the Fenians that did invade Canada, because t/iey could be made to retire, but G. F. would never leave the field while there was an audience before him, either armed or helpless. The invading Fa 238 MARK TWAIN*S SKETCHES. Fenians were visely cautious, knowing that such of them as were caught would be likely to hang ; but the Cham- pion would have stood in no such danger. There is no law, military or civil, for hanging persons afflicted in his peculiar way. He was not present, alas ! — save in spirit He could not and would not waste so fine an opportunity, though, to ^end some ecstatic lunacy over the wires, and so he wound up a ferocious telegram with this : — With Vengeance steeped in Wormwood's Gall! D D Old England, say we all! And keep your powder dry. , Geo. Francis Train. Sherman House, Chicago, Noon, Thursday, May 26. P. S.— Just arriyed and addressed Grand Fenian Meeting in Fenian Armoury, donating 50 dollars. This person could be made really useful by roosting him on some lighthouse or other prominence where storms prevail, because it takes so much wind to keep him going that he probably moves in the midst of a dead cahu wherever he travels. ■,. -V **:..-. I lem am- I no his ould ugh, he ing in }sting (\rhere keep dead A MEMORY. When I say that I never knew my austere father to be enamoured of but one poem in all the long half-century that he lived, persons who knew him will easily believe me ; when I say that I have never composed but one poem in all the long third of a century that I have lived, persons who know me will be sincerely grateful; and finally, when I say that the poem which I composed was not the one which my father was enamoured of, persons who may have known us both will not need to have this truth shot into them with a mountain howitzer before they can receive it My father and I were always on the most distant terms when I was a boy — a sort of armed neutra- lity, so to speak. At irregular intervals this neutrality was broken, and suffering ensued ; but I will be candid enough to say that the breaking and the suffering were always divided up with strict impartiality between us — which is to say, my father did the breaking, and I did the suffering. As a general thing I was a backward, cautious, unadventurous boy. But once I jumped off a two-storey stable; another time I gave an elephant a *'plug" of tobacco, and retired without waiting for an answer; and still another time I pretended to be talking in my 2y> MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, sleep, and got off a portion of a very wretched original conundrum in hearing of my father. Let us not pry into the result ; it was of no consequence to any one but me. But the poem I have referred to as attracting my father's attention and achieving his favour was *' Hia- watha." Some man who courted a sudden and awful death presented him an early copy, and I never lost faith in my own senses until I saw him sit down and go to reading it in cold blood — saw him open the book, and heard him read these following lines, with the same in- flectionless judicial frigidity with which he always read bis charge to the jury, or administered an oath to a witness — « Take your bow, O Hiawatha, Take your arrows, jasper-headed, Take your war-club, Pug^waugun, And your mittens, Minjekahwan, And your birch-canoe for sailing. And the oil of Mishe-Nama." Presently my father took out of his breast-pocket an imposing *' Warranty Deed," and fixed his eyes upon it, and dropped into meditation. I knew what it was. A Texan lady and gentleman had given my half-brother, Orrin Johnson, a handsome property in a town in the North, in gratitude to him for having saved their lives by an act of brilliant heroism. By-and-by my father looked toward me and sighed. Then he said, " If I had such a son as this poet, here were a subject worthier than the traditions of these Indians." A MEMORY, 831 iginal it pry y one g my «Hia- awful t faith go to k, and ne in- s read [1 to a ;ket an )n it, ras. A ffother, in the lives by led. it, here these " If you please, sir, where ? " "In this deed." *« In the— deed?" " Yes — in this very deed," said my father, throwing ii on the table. " There is more poetiy, more romance, more subhmity, more splendid imagery hidden away in that homely document than could be found in all the traditions of all the savages that live." " Indeed, sir? Could I — could I get it out, sir? Could I compose the poem, sir, do you think ? " "You?" I wilted. Presently my father's face softened somewhat, and he said — " Go and tiy. Bat mind ; curb folly. No poetiy at the expense of truth. Keep strictly to the facts." I said I would, and bowed myself out and went up stairs. " Hiawatha " kept droning in my head — and so did my father's remarks about the sublimity and romance hidden in my subject, and also his injunction to beware of wasteful and exuberant fancy. I noticed just here that I had heedlessly brought the deed away with me. Now, at this moment came to me one of those rare moods of daring recklessness, such as I referred to a while ago. Without another thought, and in plain de- fiance of the fact that I knew my father meant me to write the romantic story of my half-brother's adventure and subsequent good fortune, I ventured to heed merely the letter of his remarks and ignore their spirit I took the stupid " Warranty Deed " itself and chopped it up 333 MARK TWAIN*S SKETCHES, into Hiawathian blank verse, without altering or leaving out three words, and without transposing six. It required loads of courage to go down-stairs and face my father with my performance. I started three or four times be- fore I finally got my pluck to \/here it would stick. But at last I said I would go down and read it to him if he threw me over the church for it I stood up to begin, and he told me to come closer. I edged up a little, but still left as much neutral ground between us as I thought he would stand. Then I began. It would be useless for me to try to tell what conflicting emotions expressed themselves upon his face, nor how they grew more and more intense as I proceeded ; nor how a fell darkness descended upon his countenance, and he began to gag and swallow, and his hands began to work and twltch, as I reeled off line after line, with the strength ebbing out of me and my legs trembling under me. "THE STORY OF A GALLANT DEED. THIS INDENTURE, made the tenth Day of November, in the year Ot' our Lord one thousand eight Hundred six-and-fifty. Between Joanna S. K Gray And Philip Gray, her husband, Of Salem City, in the State Of Texas, of the first part, And O. B. Johnson, of the town Of Austin, ditto, WITNESSETH i That said party of first part, For and in consideration A MEMORY. Of the sum of Twenty Thousand Dollars, lawful money of The U. S. of Americay, To them in hand now ^guA by said Party of the second part, The due receipt whereof is here- By confessed and acknowledg-ed, Have Granted, Bargained, Sold, Remised, Released and Aliene'l and Conveyed, Confirmed, and by these presents do Grant and Bargain, Sell, Remise, Alien, Release, Convey, and Con- 233 Firm unto the said aforesaid Party of the second part, And to his heirs and assigns For ever and ever, ALL That certain piece or parcel of LAND situate in city of Dunkirk, county of Chautauqua, And likewise furthermore in York Static 1 p m Bounded and described, to wit, As follows, herein, namely : BEGINNING at the distance of A b indred two-and-forty feet, North-half-east, north-east-by-noith, East-north-cast and northerly Of the northerly line of Mulligan Street, On the westerly line of Brannigan Street, S34 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, And ranning thence dne northerly On Bnumigan Street 900 feet, Thence at right angles westerly, North-west-by-west-and-west-half-west, West-and-by-north, north«wesi-by-west, About ** I kind of dodged, and the b ^t-jack broke the looking- glass. I could have waited to see what t'xame of the other missiles if I had wanted to, but I took no interest in such things. SCIENCE V. LUCK. At that time, in Kentucky (said the ilon. Mr. Knott, M. C.)i the law was very strict against what it termed " games of chance." About a dozen of the boys were detected playing " seven-up " or " old sledge " for money, and the gia,iid jury found a true bill against them. Jim Stuigis was retained to defend them when the case came up, of course. The more he studied over the matter and looked into the evidence, the plainer it was that he must lose a case at last — there was no getting around that painful fact Those boys had certainly been betting money on a game of chance. Even public sympathy was roused in behalf of Sturgis. People said it was a pity to see him mar his successful career with a big prominent case like this, which must gc against him. But after several restless nights an inspired idea flashed upon Sturgis, and he sprang out of bed delighted. He thought he saw his way through. The next day he whispered around a little among his clients and a few friends, and then when the case, came up in court he acknowledged the seven-up rnd the betting, and, as his sole defence, had the astounding effrontery to put in the plea that old sledge was not a game of chance I There was the broadest sort of a smile all over the faces of that nil 1 t'i- 236 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. sophisticated audience. The judge smiled with the rest But Sturgis maintained a countenance whose earnestness was even severe. The opposite counsel tried to ridicule him out of his position, and did not succeed. The judge jested in a ponderous judicial way about the thing, but did not move him. The matter was becoming grave. The judge lost a little of his patience, and said the joke had gone far enough. Jim Sturgis said he knew of no joke in the matter — his clients could not be punished for indulging in what some people chose to consider a game of chance until it ^tdj^ proven that it was a game of chance. Judge and counsel said that would be an easy matter, and forthwith called Deacons Job, Peters, Burke, and Johnson, and Dominies Wirt and Miggles, to testify; and they unanimously and with strong feeling put down the legal quibble of Sturgis by pronouncing that old sledge was a game of chance. " What do you call it now 9 " said the judge. ** I call it a game of science 1 " retorted Stuigis ; ** and I'll prove it, too ! " They saw his little game. He brought in a cloud of witnesses, and produced an overwhelming mass of testimony, to show that old sledge was not a game of chance, but a game of science. Instead of being the simplest case in the world, it had somehow turned out to be an excessively knotty one. The judge scratched his head over it a while, and said there was no way of coming to a determination, because just as many men could be brought into court who would testify on one side as could be found to testify on the other. But he said he was willing to do the fair thing by SCIENCE V. LUCK, •37 an jdge had lone. I said luse )uld the by all parties, and would act upon any suggestion Mr. Sturgis would maku for tiie solution of tiie difficulty. Mr. Sturgis was on his feet in a second. " Impanel a jury of six of each, Luck versus Science ; give them candles and a couple of decks of cards, send tiiem into the jury room, and just abide by the result 1 " There was no disputing the fairness of the proposition. The four deacons and the two dominies were sworn in as the " chance " jurymen, and six inveterate old seven-up professors were chosen to represent the " science " side of the issue. They retired to the jury room. In about two hours Deacon Peters sent into court to borrow three dollars from a friend. [Sensation.] In about two hours more Dominie Miggles senl into court to borrow a " stake " from a friend. [Sensation.] During the next three or four hours the other dominie and the other deacons sent into court for small loans. And still the packed audience waited, for it was a prodigious occa- sion in Bull's Comers, and one in which every father of a family was necessarily interested. The rest of the story can be told briefly. About day- light the jury came in, and Deacon Job, the foreman, read the following VERDICT. We, the jury in the case of the Commonwealth of Kentucky vs. John Wheeler et al, have carefully con- sidered the points of the case, and, tested the merits of the several theories advanced, and do hereby unani- mously decide that the game commonly known z.^ old sledge or seven-up is eminently a game of science, and «3« MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. not of chance. In demonstration whereof it is hereby and herein staixl, iterated, reiterated, set forth, and made manifest that, during the entire night the " chance ** men never won a game or turned a jack, although both feats were common and frequent to the opposition ; and fur- thennore, in support of this our verdict, we call attention to the significant fact that the "chance'' men are all busted, and the " science '* men have got the money. It is the deliberate opinion of this jury that the '* chance " theory concerning seven-up is a pernicious doctrine, and calculated to inflict untold suffering and pecuniary loss upon any community that takes stock in it. " That is the way that seven-up came to be set apait and particularised in the statute-books of Kentucky as being a game not of chance but of science, and there- fore not punishable under the law," said Mr. Knott "That verdrct is of record, and holds good to this day," J<»nx.w beyond tJ,e osuTtorof ^ ""."""""V from '« of humamty. But at last If" . I I! 240 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. I the Ude of fortune turned ; young Caruthers became in- fected with small-pox of the most virulent type, and when he recovered from his illness his face was pitted like a waffle-mould, and his comeliness gone for ever. Aurelia thought to break of} the engagement at first, but pity for her unfortunate lover caused her to postpone the marriage-day for a season, and give him another trial. The very day before the wedding was to have taken place, Breckinridge, while absorbed in watching the flight of a balloon, walked into a well and fractured one of his legs, and it had to be taken off above the knee. Again Aurelia was moved to break the engagement, but again love triumphed, and she set the day forward and gave him another chance to reform. And again misfortune overtook the unhappy youth. He lost one arm by the premature discharge of a Fourth- of-July cannon, and within three months he got the other pulled out by a carding-machine. Aurelia's heart was almost crushed by these latter calamities. She could not but be deeply grieved to see her lover passing from her by piecemeal, feeling, as she did, that he could not last for ever under this disastrous process of reduction, yet knowing of no way to stop its dreadful career, and in her tearful despair she almost regretted, like brokers who hold on and Ios^ that she had not taken him at first, be£Dre he had sutiSered sach an alarming depreciation. Still, her brare soul bore her up, and she resolved to bear with her friend's uztaatural disposition yet a little longer. Again the wedi dg-day approached, and again di» appointibient overshadowed it : Caruthers fell ill with the erysipelas^ and lost the use of one of his eyes entirely. AUREUA*S UNFORTUNATE YOUNG MAN. 341 rom not and ^kers I first, ^tlon. bear Inger. di» the Itirely. The friends and relatives of the bride, considering that she had ab-eady put up with more than could reasonably be expected of her, now came forward and insisted that the match should be broken off; but after wavering awhile, Aurelia, with a generous spirit which did her credit, said she had reflected calmly upon the matter, and could not discover that Breckinridge was to blame. So she extended the time once more, and he broke his other leg. It was a sad day for the poor girl when she saw the surgeons reverendy bearing away the sack whose uses she had learned by previous experience, and her heart told her the bitter truth that some more of her lover was gone. She felt that the field of her affections was growing more and more circumscribed every day, but once more she frowned down her relatives and renewed her betrothal. Shortly before the time set for the nuptials another disaster occtirred. There was but one man scalped by the Owens River Indians last year. That man was WilliamsoB Breckinridge Caruthers, of New Jersey. He was huin^g home with happiness in his heart, when he lost his hair for ever, and in that hour of bitterness he almost cursed the mistaken mercy that had spared his head At last Aurelia is in serious perplexity as to what she ought to do. She still loves her Breckinridge, she writes, wiUi truly womanly feeling — she still loves what is left of him — ^but her parents are bitterly opposed to the match, because he has no property and is disabled from working, and she has not sufficient means to support both com- Q 343 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, fortably. "Now, what should she do?" she asks with painful and anxious solicitude. It is a delicate question ; it is one which involves the lifelong happiness of a woman, and that of nearly two- thirds of a man, and I feel that it would be assuming too great a responsibility to do more than make a mere sug- gestion in the case. How would it do to build to him ? It Aurelia can afford the expense, let her furnish her mutilated lover with wooden arms and wooden legs, and a glass eye and a wig, and give him another show ; give him ninety days, without grace, and if he does not break his neck in the meantime, marry him and take the chances. It does not seem to me that there is not much risk, any way, Aurelia, because if he sticks to his singular propensity for damaging himself every time he sees; a good opportunity, his next experiment is bound to finish him, and then you are safe, married or single. If married, the wooden legs and such other valuables as he may possess revert to the widow, and you see you sustain no actual loss save the cherished firagment of a noble but most unfortunate husband, who honestly strove to do right, but whose extraordinary instincts were against him. Try it, Maria. I have thought the matter over carefully and well, and it is the only chance I see for you. It would have been a happy conceit on the part of Caruthers if he had started with his neck and broken that first ; but since he has seen fit to choose a different policy and string himself out as long as possible, I do not think we ought to upbraid him for it if he has enjoyed it We must do the best we can under the circumstances, and try not to feel exasperated at him. MEDIAEVAL ROMANCE. CHAPTER I. es as ; you tofa strove ainst over for art of iroken ■erent I do joyed ices, THE SECRET REVEALED. It was night. Stillness reigned in the grand old feudal castle of Klugenstein. The year 1222 was drawing to a dose. Far away up in the tallest of the castle's towers a single light glimmered. A secret council was being held there. The stem old lord of Klugenstein sat in a chair of state meditating. Presently he said, with a tender accent — « My daughter ! " A young man of noble presence, clad from head to heel in knighdy mail, answered — "Speak, father!" " My daughter, the time is come for the revealing of the mystery that hath puzzled all your young life. Know, then, that it had its birth in the matters whic|^ I shall now unfold. My brother Ulrich is the great Duke of Brandenburgh. Our father, on his death-bed, decreed that if no son were bom to Uhich the succession should pass to my house, provided a son were bom to me. And further, in case no son were bom to either, but only daughters, then the succession should pass to Q 1 m '' '-'■'-•'" "ifwir'ninrif iiiiMji 344 AfARI^ TWAIN'S SKETCHES, Ulrich's daughter if she proved stainless; if she did not, my daughter should succeed if she retained a blame- less name. And so I and my old wife here prayed fervently for the good boon of a son, but the prayer was vain. You were bom to us. I was in despair. I saw the mighty prize slipping from my grasp, the splendid dream vanishing away. And I had been so hopeful 1 Five years had Ulrich lived in wedlock, and yet his wife had borne no heir of either sex. *' * But hold,' I said : ' all is not lost' A saving scheme had shot athwart my brain. You were bom at midnight Only the leech, the nurse, and six waiting- women knew your sex. I hanged them every one before an hour sped. Next moming all the barony went mad with rejoicing over the proclamation thr: a son was bom to Klugenstein, an heir to mighty Brandenburgh I And well the secret has been kept Your mother's own sister nursed your infancy, and from that time forward we feared nothing. " When you were ten years old a daughter was bom to Ulrich. We grieved, but hoped for good results from measles, or physicians, or other natural enemies of infancy, but were always disappointed. She lived, she throve — Heaven's malison upon her! But it is nothing. We are safe. For, ha ha ! have we not a •on ? And is not our son the future Duke ? Our well- beloved Conrad, is it not so ? — for, woman of eight-and- twenty years as you are, my child, none other name than that hath ever fallen to you I " Now it hath come to pass that age hath laid its hand upon my brother, and he waxes feeble. The cares of did ame- ayed rayer spair. ), the en so If and saving )omat faiting- before nt mad as bom I And n sistei e feaied Vr r IS" i' .: rasbom results [enemies le lived, ;ut it is [e not a >ur well- ight-and- lethan its hand cares of MEDIAEVAL ROMANCE, HS state do tax him sore. Therefore he wills that you shall come to him and be already Duke in act, though not yet in name. Your servitors are ready — ^you journey forth to-night "Novr listen welL Remember every word I say. There is a law as old as Germany, that if any woman sit for a single instant in the great ducal chair before she hath been absolutely crowned in presence of the people she SHALL DiEl So heed my words. Pretend humility. Pronounce your judgments from die Premier's chair, which stands at the foot of the throne. Do this until yo" Towned and safe. It is not likely that your sex '^\ ^7er be discovered, but still it is the part of wi» dom to make all things as safe as may be in this treache' rous earthly life." " Oh, my father, is it for this my life hath been a lie ? Was it that I might cheat my unoffending cousin of her rights ? Spare me, father, spare your child 1 " " What, hussy 1 Is this my reward for the august for- tune my brain has wrought for thee ? By the bones of my father, this pulling sentiment of thine but ill accords with my humour. Betake thee to the Duke instantly ! And beware how thou meddlest with my purpose ! " Let this sufii j of the conversation. It is enough for us to know tb x the prayers, the entreaties, and the tears of the gentle-natured girl availed nothing. Neither they nor anything could move the stout old lord of Klugenstein. And so, at last, with a heavy heart, the daughter saw the castle gates close behind her, and found herself riding away in the darkness surrounded by a knightly array of armed vassals and a brave following of servants. \ 34i6 MARK TWATIPS SKETCHES. The old baron sat silent for many minutes after his daught 3 departure, and then he turned to his sad wife and said — ** Dame, our matters seem speeding fairly. It is fill three months since I sent the shrewd and handsome Count Detzin on his devilish mission to my brother's daughter Constance. If he fail we are not wholly safe, but if he do succeed no power can bar our girl from being Duchess e'en though ill fortune should decree she never should be Duke ! " ** My heart is full of bodings, yet all may still be weU." " Tush, woman ! Leave the owls to croak. To bed with ye, and dream of Brandenburgh and grandeur 1 " CHAPTER II. FESTIVITY AND TEARS. Six days after the occurrences related in the above chapter, the brilliant capital of the Duchy of Branden- burgh was resplendent with military pageantry, and noisy with the rejoicings of loyal multitudes, for Conrad, the young heir to the crown, was come. The old Duke's heart was full of happiness, for Conrad's handsome person and graceful bearing had won his love at once. The great halls of the palace were thronged with nobles, who welcomed Conrad bravely ; and so bright and happy did all things seem that he felt his fears and sorrows passing away, and giving place to a comforting contentment MEDIAEVAL ROMANCE, m er hii dwife isM dsome other's y safe, I being 5 never itiUbe To bed 1 1" B!it in a remote apartment of the palace a scene of a different nature was transpiring. By a window stood the Duke's only child, the Lady Constance. Her eyes were red and swollen, and full of tears. She was alone. Pre- sently she fell to weeping anew, and said aloud — " The villain Detzin is gone— has fled the dukedom I I could not believe it at first, but, alas I it is too true. And I loved him so. I dared to love him though I knew the Duke my father would never let me wed him. I loved him — but now I hate him I With all my soul I hate him 1 Oh, what is to become of me ? I am lost, lost, lost I I shall go mad 1 CHAPTER III. J above randen- id noisy rad, the Duke's ; person The es, who ppy did passing t THE PLOT THICKENS. A FEW months drifted by. All men published the praises of the young Conrad's government, and extolled the wisdom of his judgments, the mercifulness of his sen- tences, and the modesty with which he bore himself in his great office. The old Duke soon gave everything into his hands, and sat apart and listened with proud satisfaction while his heir delivered the decrees of the crown from the seat of the premier. It seemed plain that one so loved and praised and honoured of all men as Conrad was could not be otherwise than happy. But, strangely enough, he was not For he saw with dismay that the Princess Constance had begun to love himl The love of tlie rest of the world was happy fortune foi it 348 MARK TIVAIN*S SKETCHES, him, but this was freighted with danger I And he saw, moreover, that the delighted Duke had discovered his daughters passion likewise, and was already dreaming of a marriage. ^ sry day somewhat of the deep sadness that had be& ,r. the princess's face faded away ; every day hope and animation beamed brighter from her eye ; and by-and-by even vagrant smiles visited the &ce that had been so troubled. Conrad was appalled. He bitterly cursed himself for having yielded to the instinct that had made him seek the companionship of one of his own sex when he was new and a stranger in the palace — ^when he was sorrow^ ful and yearned for a sympathy such as only women can give or feel. He now began to avoid his cousin. But this only made matters worse, for, naturally enough, the more he avoided her the more she cast herself in his way. He marvelled at this at firsts and next it startled him. The girl haunted him ; she hunted him ; she happened upon him at all times and in all places, in the night as well as in the day. She seemed singularly anxious. There was surely a mystery somewhere. This could not go on for ever. All the world was talking about it The Duke was beginning to look pes* plexed. Poor Conrad was becoming a very ghost through dread and dire distress. One day as he was emerging from a private anteroom attached to the picture gallery Constance confronted him, and, seizing both his hands in hers, exclaimed — "Oh, why do you avoid me? What have I done — what have I said, to lose your kind opinion of me — ^for surely I had it once ? Conrad, do not desoise me, but medijeval romance. 349 as ras ing ids pity a tortured heart ? I cannot, cannot, hold the wordi unspoken longer, lest they kill me — I love you, Con- rad ! There, despise me if you must, but they would\^ uttered I " Conrad was speechless. Constance hesitated a mo- ment, and then, misinterpreting his silence, a wild glad- ness flamed in her eyes, and she flung her arms about hii neck and said — "You relent I you relent! You can love me — you wiU love me I Oh, say you will, my own, my worshipped Conrad!" Conrad groaned aloud. A sickly pallor overspread his countenance, and he trembled like an aspen. Pre- sently, in desperation, he thrust the poor girl from him, and cried— "You know not what you ask ! It is for ever and ever impossible!" And then he fled like a criminal, and left the princess stupefied with amazement. A minute afterward she was crying and sobbing there, and Conrad was crying and sobbing in his chamber. Botn were in despair. Both saw ruin staring them in the face. By-and-by Constance rose slowly to her feet and moved away, saying — "To think that he was despising my love at the very moment that I thought it was melting his cruel heart 1 I hate him ! He spumed me— did this man — he spumed me from him like a dog I " ■, ■ ;i >ut 3|0 MARK TWAIN*S SKETCHES. CHAPTER IV. THE AWFUL REVELATION. Time passed on. A settled sadness rested once more upon the countenance of the good Duke's daughter. She and Conrad were seen together no more now. The Duke grieved at this. But as the weeks wore away Conrad's coloiur came back to his cheeks, and his old-time vivadQr to his eye, and he administered the government with a dear and steadily ripening wisdom. Presently a strange whisper began to be heard about the palace. It grew louder; it spread £irther. The gossips of the city got hold of it. It swept the dukedom. And this is what the whisper said — ** The Lady Constance hath given birth to a child 1 " When the lord of Klugenstein heard it he swung his plumed helmet thrice around his head and shouted — ** Long live Duke Conrad I — ^for lo, his crown is sure from this day forward 1 Detzin has done his errand well, and the good scoundrel shall be rewarded t" And he spread the tidings far and wide, and for eight- and-forty hours no soul in all the barony but did dance and sing, carouse and illuminate, to celebrate the great event, and all at proud and happy old Klugenstein's expense. MEDIEVAL ROMANCE. «$« CHAPTER V. lance THI FRIGHTFUL CATASTROPHE. The trial was at hand. All the great lords and barons of Brandenburgh were assembled in the Hall of Justice in the ducal palace. No space was left unoccupied where there was room for a spectator to stand or sit Conrad, dad in purple and ermine, sat in the premier's chair, and on either side sat the great judges of the realm. The old Duke had sternly commanded that the trial of his daughter should proceed without favour, and then had taken to his bed broken hearted. His days were num- bered. Poor Conrad had begged, as for his very life, that he might be spared the misery of sitting in judgment upon his cousin's crime, but it did not avail The saddest heart in all that great assemblage was in Conrad's breast The gladdest was in his father's, for, unknown to his daughter « Conrad," the old Baron Klugenstein was. come, and was among the crowd of nobles, triumphant in the swelling fortunes of his house. After the heralds had made due proclamation and the other preliminaries had followed, the venerable Lord Chief Justice said — " Prisoner, stand forth ! " The unhappy princess rose, and stood unveiled before the vast multitude. The Lord Chief Justice continued — ''Most noble lady, before the great judges of this realm it hath been charged and proven that out of holy wedlock your Grace hath given birth unto a child, and HI I M- ,1 • .) •ft MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. by our ancient law the penalty is death excepting in one sole contingency, whereof his Grace the acting Duke, our good Lord Conrad, will advertise you in his solemn sentence now; wherefore give heed." Conrad stretched forth the reluctant sceptre, and in the self-same moment the womanly heart beneath his robe yearned pityingly toward the doomed prisoner, and the tears came into his eyes. He opened his lips to speak, but the Lord Chief Justice said quickly — '* Not there, your Grace, not there I It is not lawful to pronounce judgment upon any of the ducal line savb FROM THE DUCAL THRONE 1" A shudder went to the heart of poor Conrad, and a tremor shook the iron frame of his old father likewise. Conrad had not been crowned— dared he profane the throne ? He hesitated and turned pale with fear. But it must be done. Wondering eyes were ahready upon him. They would be suspicious eyes if he hesi- tated longer. He ascended the throne. Presently he stretched forth the sceptre again, and said — " Prisoner, in the name of our sovereign lord Ulrich, Duke of Brandenburgh, I proceed to the solemn duty that hath devolved upon me. Give heed to my words. By die ancient law of the land, except you produce the partner of your guilt and deliver him up to the execu- tioner you must surely die. Embrace this opportunity — fiave yourself while yet you may. Name the father of your child ! " A solemn hush fell upon the great court — z. silence so profound that men could hear then: own hearts beat Then the Drincess slowly turned, with eyes gleaming medijEVal romance. s$3 with hate, and pointing her finger straight at Conrad, said — "Thou art the man I" An appalling conviction of his helpless, hopeless peril ■truck a chill to Conrad's heart like the chill of death itsel£ What power on earth could save him t To dis- prove the charge he must reveal that he was a woman, and for an uncrowned woman to sit m the ducal chair was death I At one and the same moment he and hit grim old father swooned and fell to the ground. The remainder of this thrilling and eventful story will NOT be found in this or any other publication, either now or at any future time. The truth is, I have got my hero (or herome) into such a particularly close place that I do not see how I am ever going to get him (or her) out of it again, and therefore I will wash my hands of the whole business, and leave that person to get out the best way that offers —or else stay there. I thought it was going to be easy enongh to straighten out that little difficulty, but it looks different now. I »>',-.*■;-,: .; . ,.i.i r- ■■>■ i V ;=' :\l '■(' i i MISPLACED CONFIDENCE. ** Just about the dose of that long, hard winter," said the Sunday-school superintendent, "as I was wending toward my duties one brilliant Sabbath morning, I glanced down toward the levee, and there lay the City of Hartford steamer! No mistake about it: there she was, puffing and panting after her long pilgrimage through the ice. A glad sight ? Well, I should say so t And then came a pang right away because I should have to instruct empty benches, sure; the youngsters would all be ofif welcoming the first steamboat of the season. You can imagine how surprised I was when I opened the door and saw half the benches full ! My gratitude was free, large, and sincere. I resolved that they should not find me unappreciative. *' I said, *■ Boys, you cannot think how proud it makes me to see you here, nor what renewed assurance it gives me of your affection. I confess that I said to myself, as I came along and saw that the City of Hartford was in ^• '**No! btaisshethoughV ''And, as quick as any flash of lightning, I stood in the presence of empty benches 1 I had brought them th; news mysel£" THE WIDOW'S PROTEST. One of the saddest things that ever came under my notice (said the banker's clerk) was there in Coming, during the war. Dan Murphy enlisted as a privat :, md fought very bravely. The boys all liked him, and when a wound by-and-by weakened him down till carrying a musket was too heavy work for him, they clubbed to- gether and fixed him up as a sutler. He made money then, and sent it always to his wife to bank for him. She was a washer and ironer, and knew enough by hard experience to keep money when she got it. She didn't waste a penny. On the contrary, she began to get miserly as her bank account grew. Sh, irnieved to part with a cent, poor creature, for twice in u i hard-working life she had known what it was to be hungry, cold, fiiendless, sick, and without a dollar in the world, and she had a haunting dread of siifering so again. Well, at last Dan died ; and the boys, in testimony of their esteem and respect for him, telegraphed to Mrs. Murphy to know if she would like to have him embalmed and sent home ; when you know the usual custom was to dump a poor devil like him into a shallow hole, and fAm inform his friends what had become of him. Mrs. Murphy jumped to the conclusion that it would only III iS6 MARK TIVAIN*S SKETCHES, M I cost two or three dollars to embalm her dead husband, and so she telegraphed *' Yes." It was at the "wake" that the bill for embalming arrived and was presented to the widow. She uttered a wild sad wail that pierced every heart, and said, " Sivinty-foive dollars for stooffin* Dan, blister their sowls ! Did thim divils suppose I was goin' to stairt a Museim, that I'd be dalin' in such expinsive curiassities ! " The banker's clerk said there was not a diy eye in the house. )fiJi *C » *. . » POLITICAL ECONOMY. Political Economy is the basis of all good govern- ment The wisest men of all ages have brought to bear upon this subject the [Here I was interrupted and informed that a stranger wished to see me down at the door. I went and confronted him, and asked to know his business, struggling all the time to keep a tight rein on my teething political economy ideas, and not let them break away from me or get tangled in their harness. And privately I wished the stranger was in the bottom of the canal with a cargo of wheat on top of him. I was all in a fever, but he was cooL He said he was sorry to disturb me, but as he was passing he noticed that I needed some lightning-rods. I said, " Yes, yes— go on— what about it ? ** He said there was nothing about it, in particular — nothing except that he would like to put them up for me. I am new to housekeep- ing ; have been used to hotels and boarding-houses all my life. Like anybody else of similar experience, I try to appear (to strangers) to be an old housekeeper ; consequently I said in an off-hand way that I had been intending for some time tv iiave six or eight lightning- rods put up, but—— The stranger started, and looked inquiringly at me, but I was serene. I thought that if I chanced to make any mistakes he would not catch me by my countenance. He said he would rather have my custom than any man's in town. I said, " All right," and started off to wrestle with my great subject again, when he called me back and said it would be necessary to know exactly how many "points" I wanted put up, what parts of the bottse I wanted them on, and what quality of rod I prefixed. It R X -I tm »5« MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. was dose quarters for a man not used to the exigencies of house- keeping, but I went through creditably, and he probably never sus- pected that I was a novice. I told him to put up eight "points,** and put them all on the roo^ and use the best quality of rod. He said he could furnish the "plain " article at 20 cents a foot ; " cop> pered," 25 cents; "zinc-plated, spiral-twist," at 30 cents, that would stop a streak of lightning any time, no matter where it was bound, and " render its errand harmless and its further progress apocryphal." I said apocryphal was no slouch of a word, emanat- ing from the source it did, but, philology aside^ I liked the spiral- twist and would take that brand. Then he said he could make two hundred and fifty feet answer ; but to do it right, and make the best job in town of it, and attract the admiration of the just and the imjust alike, and compel all parties to say they never saw a more symmetrical and hypothetical display of lightning-rods since they were bom, he supposed he really couldn't get along without four hundred, though he was not vindictive, and trusted he was willing to try. I said, go ahead and use four hundred, and make any kind of a job he pleased out of it, but let me get back to my work. So I got rid of him at last ; and now, after half-an-hour spent in get- ting my train of political economy thoughts coupled together again, I am ready to go on once more.] richest treasures of their genius, their experience of life, and their learning. The great lights of commercial juris- prudence, international confraternity, and biological de- viation, of all ages, all civilisations, and all nationalities, from Zoroaster down to Horace Greeley, have [Here I was interrupted again, and required to go down and con- fer further with that lightning-red man. I hurried off, boiling and surging with prodigious thoughts wombed in words of such majesty that each one of them was in itself a straggling procession of sylla- bles that might be fifteen minutes passing a given point, and once more I confronted him— he so calm and sweet, I so hot and frenzied. iHe was standing in the contemplative attitude of the Colossus of use- SUB- Its," He cop- that twas jgress Minat- ipiral- LC two lie best ndthe a more ce they )ut four [Willing my kind rk. So in get- sragMOf of life, aljuris- Lcal de- nalities, andoMi' l)Uing and majesty of syUa- [ and ones frenzied. dIossus of POLITICAL ECONOMY. 3S9 Rhodes, wtth one foot on my infant tuberose, and the other among my pansies, his hands on his hips, his hat-brim tilted forward, one eye shut and the other gazing critically and admiringly in the direction of my principal chimney. He said now there was a state of things to make a man glad to be alive ; and added, " I leave it Xoyou if you ever saw anything more deliriously picturesque than eight lightning-rods on one chimney?" I said I had no present recollection of anything that transcended it He said that in his opinion nothing on this earth but Niagara Falls was superior to it in the way of natural scenery. All that was needed now, he verily believed, to make my house a perfect balm to the eye, was to kind of touch up the other chimneys a little, and thus "add to the generous coup deceit a soothing uniformity of achievement which would allay the excitement naturally consequent upon the first coup d^Hat,*^ I asked him if he learned to talk out of a book, and if I could borrow it anywhere ? He smiled pleasantly, and said that his manner of speaking was not taught in books, and that nothing but fiuniliarity with lightning could enable a man to handle his conver< sational style with impunity. He then figured up an estimate, and said that about eight more rods scattered about my roof would about fix me right, and he guessed five hundred feet of stuff would do it; and added that the first eight had got a little the start of him, so to speak, and used up a mere trifle of material more than he had cal- culated on — a hundred feet or along there. I said I was in a dreadful hurry, and I wished we could get this business permanently mapped out, so that I could go on with my work. He said, '* I could have put up those eight rods, and marched off about my business— some men would have done it. But no : I said to myself, this man is a stranger to me, and I will die before I'll wrong him ; there ain't lightning-rods enough on that house, and for one I'll never stir oat of my tracks till I've done as I would be done by, and told him so. Stranger, my duty is accomplished ; if the recalcitrant and dephlogistic messenger of heaven strikes your " " There, now, there," I said, ** put on the other eight — add five hundred feet of spiral twist — do anything and everything you want to do; but calm your sufferings, and try to keep your feelings where you can reach them with the dictionary. Meanwhile, if we understand each R a i "\ it i iSSimmasm 260 MAXir TWAIN'S SKETCHES, other now, I will go to work again." I think I have been sitting here a full hour, this time, trying to get back to where I was when my train of thought v? - broken up by the last interruption; bat I bdieve I have accompli<(bed it at last, and may venture to proceed again.] wrestled with this great subject, and the greatest among them have found it a worthy adversary, and one that always comes up fresh and smiling after every throw. The mighty Confucius said that he would rather be a profound political economist than chief of police. Cicero frequently said that political economy was the grandest consummation that the human mind was capable of con- suming; and even our own Greeley has said vaguely but forcibly that [Here the lightning-rod man sent up another call for me. I went down in a state of mind bordering on impatience. He said he would rather have died than interrupt me, but when he was employed to do a job, and that job was expected to be done in a dean workmanlike manner, and when it was finished and fatigue urged him to seek the rest and recreation he stood so mudi in need of, and he was about to do it, but looked up and sfiw at a glance that all the calculations had been a little out, and if a thunderstorm were to come up and that house whidi he felt a personal interest in stood there with nothing on earth to protect it but sixteen lightning- rods "Let us have peace !" I shrieked. " Put up a hundred and fifty t Put some on the kitchen ! Put a dozen on the bam ! Put a couple on the cow I— put one on the cook 1— scatter them all over the persecuted place till it looks like a linc-plated, spiral- twisted, silver-mounted cane-brake! Move! Use up all the material you can get your hands on, and when you run out of lightning-rods put up ram-rods, cam-rods, stair-rods, piston-rods • anything that will pander to your dismal appetite for artificial scenery, and bring respite to my raging brain and healing to my f?'?. POLITICAL ECONOMY. fccerated soul I" Whoii™ •«id "He would now Dm™-!, v »ns«I>«nds damiilT n.rf "•""gh yet t. write on ^„„bu *'"'"'r"« """U"* I .r«ta "Political economy • ,. "^ "'»•'<'• PM^opty.] "^e he observed thatftf ft cf^d° '"'' » ''" Venetian ^ »od live his misspent r ' ^^"^ ^ '<> go ^ l"cid and nnintoZtedt,"'"^ '^''' ""^ ^""'d «ive -ot Of frivolous r ™b";'7': '" *« 'omposi.^„, «^»o«y. Washin^on i fv ""^ VP°" P°^'>^ fuch names as B^er B^It v?^' "'«"'^'« ^aence: inperishablylinkJSS. ^t^e ^•"'""' «■""*• «« "" the ninth boot of the IKad hi sL":""^ ^°"'"' "riatji.stitia,rualcoeIuffl, ^ mortem mMa,„tebenu»^ WlJacethoce^-parteKsi ^ i-olihcinne-coiiomicoest" togetlL'^h'^/J^,f f^ «'''<=eptions of the old poet, .them, and the subli„t of L i" ""'"'"« ""^ '^'°^^ ■"•^trated, have sin^ ouMhT? "'^'^'^ *^^ "« •"orecelebmedtha/any^Ite^^-!!!^ ""• "^^ •' ft^^premise. Ni,. hu„S^^', '"»«/» "- J „„ ^ ™,*'.«"»">"wia be honoured. t«^l fclhatallf This deque «^"'^t„u.t.tudeofp::;?e;rs^-t':rr^A^«. fl ■ii m-w-'M 362 JtfAXir TWAIN*S SKETCHES, —Mocking at the ligbtaing.rodsl' Bless my life, did they ueifar see liny lightning*rod3 before? Never saw 'such a si:ac1> tf them on one establishment,' did I understand you to say T i fiXL stt^p down and critically observe this populai: ebullition of rgnorncci ."] Thrbe Days Later. — ^We are all about worn out For four-and-twenty hours our bristling premises were the talk and wonder of the town. The theatres lan- guished, for their happiest scenic inventions were tame and commonplace compared with my lightning- > Is. Our iiieet was blocked night and day with spectators, and .among Utera were many who came from the country to see. It ^/as a blessed relief, on the second day, when a thunder storm came up and the lightning began to '* go for " my house, as the historian Josephus quaintly phrases it It cleared the galleries, so to speak. In five minutes there was not a spectator within half a mile of my place; but all the high houses about that distance away were full, windows, roof, and all. And well they might be, for all the falling stars and Fourth of July fireworks of a generation, put together and rained down simultaneously out of heaven in one brilliant shower upon one helpless roof, would not have any advantage of the pyrotechnic display that was making my house so magnificently con- spicuous in the general gloom of the storm. By actual count, the lightning struck at my establishment seven hundred and sixty-four times in forty minutes, but tripped on one of those faithfiil rods every time, and slid down the spiral twist and shot into the earth before it probably had time to be surprised at the way the thing was done. And through all that bombardment only one patch of slates was ripped up, and that was because, for a single POLITICAL ECONOMY, 363 \': tben\ il 3tep \ out were s Ian- tame ;tators, ountry , when to "go phrases ninutes ' place ; j,y were : be, for ks of a neously helpless itechnic itly con- y actual It seven tripped id down probably as done, patch of a single instant, the rods in the vicinity were transporting all the lightning they could possibly accommodate. Well, no- thing was ever seen like it since the world began. For one whole day and night not a member of my family put his head out of the window but he got the hair snatched o£f it as smooth as a billiard-ball ; and, if the reader will believe me, not one of us ever dreamt of stirring abroad. But at last the awfiil siege came to an end — ^because there was absolutely no more electricity left in the clouds above us within grappling distance of my insatiable rods. Then I sallied forth, and gathered daring workmen to- gether, and not a bite or a nap did we take till the premises were utterly stripped of all their terrific arma- ment except just three rods on the house, one on the kitchen, and one on the bam — and behold these remain there even unto this day. And then, and not till then, the people ventured to use our street again. I will remark here, in passing, that during that fearful time I did not continue my essay upon political economy. I am not even yet settled enough in nerve and brain to resume it. To Whom it May Concern. — Parties having need of three thousand two hundred and eleven feet of best quality zinc-plated spiral-twist lightning-rod stuff, and sixteen-hundred and thirty-one silver-tipped points, all in tolerable repair (and, although much worn by use, still equal to any ordinary emergency), can hear of a bargain by addressing the publisher. ;;Mi 1i (. ! ■ <'<' I I I 'I "■;! ! i THE KILLING OF JULIUS CiESAR "LOCALISED." Being the only true and ratable account ever published; tahm from the Roman " Daily Evening Fcisces" of the date of that tremendous occurrence. Nothing in the world affords a newspaper reporter so much satisfaction as gathering up the details of a bloody and mysterious murder, and writing them up with aggra- vating circumstantiality. He takes a living delight in this labour of love — ^for such it is to him--especially if he knows that all the other papers have gone to press, and bis will be the only one that will contain the dreadful intelligence. A feeling of regret has often come over me that I was not reporting in Rome when Caesar was killed — reporting on an evening paper, and the only one in the city, and getting at least twelve hours ahead of the morning paper boys with this most magnificent "item'' that ever fell to the lot of the craft. O'her events have happened as startling as this, but none that possessed so peculiarly all the characteristics of the favourite "item'* of the present day, magnified into grandeur and sublimity by the high rank, &me, and social and political standing of the actors in it In imagmation I have seen myself THE KJLUNG OF JULIUS CJSSAJR. 36$ , » ,» iding Lyself skirmishing around old Rome, button-holing soldiers, senators, and citizens by turns, and transferring " all the particulars " from them to my note-book. Ah ! if I had lived in those days, I would have written up that item gloatingly, and spiced it with a little moral- izing here and ^jlenty of blood there ; and some dark, shuddering mystery ; and praise and pity for some, and misrepresentation and abuse for others (who did not patronize the paper), and gory gashes, and notes of warning as to the tendency of the times, and extravagant descriptions of the excitement in the Senate-house and the street, and all that sort of thing. However, as I was not permitted to report Csesai's assassination the regular way, it has at least afforded me rare satisfaction to translate the following able account of it from the original Latin of the Roman Daily Evening Fasces of that date — second edition : — " Our usually quiet city of Rome was thrown into a state of wild excitement yesterday by the occurrence of one of those bloody aftrays which sicken the heart, and fill the soul with fear, while they inspire all thinking men with forebodings for the future of a city where human life is held so cheaply, and the gravest laws are so openly set at defiance. As the result of that affray, it is our painful duty, as public journalists, to record the death of one of our most esteemed citizens — ^a man whose name is known wherever this paper circulates, and whose fame it has been our pleasure and our privilege to ex. te; d, and also to protect from the tongue of slander and falsehood to the best of our poor ability. We retier to Mr. J. Caesar, the Emperor-elect 366 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, ;i 11 'i '* The facts of the case, as nearly as our reporter could determine them from the conflicting statements of eye- witnesses, were about as follows: — The affair was an election row, of course. Nine-tenths of the ghastly butcheries that disgrace the city now-a-days grow out of the bickerings, and jealousies, and animosities engendered by these accursed elections. Rome would be the gainer by it if her very constables were elected to serve a century ; for in our experience we have never even been able to choose a dog-pelter without celebrating the event with a dozen knockdowns, and a general cramming of the station-house with drunken vagabonds over night. It is said that when the immense majority for Csesar at the polls in the market was declared the other day, and the crown was offered to that gentleman, even his amazing unselfishness in refusing it three times was not sufficient to save him from the whispered insults of such men as Casca, of the Tenth Ward, and other hirelings of the disappointed candidate, hailing mostly from the Eleventh and Thirteenth and other outside districts, who were overheard speaking ironically and contemptuously of Mr. Caesar's conduct upon that occasion. <* We arc further informed that there are many among us who think they are justified in believing that the assassination of Julius Caesar was a put-up thing — z, cut- and-dried arrangement, hatched by Marcus Brutus and a lot of his hired roughs, and carried out only too faithfully according to the programme. Whether there be good grounds for this suspicion or not, we leave to the people to judge for themselves, only asking that they will read the following account of the sad occurrence THE KILLING OF JULIUS CMSAR. 167 :ence carefully and dispassionately before they render that judgment " The Senate was already in session, and Caesar was coming down the street towards the capitol, conversing with some personal friends, and followed, as usual, by a large number of citizens. Just as he was passing in front of Demosthenes and Thucydides's drug-store, he was observing casually to a gentleman, who, our informant thinks, is a fortune-teller, that the Ides of March were come. The reply was, * Yes, they are come but not gone yet' At this moment Artemidorus stepped up and passed the time of day, and asked Caesar to read a schedule or a tract, or something of the kind, which he had brought for his perusal. Mr. Decius Brutus also said something about an ' humble suit ' which he wanted read. Artemidorus begged that attention might be paid to his first, because it was of personal consequence to Caesar. The latter replied that what concerned himself should be read last, or words to that effect Artemidorus begged and beseeched him to read the paper instantly.* However, Caesar shook him off, and refused to read any petition in the street. He then entered the capitol, and the crowd followed him. " About this time the following conversation was over- heard, and we consider that, taken in con^ieclicn with the events which succeeded it, it bears an appalling sig- nificance. Mr. Fapilius Lena remarked to George W. * Mark that : it is hinted by William Shakspeare, who saw the beginning and the end of the unfortunate affray, that this "schedule" was simply a; note discovering to Csesar that a plot was brewing to lake his life. ' ' ■«f ( ' f I 168 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, Cassius (commonly known as the ' Nobby Boy of the Third Ward/) a bruiser in the pay of the Opposition, that he hoped his enterprise to-day might thrive ; and when Cassius asked, ' What enterprise ? ' he only closed his left eye temporarily, and said with simulated indifference, * Fare you well,' and sauntered towards Caesar. Marcus Brutus, who is suspected of being the ringleader of the band that killed Caesar, asked what it was that Lena had said. Cassius told him, and added in a low tone, ' I fear our purpose is discovered.* " Brutus told his wretched accomplice to keep an eye on Lena, and a moment after Cassius urged that lean and hungry vagrant, Casca, whose reputation here is none of the best, to be sudden, for ^ feared prevention. He then turned to Brutus, apparently much excited, and asked what should be done, and swore that either he or Caesar should never turn back — he would kill himself first At this time Csesar was talking to some of the back- country members about the approaching fall elections, and paying little attention to what was going on around him. Billy Trebonius got into conversation with the people's friend and Caesar's — Mark Antony — and under some pretence or other got him away, and Brutus, Lecius, Casca, Cinna, Metellus Cimber, and others of the gang of infamous desperados that infest Rome at present, closed around the doomed Caesar. Then Metellus Cimber knelt down and begged that his brother might be recalled from banishment, but Caesar rebuked him for his fawning, sneaking conduct, and refused to grant his petition. Immediately, at Cimber's request, first Brutus and then Cassius begged for the return of the banished THR KILLING OF JUUUS CjESAR, 969 ler lus for ed Publius ; but Cflesar still refused He said he could not be moved ; that he was as fixed as the North Star, and proceeded to tpeak in the most complimentary terms of the firmness of that star, and its steady character. Then he said he was like it, and he believed he was the only man in the country that was ; therefore, since he was 'constant' that Cimber should be banished, he was also 'constant' that he should stay banished, and he'd be d — d if he didn't keep him so I '< Instantly seizing upon this shallow pretext for a fight, Casca sprung at Csesar and struck him with a dirk, Csesar grabbing him by the arm with his right hand, and launching a blow straight firom the shoulder with his left, that sent the reptile bleeding to the earth. He then backed up against Pompe/s statue, and squared himself to receive his assailants. Cassius and Cimber and Cinna rushed upon him with their daggers drawn, and the former succeeded in inflicting a wound upon his body; but before he could strike again, and before either of the others could strike at all, Csesar stretched Ihe three miscreants at his feet with as many blows of his powerful fist By this time the Senate was in an indescribable uproar ; the throng of citizens in the lobbies had blockaded the doors in their firantic efiforts to escape from the building, the sergeant-at-arms and his assistants were struggling with the assassins, venerable senators had cast aside their encumbering robes, and were leaping over benches and flying down' the aisles in wild confusion towards the shelter of the committee-rooms, and a thou- sand voices were shouting ' Po-lice ! Fo-lice 1' in dis- cordant tones that rose above the frightful din like 1 I S7o MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. I II Mi I i shrieking winds above the roaring of a tempest. And amid it all, great Caesar stood with his back against the statue, like a lion at bay, and fought his assailants wea- ponless and hand to hand, with the defiant bearing and the unwavering courage which he had shown before on many a bloody field. Billy Trebonius and Caius Legarius struck him with tlitfhr daggers and fell, as their brother- conspirators before them had fallen. But at last, when Caesar saw his old friend Brutus step forward, armed with a murderous knife, it is said he seemed utterly over* powered with grief and amazement, and dropping his invincible lefl arm by his side, he hid his face in the folds of his mantle and received the treacherous blow without an effort to stay the hand that gave it. He only said, Et fUf Brute V and fell lifeless on the marble pavement " We learn that the coat deceased had on when he was killed was the same he wore in his tent on the after- noon of the day he overcame the Nervii, and that when it was removed from the corpse it was found to be cut and gashed in no less than seven different places. There was nothing in the pockets. It will be exhibited at the coroner's inquest, and will be damning proof of the fact of the killing. These latter facts may be relied on, as we get them from Mark Antony, whose position enables him to learn every item of news connected with the one subject of absorbing interest of to-day. " Later. — While the coroner was summoning a jury, Mark Antony and other friends of the late Caesar got hold of the body, and lugged it off to the Forum, and at last accounts Antony and Brutus were making speeches n,,rr*f<»*ili» THE KILLING OF JULIUS CjESAR. tji over it and raising such a row among the people that, as we go to press, the chief of police is satisfied there is going to be a riot, and is taking measuret accordingly/' \) m ( ! :! AN ITEM WHICH THE EDITOR HIMSELF COULD NOT UNDERSTAND. Our esteemed friend, Mr. John William Skae, of Vir- ginia City, walked into the office where we are sub-editor at a late hour last night, with an expression of profound and heartfelt suffering upon his countenance, and sighing heavily, laid the following item reverently upon the desk, and walked slowly out again. He paused a moment at the door, and seemed struggling to command his feelings sufficiently to enable him to speak, and then nodding his head towards his manuscript, ejaculated in a broken voice, " Friend of mine — oh ! how sad I" and burst into tears. We were so moved at his distress that we did not think to call him back and endeavour to comfort him until he was gone, and it was too late. The paper had already gone to press, but knowing that our friend would consider the publication of this item im- portant, and cherishing the hope that to print it would afford a melancholy satisfaction to his sorrowing heart, we stopped the press at once and inserted it in our colunms : *'. Distressing Accident. — Last erening, about six o'clock, ai Mr. William Schuyler, an old and respectable citizen of South Park, was leaving his residence to go down town, as has bf^sn iiis usual I ' I MR. SKAES ITEM, «73 ELF ►f Vir- •editor )found sighing I desk, loment nd his d then ited in 1" and ss that /our to ;. The lat our em im- would heart, in OUT ilock, as ttthPark, his usual CJibtum for many years, with the exception only of a short interval in the spring of 1850, during which he was confined to his bed by injuries received in attempting to stop a runaway horse by thought- lessly placing himself directly in his wake and throwing up his hands and shouting, which, if he had done so even a single moment sooner, must inevitably have frightened the animal still more in- stead of checking its speed, although disastrous enough to himself as it was, and rendered more melancholy and distressing by rea- son of the presence of his wife's mother, who was there and saw the sad occurrence, notwithstanding it is at least likely, though not necessarily so, that she should be reconnoitering in another direction when incidents occur, not being vivacious and on the look- out, as a general thing, but even the reverse, as her own mother is said to have stated, who is no more, but died in the full hope of a glorious resurrection, upwards of three years ago, aged 86, being a Christian woman and without guile, as it were, or property, in con- sequence of the fire of 1849, which destroyed every thing she had in the world. But such is life. Let us all take warning by this solemn occurrence, and let us endeavour so to conduct ourselves that when we come to die we can do it. Let us place our hands upon our hearts, and say with earnestness an;i r>mcerity that from this day forth we will beware of the intoxicating bowL— /irj/ Edition of the Calif ornian. The chief editor has been in here raising the mischief, and tearing his hair, and kicking the furniture about, and abusing me like a pickpocket. He says that every time he leaves me in charge of the paper for half-an- hour, I get imposed upon by the first infant or the first idiot that comes along. And he says that that distressing item of Johnny Skae's is nothing but a lot of distressing bosh, and has no point to it, and no sense and no infor- mation in it, and that there was no earthly necessity for stopping the press to pubhsh it. He says that every s »74 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, man he meets has insinuated that somebody about Thi Californian Office has gone crazy. Now all this comes of being good-hearted. If I had been as unaccommodating and unsympathetic as some people, I would have told Johnny Skae that I wouldn't receive his communication at such a late hour, and to go to grass with it ; but no, his snuffling distress touched my heart, and I jumped at the chance of doing some- thing to modify his misery. I never read his item to see whether there was anything wrong about it, but hastily wrote the few lines which preceded it, and sent it to the printers. And what has my kindness done for me ? It has done nothing but bring down upon me a storm of abuse and ornamental blasphemy. Now I will just read that item myself, and see if there is any foundation for all this fuss. And if there is, the author of it shall hear from me. I have read it, and I am bound to admit that it seems a little mixed at a first glance. However, I will peruse it once more. I have read it again, and it does reaUy seem a good deal more mixed than ever. ♦ # # . - It- '^■ I have read it over five times, but if I can get at the meaning of it, I wish I may get my just deserts. It won't bear analysis. There are things about it ivhich I cannot understand at all. It don't say what ever became of William Schuyler. It just says enough about him to get one interested in his career, and then drops him. 'HI had ome Idn't id to cbed lomc- ;o see lastily ;o the 5? It >rm of f there is, the seems peruse a good It at the Irts. It Uhich I [became him to )S him. MR. SKAETS ITEM, m Who is William Schuyler, anyhow, and what part of South Park did he live in, and if he started down town at six o'clock, did he ever get there, and if he did, did any- thing happen to him ? Is ^ the individual that met with the distressing accident"? Considering the elaborate circumstantiality of detail observable in the item, it seems to me that it ought to contain more information than it does. On the contrary, it is obscure — and not only obscure, but utterly incomprehensible. Was the break- ing of Mr. Schuyler's leg, fifteen years ago, the " dis- tressing accident " that plunged Mr. Skae into unspeak- able grief, and caused him to come up here at dead of night and stop our press to acquaint the world with the circumstance ? Or did the " distressing accident " con- sist in the destruction of Schuyler's mother-in-law's pro- perty in early times ? Or did it consist in the death of that person herself three years ago ? (albeit it does not appear that she died by accident.) In a word, what did that " distressing accident " consist in ? What did that ass of a Schuyler stand in the wake of a runaway horse for, with his shouting and gesticulation, if he wanted to stop him ? And how the mischief could he get run over by a horse that had already passed beyond him ? And what are we to take "warning" by? and how is this extraordinary chapter of incomprehensibilities going to be a "lesson" to us? And above all, what has the "intoxicating bowl" got to do With it, anyhow? It is not stated that Schuyler drank, or that his wife drank, or that his mother-in-law drank, or that the horse drank — wherefore, then, the reference to the intoxicating bowl ? It does seem to me that, if Mr. Skae had left the intoxi- 8 a t,vi 376 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. eating bowl alone hims«lf, he never would have got into so much trouble about this imaginary distressing acci- dent. I have read his absurd item over and over again, with all its insinuating plausibility, until ray head swims; but I can make neither head nor tail of it There cer- tainly seems to have been an accident of some kind or other, but it is impossible to determine what the nature of it was, or who was the sufferer by it I do not like to do it, but I feel compelled to request that the next time anything happens to one of Mr. Skae's friends, he will append such explanatory notes to his account of it as will enable me to find out what sort of an accident it was and whom it happened to. I had rather all his friends should die than that I should be driven to the verge of lunacy again in trying to cipher out the meaning of another such production as the above. ii.v'? .^.-1 ^t .- -->: •■'. , ■ ' Aui V BACK FROM "YURRUP." 1 Iff Have you ever seen a family of geese just back fix)m Europe — or Yurrup, as they pronounce it? They never talk to you, of course, being strangers, but they talk to each other and at you till you are pretty nearly distracted with their clatter ; till you are sick of their ocean expe- riences ; their mispronounced foreign names ; their dukes and emperors; their trivial adventures; their pointless reminiscences; till you are sick of their imbecile faces and their relentless clack, and wish it had pleased Provi- dence to leave the clapper out of their empty skulls. I travelled with such a family one eternal day, from New York to Boston, last week. They had spent just a year in " Yurrup," and were returning home to Boston. Papa said little, and looked bored — he had simply been down to New York to receive and cart home his cargo of travelled imbecility. Sister Angeline, aged 23, sister Augusta, aged 25, and brother Charles, aged 33, did the conversational drivel, and mamma purred and admired, and threw in some help when occasion offered, in the way of remembering some French barber's — I should say some French Count's — name, when they pretended to have forgotten it They occupied the choice seats in the parlour of the drawing-room car, and for twelve hours I ^8 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. sat opposite to them — was their vis-a-vis^ they would have saidi in their charming French way. Augusta. — '* Plague that nahsty (nasty) steamer ) I've the headache yet, she rolled so the fifth day out" Angdine. — "And well you may. /never saw such a nahsty old tub. I never want to go in the VUk de Paris again. Why didrit we go over to London and come in i}a& Scotia V Augusta, — " Because we were fools I " [I endorsed that sentiment] Angdine. — " Gustie, what made Count Nixkumarouse drive off looking so blue, that last Thursday in Pairy? (Paris, she meant) Ah, own up, now!" (tapping her arm so roguishly with her ivory fan.) Augusta. — '* Now, Angle, how you talk ! I tdd the nahs^ creature I would not receive his attentions any longer. And the old duke his father kept boring me about him and his two million francs a year till I sent him off with a flea in his ear." Chorus.—'' Ke-he-he ! Ha-ha-ha ! " Charles. — [Pulling a small silken cloak to pieces.] "Angle, where'd you get this cheap thing?" Angdine. — " You Cholly, let that alone ! Cheap I Well, how could I help it? There we were, tied up in Switzerland— just down from Mon Blong (Mont Blanc, doubtless) — couldn't buy anything in those nahsty shops so far away fi-om Pairy. I had to put up with that slimpsy forty-dollar rag — but bless you, I couldn't go naked!" CVWw.—" Ke-he-he 1" Augusta. — " Guess who I was tliinking of? Those ..?»<,,*«»,. BACK FROM « YURRUP:' a79 ^noxant persc^ns we saw fint m Rome and afterw^irds In Venice — those- » Angeline. — " Oh, ha«ha-ha 1 He-e-he I It was so funny ! Papa, one of them called the Santa della Spiggiola the Santa della Spizziola ! Ha-ha^ha ! And she thought it was Canova that did Michael Angelo's Moses! Only think of it I — Canova a sculptor and the Moses a picture 1 I thought I should die ! I guess I let them see by the way I laughed, that they'd made fools of themselves, because they blushed and sneaked off.*' [Papa laughed faintly, but not with the easy grace of a man who was certain he knew what he was laughing about] Augusta. — " Why ChoUy ! Where did you get those nahsty Beaumarchais gloves ? Well, I ivouldn't, if I were you!" Mamma. — [With uplifted hands.] " Beaumarchais, my son!" Angeline. — " Beaumarchais ! Why how can you 1 No- body in Pairy wears those nahsty things but the com- monest people." Charles. — " They are a rum lot, but then Tom Blen- nerhasset gave 'em to me^ — he wanted to do something or other to curry favour, I s'pose." Angeline. — " Tom Blennerhasset 1" * Augusta. — " Tom Blennerhasset ! " Mamma. — " Tom Blennerhasset 1 And have you been associating with him ?" , Fa/>a. — [Siiddenly interested.] "Heavens, what has the son of an honoured and honourable old friend been doing ? " ^1 >i ti i V I 380 MARK TIVAIN'S SfCETCIfES. 1 ii" 1 ii I! CA(?rus. — " Doing ! Why, his father har. ei^doreed himself bankrupt for friends — that's what's the mjitter ! " Angelina. — " Oh, mon Dieu, j'ai faim ! Avez vous quelque chose de bon, en votre poche, mon cher frere? Excuse me for speaking French, for, to tell the tru*'^, I haven't spoken English for so long that it comes dre. fill awkward. Wish we were back in Yurrup— c'est \ >tre desire aussi, n'est-ce pas, mes chores ? " And from that moment they lapsed into barbarous French and kept it up for an hour — hesitating, gasping for words, stumbling head over heels through adverbs and participles, floundering among adjectives, working miracles of villainous pronunciation — and neither one of them by any chance ever understanding what another was driving at By that time some new comers had entered the car, and so t'ney lapsed into English again and fell to holding everyihii g Ar.ierican up to scorn and contumely in order that they nught thus let those new-comers know they were just home from " Yurrup." To use their pet and best beloved phrase, they were a "nahsty" family of American snobs, and there ought to be a law against allowing such to go to Europe and misrepresent the nation. It will take these insects five years, without doubt, to get done turiuijj'j up their noses at everything American, and making damaging comparisons between their own country and " Yurrup." Let us pity theii waiting friends in Boston in their affliction. til ! MORE DI T-'ON. car, I HAVE become an honora. .. -er of the Western New York Poultry Society, and my ambition is satisfied. Seriously, from early youth I have taken an especial interest in the subject of poultry-raising, and so this membership touches a ready sympathy in my breast Even as a school boy, poultry-raising was a study with me, and 1 may say v, ithout egotism that as early as the age of seventeen I was acquainted with all the best and speediest methods oi raising chickens, from raising them off a roost by burning lucifer matches under their noses, down to lifting them off a fence on a frosty night by in- sinuating the end of a warm board under their heels. By the time I was twenty years old, I really suppose I had raised more poultry than any one individual in all the section round about there. The very chickens came to know my talent, by and by. The youth of both sexes ceased to paw the earth for worms, and old roosters that came to crow, " remained to pray," when I passed by. I have had so much experience in the raising of fowls that I cannot but think that a few hints from me might be useful to the Society. The two methods I have already touched upon are very simple, and are only used in the raising of the commonest class of fowls ; one is for I'l i:' -^% IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) // 1.0 I.I 11.25 m|2i 12.5 |5o ■^~ H^B ■^ 1^ 12.2 u Hi "*= iM i|2.0 1.8 1.4 % ^^v^'^' '> '/ ^ Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716)872-4903 \ SJ \\ [v ^ ) ^ *v^ '^^ v.-^^ ^ %" aSa MARK TWAIN*S SKETCHES, Summer, the other for Winter. In the one case, yoa start out with a friend along about eleven o'clock on a Summer's night, (not later, because in some States-— espe< daily in California and Oregon— chickens always rouse up just at midnight and crow from ten to thirty minutes, according to the ease or difficulty they experience in getting the public waked up,) and your friend cairiea with lum a sack. Arrived at the hen-roost, (your neigh^ hour's, not your own,) you light a match and hold it un- der first one and then another pullet's nose until they are willing to go into that bag without making any trouble about it You then return home, either taking the bag with you or leaving it behind, according as circumstances shall dictate. N.B. I have seen the time when it was eligible and appropriate to leave the sack behind and walk off with considerable velocity, without ever leaving any word where to send it In the case of the other method mentioned for raising poultry, your friend takes along a covered vessel with a charcoal fire in it, and you carry a long slender plank. This is a frosty night, understand. Arrived at the tree, or fence, or other hen-roost, (your own, if you are an idiot,) you warm the end of your plank in your friend's fire vessel and then raise it aloft and ease it up gently against a slumbering chicken's foot If the sub- ject of your attentions is a true bird, he will infidlibly return thanks with a sleepy cluck or two, and step out and take up quarters on the plank, thus becoming so conspicuously accessory before the fiu:t to his own murder as to make it a grave question in our minds, as it once wai in the mind of Blackston^ whether he is not MOKS DISTINCTION. S83 really and deliberately committhig raidde in tbe second degTv. . [But you enter into a contemplation of these legal refinements subsequently — ^not then.] When you wish to raise a fine, large, donkey-voiced Shanghai rooster, you do it with a lasso, just as you would a bull It is because he must be choked, and choked efifectually, too. It is the only good, certain way, for whenever he mentions a matter which he is cor> dially interested in, the chances are ninety-nine in a hundred that he secures somebody else's immediate attention to it, too, whether it be day or night The Black Spanish is an exceedingly fine bird and a costly one. lliirty-five dollars is the usual figure, and fifty a not uncommon price for a specimen. Even its eggs are worth firom a dollar to a dollar and a half apiece, and yet are so unwholesome that the city physician seldom or never orders them for the workhouse. Still I have once or twice procured as high as a dozen at a time for nothing, in the dark of the moon. The best way to raise the Black Spanish fowl, is to go late in the evening and raise coop and all. The reason I recommend this method, is, that the birds being so valuable, the owners do not permit them to roost around promiscuously, but put them in a coop as strong as a fire-proof safe, and keep it in the kitchen at night The method I speak of is not always a bright and satisfying success, and yet there are so many little articles of vertu about a kitchen that if you fail on the coop you can generally bring away something else. I brought away a nice steel trap, one night, worth ninety cents. But what is the use in my pouring out my whole intel- i 1: 1 s ■> -f*. >«4 MARK TWAIN*S SKETCHES, lect on this subject? I have shown the Western New York Poultry Society that they have taken to their bosom a parly who is not a Spring diicken by any means, but a man who knows all about poultiy, and is just as high up in the most efficient methods of laising it as the Presi- dent of the institution himself. I thank these gentlemen for the honorary membership they have conferred upon me, and shall stand at all times ready and willing to testify my good feeling and my official zeal by deeds as well as by this hastily penned advice and information. Whenever they are ready to go to raising poultry^ let th.^ 1 call for me any evening after eleven o'clock and I shall be on hand promptly. THE LEGEND OF THE CAPITOLINE VENUS. CHAPTER L [^Seene-^An Artistes Studio in Home,'] * Oh, Geoige, I do love you 1'* *' Bless your dear heart, Mary, I know that — why if your fiither so obdurate ?" " Geoige, he means well, but art is folly to him — ^he only understands groceries. He thinks you would starve me." « Confound his wisdom — ^it savours of inspiration. Why am I not a money-making, bowelless grocer, instead of a divinely-gifted sculptor with nothing to eat?" "Do not despond, Geoigy, dear— all his prejudices will fade away as soon as you shall have acquired fifty thousand dol ** '* Fifty thousand demons 1 Child, I am in arrears for my board 1" CHAPTER IL \SuM—'A Dwdling in Home,'] ** M|y dear sir, it is useless to talk. I haven't anythin(( s86 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. against you, but I can't let my daughter many a hash of love, art, and starvation — ^I believe you have nothing else to offer." ''Sir, I am poor, I grant you. But is fame nothi*ig? The Hon. Bellamy Foodie, of Arkansas, says that my new statue of America is a clever piece of sculpture, and be is satisfied that my name will one day be famous." ''Boshl What does that Arkansas ass know about it? Fame's nothing— the market price of your marble scare-crow is the thing to look at. It took you six months to chisel it, and you can't sell it for a hundred dollars. No, sur 1 Show me fifty thousand dollars and you can have my daughter— otherwise she marries young Simper. You have just six months to raise the money in. Good morning, sir." *' Alas I Woe is me 1** CHAPTER III. [Scene— Tke Studio,] ** Oh, John, fiiend of my boyhood, I am the unhappiest of men." ** You're a simpleton !" *' I have nothing left to love but my poor statue — and see, even she has no sympathy for me in her cold marble countenance — so beautiful and so heartless 1" " You're a dummy I" "Oh, John I" ** Oh, fudge 1 Didn't you say you had six m of a father makes her look in the other direction in shoit order. Now who is knocking at that door ? Who is come to persecute me? That malignant villain the bootmaker, I'll warrant Coffu in /" *'Ah, happiness attend your highness — Heaven be propitious to your grace 1 I have brought my lord's new boots — ^ah, say nothing about the pay, there is no hurry, none in the world. Shall be proud if my noble lord will continue to honour me with his custom — ah, adieu V* "Brought the boots himself! Don't want his pay! Takes his leave with a bow and a scmpe fit to honour majesty withal ! Desires a continuance of my custom ! Is the world coming to an end ? Of all the come in /" ** Pardon, signor, but I have brought your new suit of clothes for " '* Come in//** **A thousand pardons for this intrusion, your worship* THE CAPITOUNS VENUS, a«9 But I have pwpared the beautiful suite of rooms below ffx you— this wretched den is but ill suited to—" '*Comemlir **l have called to say that your credit at our bank, sometime since unfortunately interrupted, is entirely and most satisfactorily restored, and we shall be most happy if you will draw upon us for any " "Come in 1111" " My noble boy, she is yours 1 She'll be here in a moment 1 Take her — marry her— love her — be happy I •—God bless you both 1 Hip, hip, hur "* "COME IN 11 111" " Oh, George, my own darling, we are saved I" " Oh, Mary, my own darling, we are saved— but Til iwear I don't know why nor how 1" be ffd's no »ble CHAPTER V. [Scene— A Rotnan Qt/i.] One of a group of American gentlemen reads and translates from the weekly edition of H Slangwhanger di Homa as follows : <( up' WONDBRFUL DiscovBRY 1— Some rix months ago Signor John Smitthe, an American gentleman now some years a resident ol Rome, purchased for a trifle a small piece of ground in the Cam- pagna, just beyond the tomb of the Sdpio fiunily, &om the owner, a bankrupt relatiye of the Princess Borghese. Mr. Smitthe after- wards went to the Minister of the Public Records and had the piece of ground transferred to a poor American artist named George Arnold, explaining that he did it as payment and satisfaction liM S90 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, peomUry damage acddentally done by him long dnoe npoo p roperty belonging to Signor Arnold, and further obeenred that he would make additional latiidwtion by Improting the ground for Signor A., at his own charje and coet Four weeks ago, while making some necessary ticavations upon the pr ope rty, Signor Smitthe unearthed the most remarkable ancient statue that has ever been added to the opulent art treasures of Rome. It was an exquisite figure of a woman, and though sadly stained by the soil and the mould of ages» no eye could look unmoved upon its ravishing beauty. The noe^ the left 1^ firom the knee down, ax ear, and also the toes of the ri^t foot and two fingers of one of the hands, were gone, but otherwise the noble figure was in a remarkable state of preservation. The govern* ment at once took military possession of the statue, and appointed a commission of art critics, antiquaries and cardinal princes of ths church to assess its value and determine the remuneration that must go to the owner of the ground in which it was found. The whole aflUr was kept a profound secret until last night In the meantime the commission sat with closed doors, and deliberated. Last night they decided unanimously that the statue is a Venus, and the work of some unknown but sublimely gifted artist of the third century before Christ They consider it the most fiiultless work of art the world has any knowledge of. " At midnight they held a final conference and decided that the Venus was worth the enormous sum of tm miUim framal In accordance with Roman law and Roman usag^ the government being half owner in all works of art found in the Campagna, the State has naught to do but pay five million finncs to Mr. Arndd snd take permanent possesdon of tiie beautifiil statue. This morn- ing the Venus will be removed to the Capitol, there to remain, and at noon the commission will wait upon Signor Arnold with His Holineas Uie Pope's order upon the Traasoiy fiw the prinody turn of five million firana in gold." Chorus of Voiea.^** Luck t If • no name for it !" Another Voice, — " Gentlemen, I propose that we imme- diately fonn an American joint-stock company for the purchase of lands and excavation of statues, here^ with rifS CAPTTOUNS VENVS. proper connection in W«ii c^ •tock." "" ^"^ S'^t to bull and bear the -^*-" Agreed." CHAPTER VI. J:«''ve hewd «, much ,Cri, ^P""!^' Venu.. Ae humble patching of ^ „1 *" «« that they did •^it.eem*-thi,pZl',*'J:°'J^''»'i^ How food her^ ten happv yZTl ?" *•' •><*>» I latt ble« your ^ i ^.^^^f"' ^ r»'' » ^ch ^T deal to do with makine B^. ^^ y« I had a good etnct" «" valued «| Ten millions of "Yes— «»8,gl,g j^» ••^'y^STo.StSt'^r*^'^-^'' <•(■«" our blS^f^kf^^-^-oWeSnuth, AuZ "heese means? Manr that Zt f" ^"^ "^at that Ta IfJ MARK IWAlirS SKETCHES. THE END. The Capitoline Venus is still in the Capitol at Rome, and is still the most charming and most illustrious work of ancient art the world can boast o£ But if ever it shall be your fortune to stand before it and go into the customary ecstasies over it, don't permit this true and secret history of its origin to mar your bliss — and when you read about a gigantic Petrified Man being dug up near Syracuse, in the State of New York, or near any other place, keep your own counsel, — and if the Bamum that buried him there offers to sell to you at an enormous sum, don't you buy. Send him to the Pope 1 NoTB. — ^The above sketch wu written at the time the fiunoos swindle of the "Petrified Giant** waa the leniatian of the day b the United States. ENIGMA. Not wishing to be outdone in literaiy enteipriie hf tiiose magazines which have attractions especially de> signed for the pleasing of the fancy and the strengthening of the intellect of youth, we have contrived and builded the following enigma, at great expense of time and labour :•— I am a word of 13 letters. My 7) 9» 4» 4, is a village in Europe. My 7y 14, 5, 7» is a kind of dog. My II, 13, 13, 9» »f 7» «! 3» 6, I, 13, is 8 pecuUar kind of stu£f. My a, 6, la, 8, 9, 4, is the name of a great general of ancient times (have spelt it to best of ability, though may have nussed the bull's eye on a letter or two, but not enough to signify). My 3, II, I, 9, IS, a, a, 6, a, 9, 13, a, 6, 15, 4, 11, a, 3, 5, I, 10, 4, 8, is the middle name of a Russian philo- sopher, up whose full cognomen fame is slowly but surely climbing. My 7, II, 4, la, 3, I, I, 9 is an obscure but very proper kind of bug. My whole is — ^but perhaps ^a reasonable amount of diligence and ingenuity will reveal that We take a just pride in offering the customary gold pen or cheap sewing machine for correct solutions of the above t ' WIT-INSPIRATIONS OF THE *' TWO-YEAR-OLDS." All infants appear to have an impertinent and disap greeable fashion now-a-days of saying " smart " things on most occasions that o£fer, and especially on occasions when they ought not to be saying anything at alL Judg- ing by the average published specimens of smart sayings, the rising generation of children are little better than idiots. And the parents must surely be but little better than the children, for in most cases they are the publishers of the sunbursts of infantile imbecility which dazzle us from the pages of our periodicals. I may seem to speak with some heat, not to say a suspicion of personal spite ; and I do admit that it nettles me to hear about so many gifted infants in these days, and remember that I seldom said anything smart when I was a child. I tried it once or twice, but it was not popular. The family were not expecting brilliant remarks from me, and so they snubbed me sometimes, and spanked me the rest But it makes my flesh creep and my blood run cold to think what might have happened to me if I had dared to utter some of the smart things of this generation's ^* four-year-olds" where my father could hear me. To have simply skinned me alive and considered his duty at an end would have seemed to him criminal leniency toward one so sinning^ WIT-INSPIRA TIONS. m He was a stem unsmiling man, and hated all fonns of precocity. If I had said some of the things I have re- ferred to, and said them in his hearing, he would have destroyed me. He would, indeed he would, provided the opportunity remained with him. But it would not, for I would have had judgment enough to take some strychnine first and say my smart thing afterward. Tue fair record of my life has been tarnished by just one pun. My father overheard that, and he hunted me over four or five townships seeking to take my life. If I had been fiill-grown of course he would have been right ; but, child as I was, I could not know how wicked a thing I had done. I made one of those remarks ordinarily called " szkSJt things" before that, but it was not a pun. Still, it came near causing a serious rupture between my father and myself. My father and mother, my uncle Ephraim and his wife, and one or two others, were present, and the conversation turned on a name for me. I was lying there trying some India-rubber rings of various patterns, and endeavouring to make a selection, for I was tired of trying to cut my teeth on people's fingers, and wanted to get hold of something that would enable me to hurry the thing through and get at something else. Did you ever notice what a nuisance it was cutting your teeth on your nurse's finger, or how back-breaking and tiresome it was trying to cut them on your big toe ? And did you never get out of patience and wish your teeth were in Jericho long before you got them half cut? To me it seems as if these things happened yesto'day. And they did, to some children. But I digress. I was lying theie tr3ring the India-rubber rings. I remember looking at the dock I, «96 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, and noticing that in an hour and twenty-five minutes I would be two weeks old, and thinking to myself how little I had done to merit the blessings that were so un- sparingly lavished upon me. My father said, ''Abraham is a good name. My grandfather was named Abraham." My mother said, " Abraham is a good name. Very well. Let us have Abraham for one of his names." I said, " Abraham suits the subscriber." My father frowned, my mother looked pleased. My aunt said, ** What a little darling it is ! " My father said, '' Isaac is a good name, and Jacob is a good name." My mother assented and said, '' No names are better. Let us add Isaac and Jacob to his names." I said, " All right Isaac and Jacob are good enough for yours truly. Pass me that rattle, if you please. I can't chew India-rubber rings all day." Not a soul made a memorandum of these sayings of mine for publication. I saw that, and did it myself, else they would have been utterly lost So far from meeting with a generous encouragement like other children when developing intellectually, I was now furiously scowled upon by my father; my mother looked grieved and anxious, and even my aunt had about her an expression of seeming to think that maybe I had gone too far. I took a vicious bite out of an India-rubber ring, and covertly broke the rattle over the kitten's head, but said nothing. Presently my fiither said, " Samuel is a very excellent name. n JVIT'INSPJRA TIONS 297 ;nt I saw that trouble was coming. Nothing could pre- vent it I laid down my rattle; over the side of the cradle I dropped my uncle's silver watch, the clothes brush, the toy dog, my tm soldier, the nutmeg-grater, and other matters which I was accustomed to examine and meditate upon and make pleasant noises with, and bang and batter and break when I needed wholesome enter- tainment Then I put on my little frock and my litde bonnet, and took my pigmy shoes in one hand and my licorice in the other, and climbed out on the floor. I said to myself. Now, if the worst comes to the worst I am ready. Then I said aloud, in a firm voice, *' Father, I cannot, cannot wear the name of Samuel." « My son i " *< Father, I mean it. I cannot" "Why?" *' Father, I have an invincible antipathy to that name." " My son, this is unreasonable. Many great and good men have been named Samuel." " Sir, I have yet to hear of the first instance." " What I There was Samuel the prophet Was not he great and good ? " " Not so very." " My son ! With his own voice the Lord called him." ** Yes, sir, and had to call him a couple of times before he would come ! " And then I sallied forth, and that stem old man sallied forth after me. He overtook me at noon the following day, and when the interview was over I had acquired the name of Samuel, and a thrashing and other n n 1 X: i"^ f 1 398 MARK TWAIN*S SKETCHES, useful information; and by means of this compromise my father's wrath was appeased, and a misunderstanding bridged over which might have become a permanent rupture if I had chosen to be unreasonable. But, just judging by this episode, what would my father have done to me if I had ever uttered in his hearing one of the flat sickly things these "two-year-olds" say in print now-a- days ? In my opinion there would have been a case of infimticide in our family. PERSONAL HABITS OF THE SIAMESE TWINS. I DO not wish to write of the personal habits of these strange creatures solely, but also of certain curious details of various kinds concerning them, which, be- longing only to their private life, have never crept into print Knowing the Twins intimately, I feel that I am peculiarly well qualified for the task I have taken upon myselC The Siamese Twins are naturally tender and affectionate in disposition, and have dung to each other with singular fidelity throughout a long and eventful life. Even as children they were inseparable companions ; and it was noticed that they alwajrs seemed to prefer each other's society to that of any other persons. They nearly always played together; and, so accustomed was their mother to this peculiarity, that, whenever both of them chanced to be lost, she usually only hunted for one of them — satisfied that when she found that one she would find his brother somewhere in the immediate neighbour- hood. And yet these creatures were ignorant and un- lettered — barbarians themselves and the offspring of barbarians, who knew not the light of philosophy and •dence. What a withering rebuke is this to our boasted !0 .11 :ii i ''-■:■' ^ m ui 300 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, civilization, with its quarrellings, its wranglings, and its separations of brothers I As men, the Twins have not always lived in perfect accord ; but, still there has always been a bond between them which made them unwilling to go away from each other and dwell apart They have even occupied the same house, as a general thing, and it is believed that they have never failed to even sleep together on any night since they were bom. How surely do the habits of a lifetime become second nature to us ! The Twins alway go to bed at the same time ; but Chang usually gets up about an hour before his brother. By an understanding between themselves, Chang does all the in-door work and £ng runs all the errands. This is becanse Eng likes to go out j Chang's habits are sedentary. How- ever, Chang always goes along. Eng is a Baptist, but Chang is a Roman Catholic ; still, to please his brother, Chang consented to be baptized at the same time that Eng was, on condition that it should not "count" During the War they were strong partisans, and both fought gallantly all through the great struggle — Eng on the Union side and Chang on the Confederate. They took each other prisoners at Seven Oaks, but the proofs of capture were so evenly balanced in favour of each that a general army cert had to be assembled to deter- mine which one was properly the captor and which the captive. The jury was unable to agree for a long time ; but the vexed question was finally decided by agreeing to consider them both prisoners, and then exchanging them. At one time Chang was convicted of disobe- dience of orders, and sentenced to ten days in the HABITS OF THE SIAMESE TWINS, ytl n ^fs guard-house, but Eng, in spite of all aiguments, felt obliged to share his imprisonment, notwithstanding he himself was entirely innocent ; and so, to save the blame- less brother from suffering, they had to discharge both from custody — the just reward of faithfulness. Upon one occasion the brothers fell out about some- thing, and Chang knocked Eng down, and then tripped and fell on him, whereupon both clinched and began to beat and gouge each other without mercy. The by- standers interfered and tried to separate them, but they could not do it, and so allowed them to fight it out In the end both were disabled, and were carried to the hos- pital on one and the same shutter. Their ancient habit of going always together had its drawbacks when they reached man's estate, and entered upon the luxury of courting. Both fell in love with the same girl. Each tried to steal clandestine interviews with her, but at the critical moment the other would always turn up. By-and-by Eng saw, with distraction, that Chang had won the girl's affections ; and, from that day forth he had to bear with the agony of being a witness to all their dainty billing and cooing. But with a magnanimity that did him infinite credit, he succumbed to his &te, and gave countenance and encouragement to a state of things that bade fair to sunder his generous heart-strings. He sat from seven eveiy evening until two in the morning, listening to the fond foolishness of the two lovers, and to the concussion of hundreds ot squandered kisses — ^for the privilege of sharing only one of which he would have given his right hand. But he sat patiently, and waited, and gaped, and yawned, and y» MARK TIVAIN*S SKETCHES, stretched, and longed for two o'clock to come. And he took long walks with the lovers on moonlight evenings — sometimes traversing ten miles, notwithstanding he was usually suffering from rheumatism. He is an in- veterate smoker; but he could not smoke on these occasions, because the young lady was painfully sensi- tive to the smell of tobacco. Eng cordially wanted them married, and done with it ; but although Chang often asked the momentous question, the young lady could not gather sufficient courage to answer it while Eng was by. However, on one occasion, after having walked some sixteen miles, and sat up till nearly daylight, Eng dropped asleep, from sheer exhaustion, and then the question was asked and answered. The lovers were married. All acquainted with the circumstances ap- plauded the noble brother-in-law. His unwavering faithftilness was the theme of every tongue. He had staid by them all through their long and arduous court- ship; and, when at last, they were married, he lifted his hands above their heads, and said with impressive unction, " Bless ye, my children, I will never desert ye 1 " and he kept his word. Magnanimity like this b all too rare in this cold world. By-and-by Eng fell in love with his sister-in-law's sister, and married her, and since that day they have all lived together, night and day, in an exceeding sociability which is touching and beautifril to behold, and is a scathing rebuke to our boasted civilization* The sympathy existing between these two brothers is so dose and so refined that the feelings, the impulses^ the emotions of the one are instantly experienced by I .' HABITS OF THE SIAMESE TWINS, y^ the other. When one is sick, the other is sick ; when one feels pain, the other feels it ; when one is angered, the other's tempe/ takes fire. We have ahready seen with what happy facility they both fell in love with the same girl Now, Chang is bitterly opposed to all forms of intemperance, on principle; but Eng is the reverse — for, while these men's feelings and emotions arc so closely wedded, their reasoning faculties are unfettered ; their thoughts are fi-ee. Chang belongs to the Good Templars, and is a hard-working and enthusiastic sup- porter of all temperance reforms. But, to his bitter distress, eveiy now and then Eng gets drunk, and, of course, that makes Chang drunk too. This unfortunate thing has been a great sorrow to Chang, for it almost destroys his usefulness in hit! favourite field of e£fort As sure as he is to head a great temperance proces- sion Eng ranges up alongside of him, prompt to the minute, and drunk as a lord ; but yet no more dismally and hopelessly drunk than his brother, who has not tasted a drop. And so the two begin to hoot and yell, and throw mud and bricks at the Good Templars ; and of course they break up the procession. It would be manifestly wrong to punish Chang for what Eng does, and, therefore, the Good Templars accept the un- toward situation, and su£fer in silence and sorrow. They have ofiicially and deliberately examined into the matter, and find Chang blameless. They have taken the two brothers and filled Chang ful^ of warm water and sugar and Eng full of whiskey, and in twenty-five minutes it was not possible to tell which was the drunkest Both were as drunk as loons — and on hot whiskey ponchei^ 9H MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. by the smell of their breath. Yet all the while Chang's moral principles were unsullied, his conscience clear; and so all just men were forced to confess that he was not morally, but only physically drunk. By every right and by every moral evidence the man was strictly sober ; and, therefore, it caused his friends all the more anguish to see him shake hands with the pump, and try to wind his watch with his night-key. There is a moral in these solemn warnings— or, at least, a warning in these solemn morals; one or the other. No matter, it is somehow. Let us heed it ; let us profit by it I could say more of an instructive nature about these interesting beings, but let what I have written suffice. Having forgotten to mention it sooner, I will remark, in conclusion, that the ages of the Siamese Twins are r ."tpectively fifty-one and fifty-three years. A CURIOUS DREAM. CONTAINING A MORAL. Night before last I had a singular dream. I seemed to be sitting on a doorstep (in no particular city, per- haps), ruminating, and the time of night appeared to be about twelve or one o'clock. The weather was balmy and delicious. There was no human sound in the air, not even a footstep. There was no sound of any kind to emphasize the dead stillness, except the occasional hol- low barking of a dog in the distance and the fainter answer of a further dog. Presently up the street I heard a bony clack-clacking, and guessed it was the castanets of a serenading party. In a minute more a tall skeleton, hooded, and half-clad in a tattered and mouldy shroud, whose shreds were flapping about the ribby lattice-work of its person, swung by me with a stately stride, and dis- appeared in the grey gloom of the starlight It had a broken and worm-eaten cofiin on its shoulder and a bundle of something in its hand. I knew what the clack-clacking was then ; it was this party's joints working together, and his elbows knocking against his sides as he walked. I may say I was surprised. Before I could col lect my thoughts and enter upon any speculations as to what this apparition might portend, I heard another one coming — ^for J recognised his clack-clack. He had two* 'f'l 1 H ■■'! 1 ^!^ i ■ .' MARK TWATirs SKETCHES, thirds of a coffin on his shoulder, and some foot- and head-boards under his arm. I mightily wanted to peer under his hood and speak to him, but when he ^^med and smiled upon me with his cavernous sockets and his projecting grin as he went by, I thought I would not detain him. He was hardly gone when I heard the clacking again, and another one issued from the shadowy half-light This one was bending under a heavy grave- stone, and dragging a shabby coffin after him by a string. When he got to me he gave me a steady look for a moment or two, and then rounded to and backed up to me, saying : " Ease this down for a fellow, will you ? " I eased the gravestone down till it rested on the ground, and in doing so noticed that it bore the name of "John Baxter Copmanhurst," with "May, 1839," as the date of his death. Deceased sat wearily down by me, and wiped his os frontis with his major maxillary — chiefly from former habit I judged, for I could not see that he brought away any perspiration. " It is too bad, too bad," said he, drawing the remnant of the shroud about him and leaning his jaw pensively on his hand. Then he put his left foot up on his knee and fell to scratching his ankle bone absently with a rusty nail which he got out of his coffin. « What is too bad, friend ? " " Oh, everything, everything. I almort ivish I nerer had died." " You surprise me. Why do you say tais ? Has any- thuig gone wrong ? What is the matter ?" "Matter! Look at this shroud—rags. Look at thii A CURIOUS DREAM, yn lant i\y I and nail thii gnvestone, til btttrred up. I ook at that disgnceftil old coflRn. All a man's pr'^p^ny going to ruin and d'"*^tnic* tion before his eyes, and aak him if anything ia wrong? File and brimstone I ** **Calm yourself, cakn yourself," I said. "It w too bad — it is certainly too bad, but u.en I had not supposed that you would much mind such matters, situated as you are." "Well, my dear sir, I ^ mind them. My pride ii hurt, and my comfort is impaired — dest oyed, I might say. I will state my case — I will put it to you in such a way that you can comprehend it, if you will let me," said the poor skeleton, tilting the hood of his sh 'oud back, as if he were clearing for action, and thus unconsciously giving himself a jaunty and festive air very much at variance with the grave character of his position n life — so to speak — and in prominent contrast with his di stressful mood. "Proceed," said I. " I reside in the shameful old graveyard a block or two above you here, in this street — there, now, I just expected that cartilage would let go ! — ^third rib from the bottom, friend, hitch the end of it to my spine with a string, if you have got such a thing about you, though a bit of silver wire is a deal pleasanter, and more durable and becom- ing, if one keeps it polished — to think of shredding out and gioing to pieces in this way, just on account of the indifference and neglect of one's posterity 1" — and the poor ghost grated his teeth in a way that give me a wrench and a shiver — ^for the effect is mightily increased by t^«Nence of muffling flesh and cuticle. *'I reside u a dos MARK TWAIN^S SKETCHES. in that old graveyard, and have for these thirty years ; and I tell you things are changed since I first laid this old tired frame there, and turned over, and stretched out for a long sleep, with a delicious sense upon me of being done with bother, and grief, and anxiety, and doubt, and fear, for ever and ever, and listening with comfortable and increasing satisfaction to the sexton's work, from the startling clatter of his first spadeful on my coffin till it dulled away to the faint patting that shaped the roof of my new home— delicious ! My I I wish you could try it to-night ! " and out of my reverie deceased fetched me with a rattling slap with a bony hand. " Yes, sir, thirty years ago I laid me down there, and was happy. For it was out in the country, then — out in the breezy, flowery, grand old woods, and the lazy winds gossiped with the leaves, and the squirrels capered over us and around us, and the creeping things visited us, and the birds filled the tranquil solitude with musia Ah, it was worth ten years of a man's life to be dead then ! Everything was pleasant. I was in a good neigh- bourhood, for all the dead people that lived near me be- longed to the best families in the city. Our posterity appeared to think the world of us. They kept our graves in the very best condition; the fences were always in kultless repair, head-boards were kept painted or white- washed, and were replaced with new ones as soon as they began to look rusty or decayed ; monuments were kept upright, railings intact and bright, the rosebushes and shrubbery trimmed, trained, and firee firom blemish, the walks clean and smooth and gravelled. But that day is gone by. Our descendants have forgotten us. My A CURIOUS DREAM, 309 grandson lires in a stately house built with money made by these old hands of mine, and I sleep in a neglected grave with invading vermin that gnaw my shroud to build them nests withal ! I and friends that lie with me founded and secured the prosperity of this fine city, and the stately bantling of our loves leaves us to rot in a dilapi- dated cemetery which neighbours curse and strangers scoff at See the difference between the old time and this — for instance : Our graves are all caved in, now ; our head- boards have rotted away and tumbled down ; our railings reel this way and that, with one foot in the air, after a fashion of unseemly levity ; our monuments lean wearily, and our gravestones bow their heads discouraged ; there be no adornments any more — no roses, nor shrubs, nor gravelled walks, nor anything that is a comfort to the eye; and even the paintless old board fence that did make a show of holding us sacred from companionship with beasts and the defilement of heedless feet, has tot- tered till it overhangs the street, and only advertises the presence of our dismal resting-place and invites yet more derision to it And now we cannot hide our poverty and tatters in the friendly woods, for the city has stretched its withering arms abroad and taken us in, and all that remains of the cheer of our old home is the cluster of lugubrious forest trees that stand, bored and weary of city life, with their feet in our coffins, looking into the hazy distance and wishing they were there. I tell you it is disgraceful ! " You begin to comprehend — you begin to see how it is. While our descendants are living sumptuously on our money, right around us in the city, we have to fight hard 3IO MARK TtVAIATS SKETCHES, to keep ^ull and bones together. Bless you, there isn't a grave in our cemetery that doesn't leak — ^not one. Eveiy time it rains in the night we have to climb out and roost in the trees — and sometimes we are wakened sud- denly by the chilly water trickling down the back of our necks. Then I tell you there is a general heaving up of old graves and kicking over of old monuments, and scampering of old skeletons for the trees ! Bless me, if you had gone along there some such nights after twelve you might have seen as many as fifteen of us roosting on one limb, with our joints rattling drearily and the wind wheezing through our ribs I Many a time we have perched there for three or four dreary hours, and then come down, stiff and chilled through and drowsy, and borrowed each other's skulls to bale out our graves with — if you will glance up in my mouth, now as I tilt my head back, you can see that my head-piece is half ftill of old diy sediment — ^how top-heavy and stupid it makes me sometimes 1 Yes, sir, many a time if you had hap- pened to come along just before the dawn you'd have caught us baling out the graves and hanging our shrouds on the fence to dry. Why, I had an elegant shroud stolen from there one morning — think a party by the name of Smith took it, that resides in a plebeian graveyard over yonder — I think so because the first time I ever saw him he hadn't anything on but a check-shirt, and the last time I saw him, which was at a social gathering in the new cemetery, he was the best dressed corpse in the com- pany — and it is a significant fact that he left when he saw me ; and presently an old woman from here missed her cofiin — she generally took it with her when she went any- A CURIOUS DREAM, 3" where, because she was liable to take cold and bring on the spasmodic rheumatism that originally killed her if she exposed herself to the night air much. She was named Hotchkiss — ^Anna Matilda Hotchkiss — ^you might know her ? She has two upper front teeth, is tall, but a good deal inclined to stoop, one rib on the left side gone, has one shred of rusty hair hanging from the left side of her head, and one little tuft just above and a little forward of her right ear, has her under jaw wired on one side where it had worked loose, small bone of left forearm gone — lost in a fight — has a kind of swagger in her gait and a * gallus * way of going with her arms akimbo and her nostrils in the air — has been pretty free and easy, and is all damaged and battered up till she looks like a queensware crate in ruins — maybe you have met her?" " God forbid ! " I involuntarily ejaculated, for some- how I was not looking for that form of question, and it caught me a little off my guard. But I hastened to make amends for my rudeness, and say, " I simply meant I had not had the honour — for I would not deliberately speak discourteously of a friend of yours. You were saying that you were robbed — and it was a shame, too — but it appears by what is left of the shroud you have on that it was a costly one in its day. How did " A most ghastly expression began to develop among the decayed features and shrivelled integuments of my guest's face, and I was beginning to grow uneasy and distressed, when he told me he was only working up a deep, sly smile, with a wink in it, to suggest that about the time he .V' If i 313 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. acquired his present garment a ghost in a neighbouring cemetery missed one. This reassured me, but I begged him to confine himself to speech thenceforth, because his facial expression was uncertain. Even with the most elaborate care it was liable to miss fire. Smiling should especially be avoided. What he might honestly consider a shining success was likely to strike me in a very diffe- rent light I said I liked to see a skeleton cheerful, even decorously playfiil, but I did not think smiling was a skeleton's best hold. " Yes, fiiend,** said the poor skeleton, " the facts are just as I have given them to you. Two of these old graveyards — the one that I resided in and one fiirther along — have been deliberately neglected by our descen- dants of to-day until there is no occupying them any longer. Aside firom the osteological discomfort of it — and that is no light matter this rainy weather — ^the pre- sent state of things is ruinous to property. We have got to move or be content to see our effects wasted away and utterly destroyed. Now, you will hardly believe it, but it is true, nevertheless, that there isn't a single coffin in good repair among all my acquaintance — now that is an absolute fact I do not refer to low people who come in a pine box mounted on an express waggon, but I am talking about your high-toned, silver mounted burial-case, monu- mental sort, that travel under black plumes at the head of a procession and have choice of cemetery lots — I mean folks like the Jarvises, and the Bledsoes and Burlings, and such. They are all about ruined. The most substantial people in our set they were. And now look at them — utterly used up and poveny-stricken. One of the Bledsoes A CURIOUS DREAM, 313 es actually traded >ifs monument to a late bar-keeper for some fresh shavings to put under his head. I tell you it speaks volumes, for there is nothing a corpse takes so much pride in as his monument He loves to read the inscription. He comes after awhile to believe what it says himself, and then you may see him sitting on the fence night after night enjoying it Epitaphs are cheap, and they do a poor chap a world of good after he is dead, especially if he had hard luck while he was alive. I wish they were used more. Now, I don't complain, but confidentially I do think it was a little shabby in my descendants to give me nothing but this old slab of a gravestone — ^and all the more that there isn't a compli- ment on it It used to have *GONE TO HIS JUST REWARD* on it, and I was proud when I first saw it, but by-and-by I noticed that whenever an old fiiend of mine came along he would hook his chin on the railing and pull a long face and read along down till he came to that, and then he would chuckle to himself and walk off, looking satisfied and comfortable. So I scratched it off to get rid of those fools. But a dead man always takes a deal of pride in his monument Yonder goes half-a-dozen of the Jarvises, now, with the family monument along. And Smithers and some hired spectres went by with his a while ago. Hello, Higgins, good-bye, old friend ! That's Meredith Higgins — died in '44 — belongs to our set in the cemetery — fine old family — great-grandmother was an Injun — I am on the most familiar terms with him — he didn't hear me was the reason he didn't answer me. And i ■ ' V 314 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. I am Sony, too, because I would have liked to introduce you. Vou would admire him. He is the most disjointed, sway-backed, and generally distorted old skeleton you ever saw, but he is full of fun. V/hen he laughs it sounds like rasping two stones together, and he always starts it off with a cheery screech like raking a nail across a window-pane. Hey, Jones ! That is old Columbus Jones — shroud cost four hundred dollars — entire trousseau, in- cluding monument, twenty-seven hundred. This was in the Spring of '26. It was enormous style for those days. Dead people came all the way from the Alleghanies to see his things — the party that occupied the grave next to mine remembers it well. Now do you see that individual going along with a piece of a head-board under his arm, one leg-bone below his knee gone, and not a thing in the world on? That is Barstow Dalhouse, and next to Columbus Jones he was the most sumptuously outfitted person that ever entered our cemetery. We are all leav- ing. We cannot tolerate the treatment we are receiving at the hands of our descendants. They open new ceme- teries, but they leave us to our ignominy. They mend the streets, but they never mend anything that is about us or belongs to us. Look at that coffin of mine — yet I tell you in its day it was a piece of furniture that would have attracted attention in any drawing-room in this city. You may have it if you want it — I can't afford to repair it Put a new bottom in her, and part of a new top, and a bit of fresh lining along the left side, and you'll find her about as comfortable as any receptacle of her species you ever tried. No thanks— no, don't men- tion it — ^you have been civil to me, and I would give A CURIOUS DREAM, 31s you all the property I have got before I would seem ungratefuL Now this winding-sheet is a kind of a sweet thing in its way, if you would like to . No ? Well, just as you say, but I wished to be fair and liberal — there's nothing mean about me. Good-by, friend, I must be going. I may have a good way to go to-night — don't know. I only know one thing for certain, and that is, that I am on the emigrant trail, now, and I'll never sleep in that crazy old cemetery again. I will travel till I find respectable quarters, if I have to hoof it to New Jersey. All the boys are going. It was decided in public con- clave, last night, to emigrate, and by the time the sun rises there won't be a bone left in our old habitations. Such cemeteries may suit my surviving friends, but they do not suit the remains that have the honour to make these remarks. My opinion is the general opinion. If you doubt it, go and see how the departing ghosts upset things before they started. They were almost riotous in their demonstrations of distaste. Hello, here are some of the Bledsoes, and if you will give me a lift with this tombstone I guess I will join company and jog along with them — mighty respectable old family, the Bledsoes, and used to always come out in six-horse hearses, and all that sort of thing fifty years ago when I walked these streets in daylight. Good-by, fiiend." And with his gravestone on his shoulder he joined the grisly procession, dragging his damagied coffin after him, for notwithstanding he pressed it upon me so earnestly, I utterly refiised his hospitality. I suppose that for as much as two hours these sad outcasts went clacking by, laden with their dismal e£fects, and all that time I sat :H 3i6 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. pitying them. One or two of the youngest and least dilapidated among them inquired about midnight trains on the railways, but the rest seemed unacquainted with that mode of travel, and " erely asked about common public roads to various towns and cities, some of which are not on the map now, and vanished from it and from the earth as much as thirty years ago, and some few oi them never had existed anywhere but on maps, and private ones in real estate agencies at that time. And they asked about the condition of the cemeteries in these towns and cities, and about the reputation the citizens bore as to reverence for the dead. This whole matter interested me deeply, and likewise compelled my s;jnnpathy for these homeless ones. And it all seeming real, and I not knowing it was a dream, I mentioned to one shrouded wanderer an idea that had entered my head to publish an account of this curious and very sorrowful exodus, but said also that I could not describe it truthfully, and just as it occurred, without seeming to trifle with a grave subject and exhibit an irreverence for the dead that would shock and distres9 their surviving friends. But this bland and stately rem- nant of a former citizen leaned him far over my gate and whispered in my ear, and said : — " Do not let that disturb you. The community that can stand such graveyards as those we are emigrating from can stand anything a body can say about the neg- lected and forsaken dead that lie in them." At that very moment a cock crowed, and the weird procession vanished and left not a shred or a bone behind. I awoke, and found myself lying with my head out of the A CURIOUS DREAM. 317 bed and '' sagging " downwards considerably — a position favourable to dreaming dreams with morals in them, maybe, but not poetiy. Note. — ^The reader Is assured that if the cemeteries in his town are l;ept in good order, this Dream is not levelled at his town at all, Nit b levelled particularly and venomously at the next town. AN INQUIRY ABOUT INSURANCES. Coming down from Sacramento the other night, I found on a centre table in the saloon of the steamboat, a pamphlet advertisement of an Accident Insurance Com- pany. It interested me a good deal, with its General Accidents, and its Hazardous Tables, and Extra-Hazard- ous furniture of the same description, and I would like to know something more about it. It is a new thing to me. I want to invest if I come to like it I want to ask merely a few questions of the man who carries on this Accident shop. He publishes this list as accidents he is willing to insure people against : "General accidents include the Travelling Risk, and also all forms of Dislocations, Broken Bones, Ruptures, Sprains, Concus- sions, Crushings, Bruisings, Cuts, Stabs, Gunshot Wounds, Poisoned Wounds, Bums and Scalds, Freezing, Dog-Bites, Unprovoked Assaults by Burglars, Robbers, or Murderers, the action of Lightning or Sunstroke, the effects of Explosions, Chemicals, Floods, and Earthquakes, Suffocation by Drowning or Choking — where such accidental injury totally disables the person insured from following his usual avocation, or causes death within three montJis from thf time of the time of the happening of the injury." I want to address this party as follows ^— h t I tl n s V F IS tl n P AN INQUIRY ABOUT INSURANCES. 319 >wing tbi Now, Smith — I suppose likely your name is Smith — I think we can come to an understanding about your little game without any hard feelings. For instance : Do you allow the same money on a dog-bite that you do on an earthquake? Do you take special risks for specific accidents ? — that is to say, could I, by getting a policy for dog-bites alone, get it cheaper than if I took a chance in your whole lottery ? And if so, and supposing I got insured against earthquakes, would you charge any more for San Francisco earthquakes than for those that prevail in places that are better anchored down ? And if I had a policy on earthquakes alone, I couldn't collect on dog-bites, maybe, could I ? If a man had such a policy, and an earthquake shook him up and loosened his joints a good deal, but not enough to incapacitate him firom engaging in pursuits which did not require him to be tight, wouldn't you pay him some of his pension ? Why do you discriminate between Provoked and Unprovoked Assaults by Burglars? If a burglar entered my house at dead of night, and I, in the excitement natural to such an occasion, should foiget myself and say something that provoked him, and he should cripple me, wouldn't I get anything? but if I pro- voked him by pure accident, I would have you there, I judge j because you would have to pay for the Accident part of it anyhow, seeing that insuring against accidents is just yoiu: specialty, you know. But now as to those " Effects of Lightning." Suppose the lightning were to strike out at one of your men and miss him, and " fetch " another party — could that other party come on you for damages ? Or could the relatives )90 MARK TWAIirS SKETCHES, of the party thus suddenly hurled out of the bright world in the bloom of his youth come on you in case he was pushed for time ? as of course he would be, you know, under such circumstances. You say you have " issued over sixty thousand policies, forty-five of which have proved fatal and been paid for." Now, that looks just a little curious to me, in a measure. You appear to have it pretty much all your own way. It is all very well for the lucky forty-five that have died " and been paid for," but how about the other fifty* nine thousand nine hundred and fifty-five? You have got their money, haven't you ? But somehow the light- ning don't seem to strike them, and they don't get any chance at you. Won't their families get fatigued waiting for their dividends? Don't your customers drop off rather deliberately ? You will ruin yourself publishing such damaging state- ments as that. I tell you as a friend. If you had said that the fifty-nine thousand nine hundred and fifty-five died, and that forty-five lived, you would have issued about four tons of policies the next week. But people are not going to get insured, when you take so much pains to prove that there is such precious little use in it. Would it be impertinent if I should ask if you axe insured yourself? ADVICE FOR GOOD LITTLE GIRLS. h Good little girls ought not to make mouths at their teachers for every trifling offence. This kind of retaliation should only be resorted to under peculiarly aggravating circumstances. If you have nothing but a rag doll stuffed with saw- dust, while one of your more fortimate little playmates has a costly china one, you should treat her with a show of kindness nevertheless. And you ought not to attempt to make a forcible swap with her unless your conscience would justify you in it, and you know you are able to doit. You ought never to take your little brother's " chawing- gum " away from him by main foice : it is better to be- guile with the promise of the first two dollars and a half you find floating down the river on a grindstone. In the artless simplicity natural to his time of life, he will regard it as a perfectly fair transaction. In all ages of the world this eminently plausible fiction has lured the obtuse infant to financial ruin and disaster. If at any time you find it necessary to correct your brother, do not correct him with mud — never on any account throw mud at him, because it will soil his clothes. It is better to scald him a little ; for then you attain two ! !| ; tl 333 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, desirable results — ^3rou secure his immediate attention to the lesson you are inculcating, and at the same time, your hot water will have a tendency to remove impurities from his person — and possibly the skin also, in spots. If your mother tells you to do a thing, it is wrong to reply that you won't It is better and more becoming to intimate that you will do as she bids you, and then after- wards act quietly in the matter according to the dictates of your better judgment You should ever bear in mind that it is to your kind parents that you are indebted for your food and your nice bed and your beautiful clothes, and for the privilege of staying home from school when you let on that you are sick. Therefore you ought to respect their little prejudices and humour their little whims, and put up with their little foibles, until they get to crowding you too much. Good little girls should always show marked deference for the aged. You ought never to " sass" old people — unless they *^ sass " you first #1 CANNIBALISM IN THE CARS. I VISITED St Louis lately, and on my way west, after changing cars at Terre Haute, Indiana, a mild, benevo- lent-looking gentleman of about foity-five, or may be fifty, came in at one of the way-stations and sat down beside me. We talked together pleasantly on various subjects for an hour, perhaps, and I found him exceed- ingly intelligent and entertaining. When he learned that I was from Washington, he immediately began to ask questions about various public men, and about Congres- sional affairs ; and I saw very shortly that I was convers- ing with a man who was perfectly familiar with the ins and outs of political life at the Capital, even to ^he ways and manners, and customs of procedure of Senators and Representatives in the Chambers of the National Legis- lature. Presently two men halted near us for a single moment, and one said to the other : " Harris, if you'll do that for me, I'll never forget you, my boy." My new comrade^s eyes lighted pleasantly. The words had touched upon a happy memory, I thought Then his face settled into thoughtfulness — almost into gloom. He turned to me and said, " Let me tell you a story ; let me give you a secret chapter of my life — a chapter xa SH MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, that has never been referred to by me since its events transpired. Listen patiently, and promise that you will not interrupt me.'' I said I would not, and he related the following strange adventure, speaking sometimes with animation, some- times with melancholy, but always with feding and eamestnesa The Stranger's Narrative. On the 19th December, 1853, 1 started from St Louis in the evening train bound for Chicago. There were only twenty-four passengers, all told. There were no ladies and no children. We were in excellent spirits, and pleasant acquaintanceships were soon formed. The journey bade fair to be a happy one ; and no individual in the party, I think, had even the vaguest presentiment of the horrors we were soon to undergo. At 1 1 P.M. it began to snow hard. Shortly after lea^ ing the small village of Welden, we entered upon that tremendous prairie solitude that stretches its leagues on leagues of houseless dreariness far away towards the Jubilee Settlements. The winds, unobstructed by trees or hills, or even vagrant rocks, whistled fiercely across the level desert, driving the falling snow before it like spray from the crested waves of a stormy sea. The snow was deepening fast ; and we knew, by the diminished speed of the train, that the engine was ploughing through it with steadily increasing difficulty. Indeed, it almost came to a dead halt sometimes, in the midst of great drifts that piled themselves like colossal graves across CANNIBALISM IN THE CARS, 315 the tiack. Conversation began to flag. Cheerfulness gave place to grave concern. The possibility of being imprisoned in the snow, on the bleak prairie, fifty miles from any house, presented itself to every mind, and ex- tended its depressing influence over every spirit At two o'clock in the morning I was aroused out of an uneasy slumber by the ceasing of all motion about me. The appalling truth flashed upon me instantly—* we were captives in a snow-drift ! " All hands to the rescue 1 " Every man sprang to obey. Out into the wild night, the pitchy darkness, the billowy snow, the driving storm, every soul leaped, with the consciousness that a moment lost now might bring destruction to us alL Shovels, hands, boards — anything, everything that could displace snow, was brought into instant requisi- tion. It was a weird picture, that small company of frantic men fighting the banking snows, half in the blackest shadow and half in the angry light of the loco- motive's reflector. One short hour sufficed to prove the utter uselessness of our efforts. The storm barricaded the track with a dozen drifts while we dug one away. And worse than this, it was discovered that the last grand charge the engine had made upon the enemy had broken the fore- and-aft shaft ot the driving-wheel ! With a free track before us we should still have been helpless. We en- tered the car wearied with labour, and very sorrowful. We gathered about the stoves, and gravely canvassed our situation. We had no provisions whatever — in this lay our chief distress. We could not freeze, for there was a good supply of wood in the tender. This was our only 3^ MARK TWAIirS SKETCHES, comfort. The discussion ended at last in accepting the disheartening decision of the conductor, viz., that it would be death for any man to attempt to travel fifty miles on foot through snow like that We could not send for help ; and even if we could, it could not come. We must submit, and await, as patiently as we might, succour or starvation ! I think the stoutest heart there felt a momentary chill when those words were uttered. Within the hour conversation subsided to a low mm mur here and there about the car, caught fitfully between the rising and falling of the blast ; the lamps grew dim ; and the majority of the castaways settled themselves among the flickering shadows to think — ^to forget the present, if they could — to sleep, if they might The eternal night — ^it surely seemed eternal to u&— wore its lagging hours away at last, and the cold grey dawn broke in the east As the light grew stronger the passengers began to stir and give signs of life, one after another, and each in turn pushed his slouched hat up from his forehead, stretched his stiffened limbs, and glanced out at the windows upon the cheerless prospect It was cheerless indeed ! — ^not a living thing visible any- where, not a human habitation ; nothing but a vast white desert ; uplifted sheets of snow drifting hither and thither before the wind — a world of eddying flakes shutting out the firmament above. All day we moped about the cars, saying little, thinking muclu Another lingering dreary night — and hunger. Another dawning — another day of silence, sadness, wasting hunger, hopeless watching for succour that could CANNIBALISM IN THE CARS. 3«7 not come. A night of restless slumber, filled with dreams of feasting — ^wakings distressed with the gnawings of hunger. The fourth day came and went — and the fifth I Five days of dreadfiil imprisonment ! A savage hunger looked out at every eye. There was in it a sign of awful import — the foreshadowing of a something that was vaguely shaping itself in every heart — a something which no tongue dared yet to firame into words. The sixth day passed — the seventh dawned upon as gaunt and haggard and hopeless a company of men as ever stood in the shadow of death. It must out now 1 That thing which had been growing up in every heart was ready to leap firom every lip at last ! Nature had been taxed to the utmost — she must yield. Richard H. Gaston, of ^Minnesota, tall, cadaverous, and pale, rose up. All knew what was coming. All prepared — every emotion, every semblance of excitement was smothered — only a calm, thoughtfiil seriousness appeared in the eyes that were lately so wild. "Gentlemen, — It cannot be delayed longer! The time is at hand ! We must determine which of us shall die to fiimish food for the rest ! " Mr. John J. Williams, of Illinois, rose and said : "Gentlemen, — I nominate the Rev. James Sawyer, of Tennessee." Mr. Wm. R. Adams, of .Indiana, said : " I nominate Mr. Daniel Slote, of New York." Mr. Charles J. Langdon : " I nominate Mr. Samuel A. Bowen, of St Louis." Mr. Slote: "Gentlemen, — I desire to decline in 'I 328 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, favour of Mr. John A. Van Nastrand, jun., of New Jersey." Mr. Gaston : " If there be no objection, the gentle- man's desire will be acceded to." Mr. Van Nastrand objecting, the resignation of Mr. Slote was rejected. The resignations of Messrs. Sawyer and Bowen were also offered, and refused upon the same grounds. Mr. A. L. Bascom, of Ohio : " I nove that the nomi- nations now close, and that the House proceed to an election by ballot" Mr. Sawyer : " Gentlemen, — I protest earnestly against these proceedings. They are, in every way, irregular and unbecoming. I must beg to move that they be dropped at once, and that we elect a chairman of the meeting and proper officers to assist him, and then we can go on with the business before us under- standingly." Mr. Belknap, of Iowa: "Gentlemen, — I object. This is no time to stand upon forms and ceremonious observances. For more than seven days we have been without food. Every moment we lose in idle discussion increases our distress. I am satisfied with the nomina- tions that have been made — every gentleman present is, I believe — and I, for one, do not see why we should not proceed at once to elect one or more of them. I wish to offer a resolution " Mr. Gaston : " It would be objected to, and have to lie over one day under the rules, thus bringing about the ver}' delay you wish to avoid. The gentleman from New Jersey " CANNIBALISM IN THE CARS, 339 Mr. Van Nastrand : " Gentlemen, — I am a strangei among you ; I have not sought the distinction that has been conferred upon me, and I feel a delicacy " Mr. Morgan, of Alabama (interrupting) : " I move the previous question." The motion was carried, and further debate shut off, of course. The motion to elect officers was passed, and under it Mr. Gaston was chosen chairman, Mr. Blake secretary, Messrs. Holcomb, Dyer, u.id Baldwin, a com- mittee on nominations, and Mr. R. M. Ilowland, pur- veyor, to assist the committee in making selections. A recess of half an hour was then taken, and some little c«' .cusing followed. At the sound of the gavel the meeting reassembled, and the committee reported in favour of Messrs. George Ferguson, of Kentucky, Lucien Hermann, of Louisiana, and W. Messick, of Colorado, as candidates. The report was accepted. Mr. Rogers, of Missouri : "Mr. President, — The report being properly before the House now, I move to amend it by substituting for the name of Mr. Hermann that of Mr. Lucius Harris, of St. Louis, who is well and honour- ably known to us all. I do not wish to be understood as casting the least reflection upon the high character and standing of the gentleman from Louisiana — far from it. I respect and esteem him as much as any gentleman here present possibly can ; but none of us can be blind to the fact that he has lost more flesh during the week that we have lain here than any kmong you — none of us can be blind to the fact that the committee has been derelict in its duty, either through negligence or a graver fault, in thus offering for our suffrages a gentleman who, ; 1 330 MARK TWAIN*S SKETCHES, however pure nis own motives may be, has really lefis nutriment in him ** The Chair : <* The gentleman from Missouri will take his seat The Chair cannot allow the integrity of the Committee to be questioned save by the regular course, under the rules. What action will the House take upon the gentleman's motion ? " Mr. Halliday, of Virginia: ''I move to further amend the report by substituting Mr. Harvey Davis, of Oregon, for Mr. Messick. It may be urged by gentle- men that the hardships and privations of a frontier life have rendered Mr. Davis tough j but, gentlemen, is this a time to cavil at toughness ? is this a time to be fasti- dious concerning trifles ? is this a time to dispute about matters of paltry significance ? No. gentlemen, bulk is what we desire — substance, weight, bulk— these are the supreme requisites now — not talent, not genius, not education. I insist upon my motion." Mr. Morgan (excitedly) : " Mr. Chairman, — I do most strenuously object to this amendment. The gentle- man from Oregon is old, and furthermore is bulky only in bone — not in flesh. I ask the gendeman from Virginia if it is soup we want instead of solid sustenance ? if he would delude us with shadows ? if he would mock our sufiiering with an Oregonian spectre ? I ask him if he can look upon the anxious faces around him, if he can gaze into our sad eyes, if he can listen to the beating of oiur expectant hearts, and still thrust this famine- stricken fraud upon us ? I ask him if he can think of our desolate state, of our past sorrows, of our dark future, and srill unpityingly foist upon us this wreck, this CANNIBALISM IN THE CARS, 331 not rum, this tottering swindle, this gnarled and blighted and sapless vagabond from Oregon's inhospitable shores? Never 1 " (Applause.) The amendment was put to vote, after a fiery debate, and lost Mr. Harris was substituted on the first amend- ment The balloting then began. Five ballots were held without a choice. On the sixth, Mr. Harris was elected, all voting for him but himself. It was then moved that his election should be ratified by acclama- tion, which was lost, in consequence of his again voting against himself. Mr. Radway moved that the House now take up the remaining candidates, and go into an election for break- fast This was carried. On the first ballot there was a tie, half the members favouring one candidate on account of his youth, and half favouring the other on account of his superior size. The President gave the casting vote for the latter, Mr. Messick. This decision created considerable dissatis- faction among the fiiends of Mr. Ferguson, the defeated candidate, and there was some talk of demanding a new ballot ; but in the midst of it, a motion to adjourn was carried, and the meeting broke up at once. The preparations for supper diverted the attention of the Ferguson faction firom the discussion of their griev- ance for a long time, and then, when they would have taken it up again, the happy announcement that Mr. Harris was ready, drove all thought of it to the winds. We improvised tables by propping up tt:e backs of car-seats, and sat down with hearts fiill of grcititude to the finest supper that had blessed our vision for seven ! •'fl ii I SSt MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES, torturing days. How changed we were from what we had been a few short hours before i Hopeless, sad-eyed misery, hunger, feverish anxiety, desperation, then — thankfulness, serenity, joy too deep for utterance now. That I know was the cheeriest hour of my eventful life. The mnd howled, and blew the snow wildly about our prison-house, but they were powerless to distress us any more. I liked Harris. He might have been better don«, perhaps, but I am free to say that no man ever agreed with me better than Harris, or afforded me so large a degree of satisfaction. Messick was very well, though rather high-flavoured, but for genuine nutritious- ness and delicacy of fibre, give me Harris. Messick had his good points — I will not attempt to deny it, nor do I wish to do it — ^but he was no more fitted for breakfast then a mummy would be, sir — not a bit. Lean ? — ^why, bless me ! — and tough ? Ah, he was very tough ! You could not imagine it, — ^you could never imagine anything like it " Do you mean to tell me that ^ Do not interrupt me, please. After breakfast we elected a man by the name of Walker, from Detroit, for supper. He was very good. I wrote his wife so after- wards. He was worthy of all praise. I shall always remember Walker. He was a little rare, but very good. And then the next morning we had Morgan, of Alabama, for breakfast He was one of the finest men I ever '»at down to, — ^handsome, educated, refined, spoke several languages fluently — a perfect gentleman — ^he was a per- fect gentleman, and singularly juicy. Fo? supper we had that Oregon patriarch, and he was a fr<'.ud, there is no CANNIBAUSM IN THE CARS, 333 Jways food. per- had Is no question about it — old, scraggy, tough, nobody can picture the reality. I finally said, gentlemen you can do as you like, but / will wait for another election. And Grimes, of Illinois, said, ** Gentlemen, / will wait also. When you elect a man that has somdhing to recommend him, I shall be glad to join you again." It soon became evident that there was geneii^l dissatisfaction with Davis, of Oregon, and so, to preserve the good-will that had prevailed so pleasantly since we had Harris, an election was called, and the result of it was that Baker, of Georgia, was chosen. He was splendid I Well, well — after that we had Doolittle and Hawkins, and McEhroy (there was some complaint about McElroy, because he v; as uncommonly short and thin), and Penrod, and two Smiths, and Bailey (Bailey had a wooden leg, which was clear loss, but he was otherwise good), and an Indian boy, and an' organ grinder, and a gentleman by the name of Buckminster — a poor stick of a vagabond that wasn't any good for company and no account for breakfast We were glad we got him elected before relief came. " And so the blessed relief did come at last ? " Yes, it came one bright, sunny morning, just after election. John Murphy was the choice, and there never was a better, I am willing to testify ; but John Murphy came home with us, in the train that came to succour us, and lived to marry the widow Harris "ReUctof *' Relict of our first choice. He married her, and is happy and respected and prosperous yet Ah, it was like a novel, sir — it was like a romance. This is my stopping-plice, sir; I must bid you good-by. Any time 334 MARK TWAItPS SKETCHES, that you can make it convenient to tarry a day or two with me, I ihall be glad to have you. I like you, sir ; I have conceived an affection for you. I could like you as well as I liked Harris himself, sir. Good day, sir, and a pleasant journey." He was gone. I never felt so stunned, so distressed, so bewildered in my life. But in my soul I was glad he was gone. With idl his gentleness of manner and his soft voice, I shuddered whenever he turned his hungry eye upon me : and when I heard that I had achieved his perilous affection, and that I stood almost with the late Harris in his esteem, my heart fairly stood still 1 I was bewildered beyond description. I did not doubt his word ; I could not question a single item in a statement so stamped with the earnestness of truth as his ; but its dreadful details overpowered me, and threw my thoughts into hopeless confusion. I saw the con- ductor looking at me. I said, " Who is that man ? " ' He was a member of Congress once, and a good one. But he got caught in a snowdrift in the cars, and like to been starved to death. He got so frost-bitten and frozen up generally, and used up for want of some- thing to eat, that he was sick and out of his head two or three months afterwards. He is all right now, only he is a monomaniac, and when he gets on that old subject he never stops tiil he has eat up that whole car-load of people he caik5 about He would have finished the crowd by thw nme, only he had to get out here. He has got their naroes as pat as A, 6, C. When he gets them all eat u^ buc himself, he always says : — ' Then the hour for the MomX election for breakfast having arrived, CANNIBALISM IN THE CARS, 33S tnd there being no opposition, I was duly elected, after which, there being no objections offered, \ resigned. Thus I am here.' " I felt inexpressibly relieved to know that I had only been listening to the harmless vagaries of a madman instead of the genuine experiences of a blpodthinty cannibi&L II ■iti CURING A COLD. It is a good thing, perhaps, to write for the annue- ment of the public, but it is a far higher and nobler thing to write for their instruction, their profit, their actual and tangible benefit. The latter is the sole object of this article. If it prove the means of restoring to health one solitary sufferer among my race, of lighting up once more the fire of hope and joy in his faded eyes, of bringing back to his dead heart again the quick, generous impulses of other days, I shall be amply re- warded for my labour ; my soul will be permeated with the sacred delight a Christian feels when he has done a good, xmselfish deed. Having led a pure and blameless life, I am justified in believing that no man who knows me will reject the suggestions I am about to make, out of fear that 1 am trying to deceive him. Let the public do itself the honour to read my experience in doctoring a cold, as herein set forth, and then follow in my footsteps. When the White House was burned in Virginia, I lost my home, my happiness, my constitution, and my trunk. The loss of the two first-named articles was a matter of no great consequence, since a home without a mother or a sister, or a distant young female relative in it, to remind g S( «] th <(. th ke I stt, ing finj abc hin I I i ^ CURING A COLD. 337 who think about you «d S"'^ *^' *'" "« «"« And I cred not4>g for STlt''? " '»^y «"'«ai«ed. «^use. not being a poT .7!^°^ °^ ""^ ""PPwe^ be- -^ncholy .oJd aSr'Xelr "" '^"« «»' wfU°J,'^orr'''-«ouf;d a better .«„, «vS twt^X'^.ndTerr^r"" "^•^^ «° « do something. I 3,^"^"^ "'«"*'« '^^J' '» *• PJ" I was figuriJXl ° «"^«.. too. because was so elaborate that I n^L IT^"'^^ °^** «» ■""Idle of the foUo^^^ «°' " '""P'^ed untU the The first time I h#»other fatnd ^ „' *^ ««' "l^o. WitWn "feed a cold and sta^eT^t "' f ^ 'I T """^ «» thought it best to fill mysytTV J had both. Sol k^pd^andletthef::^^ JetlS: cold, and then m a case of this kfnH t u **^""®' I «te pretty he^lj^ i con^''° '«»«' "yh^dves; stranger who had jm od^.^ v "^ '^'°'° "PO" « ing; he waited ne^eT? h« restaurant that mom- finished feeding mucoid wh^r"" '"™^' "»'" I """l omce, and on the way !i m 338 MARK TWAIN*S SKETCHES, encountered another bosom friend, who told me that a quart of salt water, taken warm, would come as neat curing a cold as anything in the world. I hardly thought I had room for it, but I tried it any how. The result was surprisii^g. I believe I threw up my immortal souL Now, as I am giving my experience only for the benefit of those who are troubled with the distemper I am writing about, I feel that they will see the propriety of my cautioning them against following such portions of it as proved inefficient with me, and, acting upon this conviction, I warn them against warm salt water. It may be a good enough remedy, but I think it is too severe. If I had another cold in the head, and there was no course left me but to ta^ .c either an earthquake or a quart of warm salt water, I would take my chances on the earthquake. After the storm which had been raging in my stomach had subsided, and no more good Samaritans happening along, I went on borrowing handkerchiefs again and blowing them to atoms, as had been my custom in the early stages of my cold, until I came across a lady who had just arrived from over the plains, and who said she had lived in a part of the country where doctors were scarce, and had from necessity acquired considerable skill in the treatment of simple '* family complaints/' I knew she must have had much experience, for she ap- peared to be a hundred and fifty years old. She mixed a decoction composed of molasses, aqua- fortis, turpentine, and various other drugs, and instructed me to take a wine-glass full of it every fifteen minutes. I omach ening and the who ,d she were erable ." I le ap- aqua- icted Ltes. I CURING A COLD, 339 never took but one dose ; that was enough; it robbed me of all moral principle, and awoke every unworthy impulse of my nature. Under its malign influence my brain conceived miracles of meanness, but my hands were too feeble to execute them ; at that time, had it not been that my strength had surrendered to a succes- sion of assaults from infallible remedies for my cold, I am satisfied that I would have tried to rob the grave- yard. Like most other people I often feel mean, and act accordingly ; but until I took that medicine I had never revelled in such supernatural depravity and felt proud of it At the end of two days I was ready to go to doctor- ing again. I took a few more unfailing remedies, and finally drove my cold firom my head to my lungs. I got to coughing incessantly, and my voice fell below zero; I conversed in a thundering base, two octaves below my natural tone ; I could only compass my regular nightly repose by coughing myself down to a state of utter exhaustion, and then the moment I began to talk in my sleep my discordant voice woke me up again. My case grew more and more serious every day. Plain gin was recommended ; 1 took it Then gin and molas'^-.s; I took that also. Then gin and onions; I addea the onions, and took all three. I detected no particular result I found I had to travel for my health. I went to Lake Tahoe with my reportorial comrade, Wilson. I is gratifying to me to reflect that we travelled in con- siderable style ; we went in the Pioneer coach, and my firiend took all his baggage with him, consisting of two Y 9 340 MARIC TWAIN*S SKETCHES, excellent silk handkerchiefs and a daguerrotype of his grandmother. We sailed, and hunted, and fished, and (' iiced all day, and I doctored my cough all night By managing in diis way, I made out to improve every hour m the twenty-four. But my disease continued ^.o grow worse. A sheet-bath was recommended. I had never refused a remedy yet, and it seemed poor policy to commence then ; therefore I determined to take a sheet-bath, not- withstanding I had no idea what sort of arrangement it was. It was administered at miunight, and the weather was very firosty. My breast and back were bared, and a sheet (there appeared to be a thousand yards of it) soaked in ice-water was wound around me until I re- sembled a swab for a Columbiad. It is a cruel expedient When the chilly rag touches one's warm flesh it makes him start with sudden violence and gasp for breath, just as men do in the death agony. It froze the marrow in my bones and stopped the beating of my heart I thought my time had come. Never take a sheet-bath — never. Next to meeting a lady acquaintance, who, for reasons best known to herself don't see you when she looks at you, and don't know you when she does see you, it is the most uncomfortable thing in the world. But, as I was saying when the sheet-bath failed to cure my cough, a lady fiiend recommended the applica- tion of a mustard plaster to my breast I believe thai would have cured me e£fectually, if it had not been for young Wilson. When I went to bed I put my mustard CUJUJVG A COLD. plMter—which was . v^ *** ^uar^-where I could ^JLTT T '«'"'» "<*« ft"t young Wilson got hlZ^ tt ^ T "'^J' *■" *«• After sojourning*. wTa "iJeTS ""— Steamboat Springs, and b«M.»r^ *^~' ^ "««*• ^cted. They would have IZ. i ^"^ «^« ^ •»* to Viiginia, wherT^^^S? '"'' ^^t I had to go nc.remediSl^a.li^^JJtrf"" *^ ^"^'^ ^ vate my disease by careL^T ^'. ^ ""^^^ «» aggra- ^ I fi»anyconduiTi'wsr^<'"»<'«eexposu^ fi"t day I got there, a I^y a .^t ^'^^°' «" *e to drink a quart of ;hiskS ^e^* ^* «°»« told me « «end at the OcddenS^ ^m:??""""^ "" ««»e course. Each advi^d^M ! ?"'* P"^'*'^ the -ade half a gallon, itdt »d sti..?* " ""^ ' ^ Now, with the kindest mlri • ''''*• the conside^tion of Ssll^ ^^^ """'^ ' »«" for «=ou«e of treatment I ha^*^ ^r"^"*' the variegated ft«n t.y it; if it don?^ 'f^ «?* through. *^i^ them. '""' 't can't more th«n kill REV. HENRY WARD BEECHER'S FARM. Mr. B.'s fann consists of thirty-six acres, and is carried on on strict scientific principles. He never puts in any part of a crop without consulting his book. He ploughs and reaps and digs and sows according to the best autho- rities — ^and the authorities cost more than the other farm- ing implements do. As soon as the library is complete, the farm will begin to be a profitable investment But book fiuming has its drawbacks. Upon one occasion, when it seemed morally certain that the h&y ought to be cut, the hay book could not be found, and before it was found it was too late, and the hay was all spoiled. Mr. Beecher raises some of the finest crops of wheat in the country, but the unfavourable difference between the cost of producing it and its market value after it is pro- duced has interfered considerably with its success as a commercial enterprise. His special weakness is hogs, however. He considers hogs the best game a farm pro- duces. He buys the original pig for a dollar and a half, and feeds him forty dollars' worth of corn, and then sells him for about nine dollars. This is the only crop he ever makes any money on. He loses on the com, but he makes seven dollars and a half on the hog. He does a P V III w tc th rii ai su W thi eg eai cai ex] XEV, HENRY WARD BEECHERS FARM, 343 be was Mr. the the pro- as a ogs, pro- half, sells he but loes not mmd this, because he never expects to make any- thing on com, anyway. And any way it turns out, he has the excitement of raising the hog any how, whether he gets the worth of him or not His strawberries would be a comfortable success if the robins would eat turnips, but they won't, and hence the difficulty. One of Mr. Beecher's most harassing difficulties in his farming operations comes of the close resemblance of different sorts of seeds and plants to each other. Two years ago his far-sightedness warned him that there was going to be a great scarcity of water melons, and there* fore he put in a crop of seven acres of that fruit But when they came up Ihey turned out to be pumpkins, and a dead loss was the consequence. Sometimes a portion of his crop goes into the ground the most promising sweet potatoes, and comes up the most execrable carrots. When he bought his farm he found one egg in every hen's nest on the place. He said that here was just the reason why so many farmers failed — they scattered their forces too much— concentration was the idea. So he gathered those eggs together, and put them all under one expe- rienced hen. That hen roosted over the contract night and day for many weeks, under Mr. Beecher's personal supervision, but she could not "phase" those eggs. Why? Because they were those shameful porcelain things which are used by modem farmers as "nest eggs." Mr. Beecher's farm is not a triumph. It would be easier if he worked it on shares with some one ; but he cannot find any body who is willing to stand half the expense, and not many that are able. Still, persistence 344 VARX TJVAIJVS SKETCHES, in any cause is bound to succeed. He was a veiy in- ferior fanner, when he first began, but a prolonged and unflinching assault upon his agricultural difficulties hat had its effect at last, and he is now fast rising from afflu- ence to poverty. RUNNING FOR GOVERNOR. A FEW months ago I was nominated for Governor of the great State of New York, to run against Stewart L. Woodford and John T. Hoffinan on an independent ticket. I somehow felt that I had one prominent ad- vantage over these gentlemen, and that was — good character. It was easy to see by the newspapers that, if ever they had known what it was to bear a good name, that time had gone by. It was plain that in these latter years they had become familiar with all manner of shameful crimes. But at the veiy moment that I was exalting my advantage and joying in it in secret there was a muddy undercurrent of discomfort ''riling" the deeps of my happiness, and that was — the having to hear my name bandied about in familiar connection with those of such people. I grew more and more disturbed. Finally I wrote my grandmother about it Her answer came quick and sharp. She said — ** You have never done one single diing in all your life to be ashamed of— not one. Look at the news- papers — ^Ibok at them and comprehend what sort of characters Woodford and Hoffman are, and then see if you are willing to lower yourself to their level and enter a public canvass with them.** 34tf MARK TWAIN*S SKETCHES, It was my very thought ! I did not sleep a single moment that night But after all I could not recede. I was fully committed, and must go on with the fight As I was looking listlessly over tlie papers at breakfast I came across this paragraph, and I may truly say I never was so confounded before : — " Perjury. — Perhaps, now that Mr. Mark Twain is before the people as a candidate for Governor, he will condescend to explain how he came to be convicted of perjury by thirty-four witnesses in Wakawak, Cochin China, in 1863, the intent of which perjury was to rob a poor native widow and her helpless family of a meagre plaintain-patch, their only stay and support in their bereavement and desolation. Mr. Twain owes it to him- self, as well as to the great people whose suffrages he asks, to clear this matter up. Will he do it ? " I thought I should burst with amazement i Such a cruel heartless charge. I never had seen Cochin China I I never had heard of Wakawak ! I didn't know a plain- tain-patch from a kangaroo ! I did not know what to do. I was crazed and helpless. I let the day slip away without doing anything at all. The next morning the same paper had this — nothing more : — "Significant. — Mr. Twain, it will be observed, is suggestively silent about the Cochin China perjury." [Mem. — During the rest of the campaign this paper never referred to me in any other way than as " the in- famous perjurer Twain."] Next came the " Gazette," with this :— "Wanted to Know. — ^Will the new candidate for Governor deign to explain to certain of his fellow-citizens RUNNING FOR GOVERNOR, 347 18 jiper in* foi kens (whc are suffering to vote for him t) the little circumstunce of hid cabin-mates in Montana losing small valuables from time to time, until at last, these things having been invariably found on Mr. Twain's person or in his " trunk ** (newspaper he rolled his traps in), they felt compelled to give him a friendly admonition for his own good, and so tarred and feathered him and rode him on a rail, and then advised him to leave a permanent vacuum in the place he usually occupied in the camp. Will he do this ? ** Couid anything be more deliberately malicious than that? For I never was in Montana in my life. [After this, this journal customarily spoke of me as "Twain, the Montana Thief."] I got to picking up papers apprehensively — much as one would lift a desired blanket which he had some idea might have a rattlesnake under it. One day this met my eye: — *^The Lie Nailed! — By the sworn affidavits ol Michael O'Flanagan, Esq., of the Five Points, and Mr. Kit Bums and Mr. John Allen, of Water Street, it is established that Mr. Mark Twain's vile statement that the lamented grandfather of our noble standard-bearer, John T. Hoffman, was hanged for highway robbery, is a brutal and gratuitous lie, without a single shadow of foundation in fact. It is disheartening to virtuous men to see such shameful means resorted to to achieve poli- tical success as the attacking of the dead in their graves, »nd defiling their honoured names with slander. When we think of the anguish this miserable falsehood must cause the innocent relatives and friends of the deceased, we are almost driven to incite an outraged and insulted I! I 34t MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. public to summary and unlawful vengeance upon the traducer. But no : let us Wve him to the agony of a lacerated conscience (though if passion should get the better of the public and in its blind fury they should do the traducer bodily injury, it is but too obvious that no jury could convict and no court punish the perpetrators of the deed)." The ingenious closing sentence had the effect of moving me out of bed with despatch that night, and out at the back door also, while the " outraged and insulted public " surged in the front way, breaking furniture and windows in their righteous indignation as they came, and taking off such property as they could cany when they went. And yet I can lay my hand upon the Book and say that I never slandered Governor Hoffman's grandfather. More : I had never even heard of him or mentioned him up to that day and date. [I will state, in passing, that the journal above quoted from always referred to me afterward as "Twain the Body-Snatcher.*'] The next newspaper article that attracted my attention was the following : — "A SwiET Candidate. — Mark Twain, who was to make such a blighting speech at the mass meeting of the Independents last night, didn't come to time ! A tele- gram from his physician stated that he had been knocked down by a runaway team and his leg broken in two places — sufferer lying in great agony, and so forth, and so forth, and a lot more bosh of the same sort And the Indepen- dents tried hard to swallow the wretched subterfuge, and pretend that they did not know what was the real reason RUNNING FOR GOVERNOR, 949 ion of the absence of the abandoned creature whom they denominate their standard-bearer. A ceriain man was seen to reel into Mr, 7\uaMs hotel last mght in a stait oj beastly intoxication. It is the imperative duty of the Independents to prove that this besotted brute was not Mark Twain himself. We have them at last t Tliis is a case that admits of no shirking. Tbn voice of the people demands in thunder-tones, " Who was that m iN ?'' It was incredible, absolutely incredible, for a moment, that it was really my name that was couple! with t'lis disgraceful suspicion. Three long years had passed er my head since I had tasted ale, beer, wine, or liquor of any kind. [It shows what effect the times were having on me when I say that I saw myself confidently dubbed " Mr. Delirium Tremens Twain" in the next issue of that journal without a pang, — notwithstanding I knew that with monotonous fidelity the paper would go on calling me so to the very end.] By this time anonymous letters were getting to be an important part of my mail matter. This form was com- mon — " How about that old woman )Ca kiked of your pre- mises which was beging. « Pol Pry." And this — " There is things which you have done which is unbe- knowens to anybody but me. • You better trot out a few dolls to yours truly, or you'll hear thro' the papers from " Handy Andy." 3JO MARK TWAIIPS SKETCHES, That is about the idea. I could continue them till the reader was surfeited, if desirable. Shortly the principal Republican journal ** convicted " me of wholesale bribery, and the leading Democratic paper " nailed " an aggravated case of blackmailing to me. [In this way I acquired two additional names : " Twain the Filthy Corruptionist," and "Twain the Loathsome Embracer."] By this time there had grown to be such a clamour for an " answer" to all the dreadful charges that were laid to me that the editors and leaders of my party said it would be political ruin for me to remain silent any longer. As if to make their appeal the more imperative, the following appeared in one of the papers the very next day : — " Behold the Man ! — The independent candidate still maintains silence. Because he dare not speak. Every accusation against him has been amply proved, and they have been endorsed and re-endorsed by his own eloquent silence till at this day he stands for ever convicted. Look upon your candidate, Independents! Look upon the Infamous Perjurer ! the Montana Thief I the Body-snatcher! Contemplate your Incarnate De- lirium Tremens ! your Filthy Corruptionist ! your Loath- some Embracer ! Gaze upon him— ponder him well — and then say if you can give your honest votes to a creature who has earned this dismal array of titles by his hideous crimes, and dares not open his mouth in denial of any one of them ! " There was no possible way of getting out of it and s I will majtie a note of it And you say even this wasn't all ?' " All ? Why bless you there was isiy income from the Bu^alo Express for four months — abcit — about — well, what should you say to about eight thousand dollars, for instance ? " " Say ! Why I should say I should like to see rayself rolling in just such another ocean of afflueni ,. Eight tliousand I Til make a note of it. Why, man ! — and on vop of all thiS; I am to understand that yoa had still more income?" " *' Hii-ha-ha I Why you're only in the suburbs of it, so to speak. There's my book, *The Innocents Abroad' — price $3.50 to $5.00, according to the binding. Listen to me. Look me in the eye. During the last four months and a half, saying nothing of sales before that, but just simply during the four months and a half, we've sold ninety-five thousand copies of that book ! Ninety- five thousand ! Think of it. Average four dollars a copy, say. It's nearly four hundred thousand dollars, my son. I get half ! " " The suffering Moses 1 I'll set that down. Fourteen- seven-fifty — eight — two hundred. Total, say — ^well, upon my word, the grand total is about two hundred and thirteen or fourteen thousand dollars. Is that pos- sible?" " Possible ! If there's any mistake it's the other way. Two hundred and fourteen thousand, cash, is my income for this year, if /know how to cipher." Then the gentleman got up to go. It came over me most uncomfortably that maybe I had made my revelations A MYSTERIOUS VISIT, 357 teen- |ipon land Ipos- ray. >me me ions for nothing, besides being flattered into stretching them considerably by the stranger's astonished exclamations. But no ; at the last moment the gentleman handed me a large envelope and said it contained his advertisement ; and that I would find out all about his business in it ; and that he would be happy to have my custom — would, in fact, ht proud to have the custom of a man of such prodigious income ; and that he used to think there were several wealthy men in the city, but when they came to trade with him, he discovered that they barely had enough to live on ; and that, in truth, it had been such a weary, weary age since he had seen a rich man face to face, and talked with him, and touched him with his hands, that he could hardly refrain from embracing me — in fact, would esteem it a great favour if I would let him embrace me. This so pleased me, that I did not try to resist, but allowed this simple-hearted stranger to throw his arms about me and weep a few tranquillizing tears down the back of my neck. Then he went his way. As soon as he was gone, I opened his advertisement. I studied it attentively for four minutes. I then called up the cook and said : — **• Hold me while I faint Let Maria turn the griddle- cakes." By-and-by, when I came to, I sent down to the rum *«ull on the comer and hired an artist by the week to sit up nights and curse that stranger, and give me a lift occasionally in the day time when I came to a hard place. Ah, what a miscreant he was 1 His ** advertisement ** 3St MARK TIVAIN*S SKETCHES, was nothing in the world but a wicked tax-return — a •tring of impertinent questions about my private affairs occupying the best part of four foolscap pages of fine print — questions, I may remark, gotten up with such marvellous ingenuity that the oldest man in the world couldn't understand what the most of them were driving at— questions, too, that were calculated to make a man report about four times his actual income to keep firom swearing to a falsehood. I looked for a loop-hole, but there did not appear to be any. Inquiry No. i covered my case, as generously and as amply as an umbrella could cover an ant-hill : H "What were your profits, during tiie past year, from any trade business or vocation, wherever carried on ? " And that inquiry was backed up by thirteen others of an equally searching nature, the most modest of which required information as to whether I had committed any burglary, or highway robbery, or by any arson or other secret source of emolument, had acquired property which was not enumerated in my statement of income as set opposite to inquiry No. i. It was plain that that stranger had enabled me to make a goose of myself. It was very, very plain, and so I went out and hired another artist By working on my vanity the stranger had seduced me into declaring an income of 314,000 dollars. By law, 1000 dollars of this was exempt firom income-tax — the only relief I could see, and it was only a drop in the ocean. At the legal five per cent, I vmsi pay over to the government the iIl. A MYSTERIOUS VISIT, 319 to so my an I this >uld legal the i^palling sum of ten thousand six hundred and fifty dollars, income-tax. [I may remark, in this place, that I did not do it] I am acquainted with a very opulent man, whose house is a palace, whose table is regal, whose outlays are enormous, yet a man who has no income, as I have often noticed Dy the revenue returns ; and to him I went for advice, in my distress. He took my dreadful exhibition of receipts, he put on his glasses, he took his pen, and presto ! — I was a pauper ! It was the neatest thing that ever was. He did it simply by deftly manipulating the bill of " Deductions." He set down my " State, nar tional, and municipal taxes " at so much ; my " losses by shipwreck, fire, &c.," at so much; my "losses on sales of real estate " — on " live stock sold " — on •* payments for rent of homestead " — on " repairs, improvements, in- terest " — on " previously taxed salary as an officer of the United States' army, navy, revenue service," and other things. He got astonishing "deductions" out of each and every one of these matters— each and every one of them. And when he was done he handed me the paper and I saw at a glance that during the year my income, in the way of profits, had been one thousand two hundred and fifty dollars and forty cents% " Now," said he, " the thousand dollars is exempt by law. Wliat you want to do is to go and swear this docu- ment in and pay tax on the two hundred and fifty dollars." [While he was making this, speech his little boy Willie lifted a two dollar green-back out of his vest pocket and vanished with it, and I would wager anything that if my 36o MARK TWA1N*S SKETCHES. ttranger were to call on that little boy to-morrow he would make a false return of his income.] "Do you/* said I, "do you always work up the ' deductions ' after this fashion in your own case, sir ? '* *' Well, I should say so \ If it weren't for those eleven saving clauses under the head of ' Deduction ' I should be beggared every year to support this hateful and wicked, this extortionate and tyrannical government" This gentleman stands away up among the very best of the solid men of the city — the men of moral weight, of commejrcial integriity, of unimpeachable social spot- lessness — and so I bowed to his example. I went down to the revenue office, and under the accusing eyes of my old visitor I stood up and swore to lie after lie, fraud after fraud, villainy after villainy, till my soul was coated inches and inches thick with perjury and my self-respect gone for ever and ever. But what of it ? It is nothing more than thousands of the highest, and richest, and proudest, and most re- spected, honoured, and courted men in America do every year. And so I don't care. I am not ashamed, I shall simply, for the present, talk little and eschew fire- proof gloves, lest I fall into certain dreadful habits irrevocably. THE END. Spottiswoode &" Co. Ltd., Printers, Colchester, London and Eton.