e bowl, and pitcher, and with soap in a china dish, and on a rack more than a dozen towels, towels too clean and white for one out of practice to use without some vague sense of profanation.  Now you would think, but I mustn't talk so much. By this time I was wiping my hands and glancing from detail to detail of the room's belongings as one is apt to do when he is in a new place, where everything he sees is a comfort to his eye and his spirit. And I became conscious in one of those unaccountable ways, you know, that there was something there, somewhere, that the man wanted me to discover for myself. I knew it perfectly, and I knew he was trying to help me by furtive indications with his eye, so I tried hard to get on the right track being eager to gratify him. I failed several times, as I could see out of the corner of my eye without being told, but at last I knew I must be looking straight at the thing, knew it from the pleasure issuing in invisible waves from him. He broke into a happy laugh and rubbed his hands together and cried out, That's it, you found it, I knew you would. It's her picture. I went to the little black walnut bracket on the farther wall and did find there what I had not yet noticed, a daguerreotype case. It contained the sweetest girlish face and the most beautiful, as it seemed to me, that I had ever seen.  Nineteen her last birthday, he said, as he put the picture back, and that was the day we were married.  Where is she? When will she be in? Oh, she's away now. She's gone to see her people. They live forty or fifty miles from here. She's been gone two weeks today. When do you expect her back? This is Wednesday. She'll be back Saturday in the evening, about nine o'clock likely. I felt a sharp sense of disappointment. I'm sorry, because I'll be gone then, I said regretfully. Gone? No. Why should you go? Don't go. She'll be disappointed. She would be disappointed, that beautiful creature. If she had said the words herself, they could hardly have blessed me more. I was feeling a deep, strong longing to see her, a longing so supplicating, so insistent, that it made me afraid. I said to myself, I will go straight away from this place for my peace of mind's sake. You see, she likes to have people come and stop with us, people who know things and can talk, people like you. She delights in it. For she knows, well, she knows nearly everything herself, and can talk, oh, like a bird. And the book she reads, why, you would be astonished. Don't go. It's only a little while, you know, and she'll be so disappointed. I heard the words, but hardly noticed them. I was so deep in my thinking's and struggling's. He left me, but I didn't know. Presently he was back with a picture case in his hand, and he held it open before me, and said, there, now tell her to her face. You could have stayed to see her, and you wouldn't. That second glimpse broke down my good resolution. I would stay and take the risk. That night we smoked the tranquil pipe, and talked till late about various things, but mainly about her, and certainly I had had no such pleasant and restful time for many a day. The Thursday followed and slipped comfortably away, toward twilight a big miner from three miles away came, one of the grizzled, stranded pioneers, and gave us warm salutation, clothed in grave and sober speech. Then he said, I only just dropped over to ask about the little madam, and when is she coming home? Any news from her? Oh, yes, a letter. Would you like to hear it, Tom? Well, I should think I would, if you don't mind, Henry. Henry got the letter out of his wallet, and said he would skip some of the private phrases, if we were willing.  As the reader finished, he glanced at Tom, and cried out, Oh, you're at it again.  You always do that when I read a letter from her. I will write and tell her. Oh, no, you mustn't, Henry.  I thought she'd be here herself, and now you've got only a letter. Well, now, what put that in your head? I thought everybody knew she wasn't coming till Saturday. Saturday? Come to think of it, I did know it. I wonder what's the matter with me lately. Certainly I knew it. Ain't we all getting ready for her? Well, I must be going now, but I'll be on hand when she comes, old man. Late Friday afternoon another gray veteran trapped over from his cabin a mile or so away, and said the boys wanted to have a little deity in a good time Saturday night, if Henry thought she wouldn't be too tired after her journey to be kept up. Tired? She tired. Oh, here the man! Joe, you know she'd sit up six weeks to please any of you. When Joe heard that there was a letter, he asked to have it read, and the loving messages in it for him broke the old fellow all up. But he said he was such an old wreck that that would happen to him if she only just mentioned his name. Lord, we miss her so! he said. Saturday afternoon I found I was taking out my watch pretty often. Henry noticed it and said, with a startled look, you don't think she ought to be here soon, do you? I felt caught and a little embarrassed. But I laughed and said it was a habit of mine when I was in a state of expectancy. But he didn't seem quite satisfied, and from that time on he began to show uneasiness. Four times he walked me up the road to a point once we could see a long distance, and there he would stand, shading his eyes with his hand and looking. Several times he said, I'm getting worried. I'm getting right down worried. I know she's not due till about nine o'clock, and yet something seems to be trying to warn me that something's happened. You don't think anything has happened, do you? I began to get pretty thoroughly ashamed of him for his childishness, and at last, when he repeated that imploring question still another time, I lost my patience for the moment and spoke pretty brutally to him. It seemed to shrivel him up and cow him, and he looked so wounded and so humble after that that I detested myself for having done the cruel and unnecessary thing. And so I was glad when Charlie, another veteran, arrived toward the edge of the evening and nestled up to Henry to hear the letter read and talked over the preparations for the welcome. Charlie fetched out one hearty speech after another, and it is best to drive away his friend's boatings and apprehensions. Anything happened to her? Henry, that's pure nonsense! There isn't anything going to happen to her. Just make your mind easiest to that. What did the letter say? Said she was well, didn't it? And said she'd be here by nine o'clock, didn't it? Did you ever know her to fail of her word? Why, you know you never did. Well then, don't you fret. She'll be here, and that's absolutely certain, and as sure as you were born. Come now, let's get to decorating. Not much time left. Pretty soon Tom and Joe arrived, and then all hands set about adorning the house with flowers. Toward nine the three miners said that as they had brought their instruments they might as well tune up, for the boys and girls would soon be arriving now, and hungry for a good old-fashioned breakdown. A fiddle, a banjo, and a clarinet—these were the instruments.  It was getting very close to nine.  He had been made to drink his wife's health and safety several times, and now Tom shouted, All hands stand by! One more drink, and she's here. Joe brought the glasses on a waiter and served the party. I reached for one of the two remaining glasses, but Joe growled under his breath. Drop that! Take the other! Which I did. Henry was served last. He had hardly swallowed his drink when the clock began to strike. He listened till it finished, his face growing pale and paler. Then he said, Boys! I'm sick with fear! Help me! I want to lie down! They helped him to the sofa. He began to nestle and drowse, and presently spoke like one talking in his sleep, and said, Did I hear horses' feet? Have they come? One of the veterans answered, close to his ear, It was Jimmy Parish come to say the party got delayed. But they're right up the road apiece, and coming along. Her horses lame, but she'll be here in half an hour. Oh, I'm so thankful nothing has happened! He was asleep almost before the words were out of his mouth. In a moment those handymen had his clothes off, and had tucked him into his bed in the chamber where I had washed my hands. They closed the door and came back. Then they seemed preparing to leave. But I said, Please don't go, gentlemen. She won't know me, I am a stranger. They glanced at each other. Then Joe said, She? Poor thing. She's been dead nineteen years. Dead? That or worse. She went to see her folks half a year after she was married, and on her way back on a Saturday evening the Indians captured her within five miles of this place, and she's never been heard of since. And he lost his mind and consequence? Never has been sane an hour since. But he only gets bad when that time of year comes round. Then we begin to drop in here three days before she's due to encourage him up and ask if he's heard from her. And Saturday we all come and fix up the house with flowers and get everything ready for a dance. We've done it every year for nineteen years. The first Saturday there was twenty-seven of us without counting the girls. There's only three of us now, and the girls are all gone. We drug him to sleep, or he would go wild. Then he's all right for another year. Think she's with him till the last three or four days come round. Then he begins to look for her, and gets out his poor old letter, and we come and ask him to read it to us. Lord, she was a darling. End of The Californian's Tale This is section 20 of the $30,000 request and other stories by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. A Helpless Situation Once or twice a year I get a letter of a certain pattern, a pattern that never materially changes in form and substance, yet I cannot get used to that letter. It always astonishes me. It affects me as the locomotive always affects me. I say to myself, I have seen you a thousand times. You always look the same way, yet you are always a wonder, and you are always impossible. To contrive you is clearly beyond human genius. You can't exist. You don't exist. Yet here you are. I have a letter of that kind by me, a very old one. I yearn to print it, and where is the harm? The writer of it is dead years ago, no doubt, and if I conceal her name and address—her, this world address—I am sure her shade will not mind. And with it I wish to print the answer, which I wrote at the time, but probably did not send. If it went, which is not likely, it went in the form of a copy, for I find the original still here pigeon-holed with the said letter. To that kind of letters we all write answers, which we do not send, fearing to hurt where we have no desire to hurt. I have done it many a time, and this is doubtless a case of the sort. THE LETTER X California June 3, 1879 Mr. S. L. Clemens Hartford, Connecticut Dear sir, you will doubtless be surprised to know who has presumed to write and ask a favor of you. Let your memory go back to your days in the humbled mind 6263. You will remember you and Claggett and Oliver and the old blacksmith T. Lou lived in a lean-to, which was halfway up the gulch, and there were six log cabins in the camp, strong pretty well separated up the gulch, from its mouth at the desert, to where the last claim was at the divide. The lean-to you lived in was the one with the canvas roof that the cow fell down through one night, as told about by you in roughing it, my uncle Simmons remembers it very well. He lived in the principal cabin halfway up the divide, along with Dixon and Parker and Smith. It had two rooms, one for kitchen and the other for bunks, and was the only one that had. You and your party were there on the great night, the time they had dried apple pie. Uncle Simmons often speaks of it. It seems curious that dried apple pie should have seemed such a great thing, but it was, and it shows how far humbled was out of the world and difficult to get to, and how slim the regular bill of fare was. Sixteen years ago—it is a long time—I was a little girl then, only fourteen. I never saw you, I lived in Washoo. But Uncle Simmons ran across you every now and then, all during those weeks that you and party were there working your claim, which was like the rest. The camp played out long and long ago. There wasn't silver enough in it to make a button.  A bachelor then, but married to me now. He often wishes there had been a photographer there in those days. He would have taken the lean-to. He got hurt in the old Hal Clayton claim that was abandoned like the others, putting in a blast and not climbing out quick enough, though he scrambled the best he could. It landed him clear down on the trail and hit a piute. For weeks they thought he would not get over it, but he did, and is all right now. Has been ever since. This is a long introduction, but it is the only way I can make myself known. The favour I ask, I feel assured your generous heart will grant. Give me some advice about a book I have written. I do not claim anything for it, only it is mostly true and as interesting as most of the books of the times. I am unknown in the literary world, and you know what that means unless one has someone of influence, like yourself, to help you by speaking a good word for you. I would like to place the book on royalty basis plan, with anyone you would suggest. This is a secret from my husband and family. I intended as a surprise in case I get it published. Feeling you will take an interest in this, and if possible, write me a letter to some publisher or better still, if you could see them for me, and then let me hear. I appeal to you to grant me this favour. With deepest gratitude I thank you for your attention. One knows, without inquiring, that the twin of that embarrassing letter is forever and ever flying in this and that and the other direction, across the continent, in the males, daily, nightly, hourly, unceasingly, unrestingly. It goes to every well-known merchant and railway official, and manufacturer, and capitalist, and mayor, and congressman and governor, and editor, and publisher, and author, and broker, in a word, to every person who is supposed to have influence. It always follows the one pattern. You do not know me, but you once knew a relative of mine, etc., etc. We should all like to help the applicants. We should all be glad to do it. We should all like to return the sort of answer that is desired. But, well, there is not a thing we can do that would be a help. For not in any instance does that letter ever come from anyone who can be helped. The struggler whom you could help does his own helping. It would not occur to him to apply to you, stranger. He has talent and knows it, and he goes into his fight eagerly and with energy and determination, all alone, preferring to be alone. That pathetic letter which comes to you from the incapable, the unhelpable, how do you, who are familiar with it, answer it? What do you find to say? You do not want to inflict a wound. You hunt ways to avoid that. What do you find?  Do you try to explain? The old reply of mine to such a letter shows that I tried that once. Was I satisfied with the result? Possibly. And possibly not. Probably not. Almost certainly not. I have long ago forgotten all about it. But anyway, I append my effort. The reply. I know Mr. H., and I will go to him, dear madam, if upon reflection you find you still desire it. There will be a conversation. I know the form it will take. It will be like this. Mr. H., how do her books strike you? Mr. Clemens, I am not acquainted with them. H., who has been her publisher? See, I don't know. H., she has one, I suppose. See, I, I think not. H., ah, you think this is her first book? See, yes, I suppose so. I think so. H., what is it about? What is the character of it? See, I believe I do not know. H., have you seen it? See, well, no, I haven't. H., ah, how long have you known her? See, I don't know her. H., don't know her? See, no. H., ah, how did you come to be interested in her book, then? See, well, she wrote and asked me to find a publisher for her, and mentioned you. H., why should she apply to you instead of me? See, she wished me to use my influence. H., dear me, what has influence to do with such a matter? See, well, I think she thought you would be more likely to examine her book if you were influenced. H., why, what we are here for is to examine books, anybody's book, that comes along. It's our business. Why should we turn away a book on examine because it's a strangers? It would be foolish. No publisher does it. On what ground did she request your influence since you do not know her? She must have thought you knew her literature and could speak for it. Is that it? See, no, she knew I didn't. H., well, what then? She had a reason of some sort for believing you competent to recommend her literature and also under obligations to do it? See, yes, I knew her uncle. H., knew her uncle? See, yes, H., upon my word. So you knew her uncle. Her uncle knows her literature. He endorses it to you. The chain is complete. Nothing further needed. You are satisfied, and therefore— See, no, that isn't all. There are other ties. I know the cabin her uncle lived in, in the mines. I knew his partners too. Also, I came near knowing her husband before she married him, and I did know the abandoned shaft where a premature blast went off, and he went flying through the air and clear down to the trail and hit an Indian in the back with almost fatal consequences. H., to him or to the Indian? See, she didn't say which it was. H., with a sigh. It certainly beats the band. You don't know her. You don't know her literature. You don't know who got hurt when the blast went off. You don't know a single thing for us to build an estimate of her book upon. So far as I— See, I knew her uncle.  H., oh, what use is he? Did you know him long? How long was it? See, well, I don't know that I really knew him, but I must have met him anyway. I think it was that way. You can't tell about these things, you know, except when they are recent. H., recent? When was all this? See, 16 years ago. H., what a basis to judge a book upon. At first you said you knew him, and now you don't know whether you did or not. See, oh yes, I know him. Anyway, I think I thought I did. I'm perfectly certain of it. H., what makes you think you thought you knew him? See, why, she says I did herself. H., she says so. See, yes, she does. And I did know him too, though I don't remember it now. H., come. How can you know it when you don't remember it? See, I don't know. That is, I don't know the process, but I do know lots of things that I don't remember, and remember lots of things that I don't know. It's so with every educated person. H., after a pause. Is your time valuable? See, no. Well, not very. H., mine is. So I came away then, because he was looking tired. Overwork, I reckon. I never do that. I have seen the evil effects of it. My mother was always afraid I would overwork myself, but I never did. Dear Madam, you see how it would happen if I went there. He would ask me those questions, and I would try to answer them to suit him. And he would hunt me the here and there and yonder, and get me embarrassed more and more all the time, and at last he would look tired on account of overwork. And there it would end, and nothing done. I wish I could be useful to you, but you see, they do not care for uncles or any of those things. It doesn't move them. It doesn't have the least effect. They don't care for anything but the literature itself, and they, as good as despise, influence. But they do care for books, and are eager to get them and examine them, no matter whence they come, nor from whose pen. If you will send yours to a publisher, any publisher, he will certainly examine it. I can assure you of that. End of Section 20. This is Section 21 of the $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. A Telephonic Conversation Consider that a conversation by telephone, when you are simply sitting by and not taking any part in that conversation, is one of the solemnest curiosities of modern life. Yesterday I was writing a deep article on a sublime philosophical subject, while such a conversation was going on in the room. I noticed that one can always write best when somebody is talking through a telephone close by. Well, the thing began in this way. A member of our household came in and asked me to have our house put into communication with Mr. Bagley's downtown. I have observed in many cities that the sex always shrink from calling up the central office themselves. I don't know why, but they do. So I touched the bell, and this talk ensued. Central office, gruffly. Hello. Hi. Is this the central office? C-O. Of course it is. What do you want? Hi. Will you switch me on to the Bagley's, please? C-O. All right, just keep your ear to the telephone.  Yes? Rising inflection. Did you wish to speak to me? Without answering I handed the telephone to the applicant and sat down. Then followed that queerest of all the queer things in this world, a conversation with only one end to it. You hear questions asked, you don't hear the answer. You hear invitations given, and you hear no thanks in return. You have listening pauses of dead silence, followed by apparently irrelevant and unjustifiable exclamations of glad surprise or sorrow or dismay. You can't make head or tail of the talk, because you never hear anything that the person at the other end of the wire says. Well, I heard the following remarkable series of observations all from the one tongue and all shouted, for you can't ever persuade the sex to speak gently into a telephone. Yes? Why, how did that happen? Pause. What did you say? Pause. Oh no, I don't think it was. Pause. No, oh no, I didn't mean that. I meant put it in while it is still boiling, or just before it comes to a boil. Pause. What? Pause. I turned it over with a backstitch on the salvage edge. Pause. Yes, I like that way too, but I think it's better to baste it on with Valencians or Bombazine or something of that sort. It gives it such an air and attracts so much noise. Pause. It's 49th Deuteronomy, 64th to 97th Inclusive. I think we ought all to read it often. Pause. Perhaps so. I generally use a hairpin. Pause. What did you say? Aside. Children, do be quiet. Pause. Oh, be flat. Dear me, I thought you said it was the cat. Pause. Since when? Pause. Why, I never heard of it. Pause. You astound me, it seems utterly impossible. Pause. Who did? Pause. Goodness gracious! Pause. Well, what is this world coming to? Was it right in church? Pause. And was her mother there? Pause. Why, Mrs. Bagley, I should have died of humiliation. What did they do? Long pause. I can't be perfectly sure because I haven't the notes by me, but I think it goes something like this. To rolly la-la, la-la-la-la, oh-tally la-la-le-la-le-la-do. And then repeat, you know. Pause. Yes, I think it is very sweet and very solemn and impressive if you get the undaunty note in the Pienecimo, right? Pause. Oh, gumdrops, gumdrops, but I never allow them to eat striped candy. and, of course, they can't till they get their teeth anyway. Pause. What? Pause. Oh! Not in the least. Go right on. He's here writing. It doesn't bother him. Pause. Very well. I'll come if I can. Aside. Dear me, how it does tire a person's arm to hold this thing up so long. I wish she'd— Pause. Oh! No! Not at all. I like to talk. But I'm afraid I'm keeping you from your affairs. Pause. Visitors? Pause. We never use butter on them. Pause. Yes, that is a very good way, but all the cookbooks say they are very unhealthy when they are out of season, and he doesn't like them anyway, especially canned. Pause. Oh! I think that is too high for them. We have never paid over fifty cents a bunch. Pause. Must you go? Well, good-bye. Pause. Yes, I think so. Good-bye. Pause. Four o'clock then. I'll be ready. Good-bye. Pause. Thank you ever so much. Good-bye. Pause. Oh! Not at all. Just as fresh. Which—? Oh! I'm glad to hear you say that. Good-bye. Hangs up the telephone and says— Oh! It does tire a person's arm so— A man delivers a single brutal good-bye, and that is the end of it. Not so with a gentle-sex. I say it in their praise. They cannot abide bruntness. End of section twenty-one. This is section twenty-two of the thirty thousand dollar request and other stories by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in a public domain. Edward Mills and George Benton, a tale. These two were distantly related to each other—seventh cousins or something of that sort. While still babies they became orphans and were adopted by the Brantz, a childless couple who quickly grew very fond of them. The Brantz were always saying, Be pure, honest, sober, industrious, and considerate of others, and success in life is assured. The children heard this repeated some thousands of times before they understood it. They could repeat it themselves long before they could say the Lord's Prayer. It was painted over the nursery door, and was about the first thing they learned to read. It was destined to become the unswerving rule of Edward Mills's life. The Brantz changed the wording a little and said, Be pure, honest, sober, industrious, considerate, and you will never lack friends. Baby Mills was a comfort to everybody about him. When he wanted candy and could not have it, he listened to reason and contented himself without it. When Baby Benton wanted candy he cried for it until he got it. Baby Mills took care of his toys. Baby Benton always destroyed his in a very brief time, and then made himself so insistently disagreeable that in order to have peace in the house, little Edward was persuaded to yield up his playthings to him. When the children were a little older, Georgie became a heavy expense in one respect. He took no care of his clothes. Consequently, he shone frequently in new ones, which was not the case with Eddie. The boys grew apace. Eddie was an increasing comfort, Georgie, an increasing solicitude. It was always sufficient to say in answer to Eddie's petitions, I would rather you not do it, meaning swimming, skating, picnicking, burying, circusing, and all sorts of things which boys delight in. But no answer was sufficient for Georgie. He had to be humoured in his desires, or he would carry them with a high hand. Naturally no boy got more swimming, skating, burying, and so forth than he. Nobody ever had a better time. The good Brantz did not allow the boys to play out after nine in summer evenings. They were sent to bed at that hour. Eddie honourably remained, but Georgie usually slipped out of the window toward ten and enjoyed himself until midnight. It seemed impossible to break Georgie of this bad habit, but the Brantz managed it at last by hiring him, with apples and marbles, to stay in. The good Brantz gave all their time and attention to vain endeavours to regulate Georgie. They said, with grateful tears in their eyes, that Eddie needed no efforts of theirs he was so good, so considerate, and in all ways so perfect. By and by the boys were big enough to work, so they were apprentice to a trade. Edward went voluntarily. George was coaxed and bribed. Edward worked hard and faithfully, and ceased to be an expense to the good Brantz. They praised him. So did his master. But George ran away, and it cost Mr. Brant both money and trouble to hunt him up and get him back. By and by he ran away again, more money and more trouble. He ran away a third time, and stole a few little things to carry with him. Trouble and expense for Mr. Brantz once more, and besides, it was with the greatest difficulty that he succeeded in persuading the master to let the youth go unprosecuted for the theft. Edward worked steadily along, and in time became a full partner in his master's business. George did not improve.  Edward, as a boy, had interested himself in Sunday schools, debating societies, penny missionary affairs, anti-tobacco organizations, anti-profanity associations, and all such things. As a man he was a quiet but steady and reliable helper in the church, the temperance societies, and in all movements looking to the aiding and uplifting of men. This excited no remark attracted no attention, for it was his natural bent. Finally the old people died. The will testified their loving pride in Edward and left their little property to George because he needed it, whereas owing to a bountiful providence such was not the case with Edward. The property was left to George conditionally. He must buy out Edward's partner with it, else it must go to a benevolent organization called the Prisoner's Friend Society. The old people left a letter in which they begged their dear son Edward to take their place and watch over George, and help and shield him as they had done. Edward dutifully acquiesced, and George became his partner in the business. He was not a valuable partner. He had been meddling with drink before. He soon developed into a constant tipler now, and his flesh and eyes showed the fact unpleasantly.  They loved each other dearly, and—but about this period George began to haunt her tearfully and imploringly, and at last she went crying to Edward, and said her high and holy duty was plain before her. She must not let her own selfish desires interfere with it. She must marry poor George, and reform him. It would break her heart, she knew it would, and so on, but duty was duty. So she married George, and Edward's heart came very near breaking, as well as her own. However Edward recovered, and married another girl, a very excellent one she was, too. Children came to both families. Mary did her honest best to reform her husband, but the contract was too large. George went on drinking, and by and by he fell to misusing her and the little one sadly. A great many good people strove with George—they were always at it in fact—but he calmly took such efforts as his do, and their duty, and did not mend his ways. He added a vice presently, that of secret gambling. He got deeply in debt, he borrowed money on the firm's credit, as quietly as he could, and carried the system so far and so successfully that one morning the sheriff took possession of the establishment, and the two cousins found themselves penniless. Times were hard now, and they grew worse. Edward moved his family into a garret, and walked the streets day and night seeking work. He begged for it, but it was really not to be had. He was astonished to see how soon his face became unwelcome. He was astonished and hurt to see how quickly the ancient interest which people had had in him faded out and disappeared. Still he must get work, so he swallowed his chagrin and toiled on in search of it. At last he got a job of carrying bricks up a ladder in a hod, and was a grateful man in consequence, but after that nobody knew him or cared anything about him. He was not able to keep up his dues in the various moral organizations to which he belonged, and had to endure the sharp pain of seeing himself brought under the disgrace of suspension. But the faster Edward died out of public knowledge and interest, the faster George rose in them. He was found lying, ragged, and drunk in the gutter one morning. A member of the Lady's Temperance Refuge fished him out, took him in hand, got up a subscription for him, kept him sober a whole week, then got a situation for him. An account of it was published. General attention was thus drawn to the poor fellow, and a great many people came forward and helped him toward reform with their countenance and encouragement. He did not drink a drop for two months, and meantime was the pet of the good. Then he fell in the gutter, and there was a general sorrow and lamentation. But the noble sisterhood rescued him again. They cleaned him up, they fed him, they listened to the mournful music of his repentances, they got him his situation again. An account of this also was published, and the town was drowned in happy tears over the re-restoration of the poor beast and struggling victim of the fatal bowl. A grand temperance revival was got up, and after some rousing speeches had been made the Chairman said impressively, We are now about to call for signers, and I think there is a spectacle in store for you which not many in this house will be able to view with dry eyes. There was an eloquent pause, and then George Benton, escorted by a red sash detachment of the ladies of the refuge, stepped forward upon the platform and signed the pledge. The air was rent with applause, and everybody cried for joy. Everybody rung the hand of the new convert when the meeting was over. His salary was enlarged next day, he was the talk of the town and its hero. An account of it was published. George Benton fell, regularly, every three months, but was faithfully rescued and wrought with every time and good situations were found for him. Finally he was taken around the country lecturing, as a reformed drunkard, and he had great houses and did an immense amount of good. He was so popular at home and so trusted during his sober intervals that he was unable to use the name of a principal citizen and get a large sum of money at the bank. A mighty pressure was brought to bear to save him from the consequences of his forgery, and it was partially successful. He was sent up for only two years. When at the end of a year the tireless efforts of the benevolent were crowned with success and he emerged from the penitentiary with a pardon in his pocket, the prisoner's friend society met him at the door with a situation and a comfortable salary, and all the other benevolent people came forward and gave him advice, encouragement, and help. Edward Mills had once applied to the prisoner's friend's society for a situation, when in dire need, but the question, Have you been a prisoner? made brief work of his case. While all these things were going on, Edward Mills had been quietly making head against adversity. He was still poor, but was in receipt of a steady and sufficient salary as they respected and trusted cashier of a bank. George Benton never came near him and was never heard to inquire about him. George got to indulging in long absences from the town. There were ill reports about him, but nothing definite. One winter's night some masked burglars forced their way into the bank and found Edward Mills there alone. They commanded him to reveal the combination, so that they could get into the safe. He refused. They threatened his life. He said his employers trusted him and he could not be traitor to that trust. He could die, if he must, but while he lived he would be faithful. He would not yield up the combination. The burglars killed him. The detectives hunted down the criminals. The chief one proved to be George Benton. A wide sympathy was felt for the widow and orphans of the dead man, and all the newspapers in the land begged that all the banks in the land would testify their appreciation of the fidelity and heroism of the murdered cashier by coming forward with a generous contribution of money in aid of his family, now bereft of support. The result was a mass of solid cash amounting to upward of five hundred dollars, an average of nearly three-eighths of a cent for each bank in the Union. The cashier's own bank testified its gratitude by endeavouring to show, but humiliatingly failed in it, that the peerless servants' accounts were not square and that he himself had knocked his brains out with a bludgeon to escape detection and punishment. George Benton was arraigned for trial. Then everybody seemed to forget the widow and orphans in their solicitude for poor George. Everything that money and influence could do was done to save him, but it all failed. He was sentenced to death. Straightway the governor was besieged with petitions for commutation or pardon. They were brought by tearful young girls, by sorrowful old maids, by deputations of pathetic widows, by shoals of impressive orphans. But no, the governor for once would not yield. Now George Benton experienced religion. The glad news flew all around. From that time forth his cell was always full of girls and women and fresh flowers. All the day long there was prayer and hymn singing and thanksgiving and homilies and tears, with never an interruption except an occasional five-minute intermission for refreshments. This sort of thing continued up to the very gallows and George Benton went proudly home in the black cap before a wailing audience of the sweetest and best that the region could produce. His grave had fresh flowers on it every day for a while, and the headstone bore these words under a hand pointing aloft. He has fought the good fight. The brave cashier's headstone has this inscription. Be pure, honest, sober, industrious, considerate, and you will never. Nobody knows who gave the order to leave it that way, but it was so given. The cashier's family are in stringent circumstances now, it is said, but no matter a lot of appreciative people who are not willing that an act so brave and true as his should go unrewarded have collected forty-two thousand dollars and built a memorial church with it. End of section 22. This is section 23 of The Thirty Thousand Dollar Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Five Boons of Life. Chapter 1 In the morning of life came the good fairy with her basket and said, Here are gifts, take one, leave the others, and be wary, choose wisely, oh, choose wisely, for only one of them is valuable. The gifts were five, fame, love, riches, pleasure, death. The youth said eagerly, There is no need to consider, and he chose pleasure. He went out into the world and sought out the pleasures that youth delights in, but each in its turn was short-lived and disappointing, vain and empty, and each departing mocked him. In the end he said, These years I have wasted. If I could but choose again, I would choose wisely. Chapter 2 The fairy appeared and said, Four of the gifts remain. Choose once more, and oh, remember, Time is flying, and only one of them is precious. The man considered long, then chose love, and did not mark the tears that rose in the fairy's eyes. After many, many years the man sat by a coffin in an empty home, and he communed with himself, saying, One by one they have gone away and left me, and now she lies here, the dearest and the last. Desolation after desolation has swept over me, for each hour of happiness the treacherous traitor love has sold me, I have paid a thousand dollars of grief. Out of my heart of hearts I curse him. Chapter 3 Choose again, it was the fairy speaking. The years have taught you wisdom, surely it must be so. Three gifts remain. Only one of them has any worth, remember it, and choose warily. The man reflected long, then chose fame, and the fairy, sighing, went her way. Years went by and she came again and stood behind the man where he sat solitary in the fading day, thinking, and she knew his thought. My name filled the world, and its praises were on every tongue, and it seemed well with me for a little while. How little a while it was! Then came envy, then detraction, then columny, then hate, then persecution, then derision, which is the beginning of the end, and last of all came pity, which is the funeral of fame. Oh! the bitterness and misery of renown! Target for mud in its prime, for contempt and compassion in its decay. CHAPTER IV Choose yet again, it was the fairy's voice. Two gifts remain, and do not despair. In the beginning there was but one that was precious, and it is still here. Wealth, which is power! How blind I was! said the man. Now at last life will be worth the living. I will spend, squander, and dazzle. These mockers and despisers will crawl in the dirt before me, and I will feed my hungry heart with their envy. I will have all luxuries, all joys, all enchantments of the spirit, all contentments of the body that man holds dear. I will buy, buy, buy. Deference, respect, esteem, worship, every pinch-back grace of life the market of a trivial world can furnish forth. I have lost much time, and chosen badly here to fore, but let that pass, and I was ignorant then, and could but take for best what seemed so. Three short years went by, and a day came when the man sat shivering in a mean garret. He was gaunt and wan, and hollow-eyed, and closed in rags, and he was gnawing a dry crust and mumbling, Curse all the world's gifts, for mockeries and gilded lies, and miscalled every wine. They are not gifts, but merely lendings. Pleasure, love, fame, riches, they are but temporary disguises for lasting realities, pain, grief, shame, poverty, the fairy said true. In all her store there was but one gift which was precious, only one that was not valueless. How poor and cheap and mean I know those others now to be, compared with that inestimable one, that dear and sweet and kindly one that steeps in dreamless and enduring sleep the pains that persecute the body, and the shames and griefs that eat the mind and heart. Bring it! I am weary. I would rest. The fairy came, bringing again four of the gifts, but death was wanting. She said, I gave it to a mother's pet, a little child. It was ignorant, but trusted me asking me to choose for it. You did not ask me to choose. O miserable me! What is left for me? What not even you have deserved. The wanton insult of old age. End of Section 23. This is Section 24 of the $30,000 request and other stories by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The first writing-machines. From my unpublished autobiography. Some days ago a correspondent sent in an old typewritten sheet faded by age containing the following letter of the signature of Mark Twain. Hartford, March 10, 1875. Please do not use my name in any way. Please do not even divulge that fact that I own a machine. I have entirely stopped using the typewriter for the reason that I never could write a letter with it to anybody without receiving a request by return mail, that I would not only describe the machine, but state what progress I had made in the use of it, etc., etc. I don't like to write letters, and so I don't want people to know I own this curiosity-breeding little joker. A note was sent to Mr. Clemens asking him if the letter was genuine, and whether he really had a typewriter as long ago as that. Mr. Clemens replied that his best answer is the following chapter from his unpublished autobiography. 1904 Via Cato Florence, January. Writing autobiography to a typewriter is a new experience for me, but it goes very well, and is going to save time and language, the kind of language that soothes vexation. I have dictated to a typewriter before, but not autobiography. Between that experience and the present one there lies a mighty gap more than thirty years. It is sort of lifetime. In that wide interval much has happened to the type machine as well as to the rest of us. At the beginning of that interval a type machine was a curiosity. The person who owned one was a curiosity, too. But now it is the other way about. The person who doesn't own one is a curiosity. I saw a type machine for the first time in—what year? I suppose it was 1873, because Nasbi was with me at the time, and it was in Boston. We must have been lecturing, or we could not have been in Boston, I take it. I quitted the platform that season. But never mind about that. It is no matter. Nasbi and I saw the machine through a window and went in to look at it. The salesman explained it to us, showed us samples of its work, and said it could do fifty-seven words a minute—a statement which we frankly confessed that we did not believe. So he put his type girl to work, and we timed her by the watch. She actually did the fifty-seven in sixty seconds. We were partly convinced, but said it probably couldn't happen again, but it did. We timed the girl over and over again with the same result always. She won out. She did her work on narrow slips of paper, and we pocketed them as fast as she turned them out to show as curiosities. The price of the machine was one hundred and twenty-five dollars. I bought one, and we went away very excited. At the hotel we got out our slips, and were a little disappointed to find that they contained the same words. The girl had economized time and labor by using a formula which she knew by heart. However, we argued, safely enough, that the first type girl must naturally take rank with the first billiard player, and either of them could be expected to get out of the game any more than a third or a half of what was in it. If the machine survived—if it survived—experts would come to the front by and by, who would double the girl's output without a doubt? They would do one hundred words a minute, my talking speed on the platform. That score has long ago been beaten. At home I played with the toy, repeated and repeated and repeated, the boy stood on the burning deck, until I could turn that boy's adventure out at the rate of twelve words a minute. Then I resumed the pen for business, and only worked the machine to astonish inquiring visitors. They carried off many reams of the boy and his burning deck. By and by I hired a young woman, and did my first dictating, letters merely, and my last, until now. The machine did not do both capitals and lower case, as now, but only capitals—gothic capitals they were, and sufficiently ugly. I remember the first letter I dictated it was to Edward Bach, who was a boy, then. I was not acquainted with him at that time. His present, enterprising spirit is not new, he had it in that early day. He was accumulating autographs, and was not content with mere signatures. He wanted a whole autograph letter. I furnished it, in typewritten capitals, signature and all. It was long, it was a sermon. It contained advice, also reproaches. I said writing was my trade, my bread and butter. I said it was not fair to ask a man to give away samples of his trade. Would he ask the blacksmith for a horseshoe? Would he ask the doctor for a corpse? Now I come to an important matter, as I regard it. In the year seventy-four, the young woman copied a considerable part of a book of mine on the machine. In a previous chapter of this autobiography I have claimed that I was the first person in the world that ever had a telephone in the house for practical purposes. I will now claim, until dispossessed, that I was the first person in the world to apply the type machine to literature. That book must have been the Adventures of Tom Sawyer. I wrote the first half of it in seventy-two, the rest of it in seventy-four. My machinist type copied a book for me in seventy-four, so I concluded it was that one.  It had as many immoralities as the machine of today has virtues. After a year or two I found that it was degrading my character, so I thought I would give it to Howells. He was reluctant, for he was suspicious of novelties and unfriendly toward them, and he remained so to this day. But I persuaded him, he had great confidence in me, and I got him to believe things about the machine that I did not believe myself. He took it home to Boston, and my morals began to improve, but his have never recovered. He kept it six months, and then returned it to me. I gave it away twice after that, but it wouldn't stay. It came back. Then I gave it to our coachman, Patrick McLeer, who was very grateful, because he did not know the animal, and thought I was trying to make him wiser and better. As soon as he got wiser and better he traded it to a heretic for a side saddle, which he could not use, and there my knowledge of its history ends. End of Section 24. This is Section 25 of the $30,000 Quest and Other Stories by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Italian Without a Master. It is almost a fortnight now that I am domiciled in a medieval villa in the country, a mile or two from Florence—I cannot speak the language—I am too old not to learn how, also too busy when I am busy, and too indolent when I am not. Wherefore some will imagine that I am having a dull time of it. But it is not so. The help are all natives. They talk Italian to me, I answer in English. I do not understand them. They do not understand me. Consequently, no harm is done, and everybody is satisfied. In order to be just and fair I throw in an Italian word when I have one, and this has a good influence. I get the word out of the morning paper. I have to use it while it is fresh, for I find that Italian words do not keep in this climate. They fade toward night, and next morning they are gone. But it is no matter. I get a new one out of the paper before breakfast, and thrill the domestics with it while it lasts. I have no dictionary, and I do not want one. I can select my words by the sound, or by orthographic aspect. Many of them have a French or German or English look, and these are the ones I enslave for the day's service. That is, as a rule, not always. If I find a learnable phrase that has an imposing look and warbles musically along, I do not care to know the meaning of it. I pay it out to the first applicant, knowing that if I pronounce it carefully, he will understand it, and that's enough. Yesterday's word was avanti. It sounds Shakespearean, and probably means avalt, and quit my sight. One day I have a whole phrase, sono despiacentissimo. I do not know what it means, but it seems to fit in everywhere and give satisfaction. Although as a rule my words and phrases are good for one day and train only, I have several that stay by me all the time, for some unknown reason, and these come very handy when I get into a long conversation and need things to fire up with in monotonous stretches. One of the best ones is Dove il Gatto. It nearly always produces a pleasant surprise, therefore I save it for places where I want to express applause or admiration. The fourth word has a French sound, and I think the phrase means, That takes the cake. During my first week in the deep and dreamy stillness of this woodsy and flowery place, I was without news of the outside world, and was well content without it. It has been four weeks since I had seen a newspaper, and this lack seemed to give life a new charm and grace, and to saturate it with a feeling verging upon actual delight. Then came a change that was to be expected. The appetite for news began to rise again, after this invigorating rest. I had to feed it, but I was not willing to let it make me its helpless slave again. I determined to put it on a diet, and a strict and limited one. So I examined an Italian paper, with the idea of feeding it on that, and on that exclusively. On that exclusively and without help of a dictionary. In this way I should surely be well protected against overloading and indigestion. A glance at the telegraphic page filled me with encouragement. There were no scare-heads. That was good, supremely good. But there were headings, one-liners and two-liners, and that was good too, for without these one must do as one does with a German paper. They are a precious time in finding out what an article is about, only to discover, in many cases, that there is nothing in it of interest to you. The headline is a valuable thing. Necessarily we are all fond of murders, scandals, swindles, robberies, explosions, collisions, and all such things, when we knew the people, and when they are neighbors and friends, but when they are strangers we do not get any great pleasure out of them as a rule. Now the trouble with an American paper is that it has no discrimination. It rakes the whole earth for blood and garbage, and the result is that you are daily overfed and suffer a surfeit. By habit you stow this muck every day, but you come by and by to take no vital interest in it, indeed you almost get tired of it. As a rule, forty-nine fiftieths of it concern strangers only.  Why, when you come to think of it, who cares what becomes of those people? I would not give the assassination of one personal friend for a whole massacre of those others, and to my mind, one relative or neighbor mixed up in a scandal is more interesting than a whole Sodom and Gomorrah of outlanders gone rotten. Give me the home product every time. Very well. I saw at a glance that the Florentine paper would suit me. Five out of six of its scandals and tragedies were local. They were adventures of one's very neighbors. One might almost say one's friends. In the matter of world news there was not too much, but just about enough. I subscribed. I have had no occasion to regret it. Every morning I get all the news I need for the day, sometimes from the headlines, sometimes from the text. I have never had to call for a dictionary yet. I read the paper with ease. Often I do not quite understand. Often some of the details escape me, but no matter, I get the idea. I will cut out a passage or two, and then you see how limpid the language is. Il ritorno dei Beati d'Italia, ilargizione del re al ospedale italiano. The first line means that the Italian sovereigns are coming back. They have been to England. The second line seems to mean that they enlarge the king at the Italian hospital, or the banquet, I suppose. An English banquet has that effect. Further. Il ritorno dei Sovrani a Roma, Roma, 24, ore, 2250. Isovrani e le principesine reali si attendono a Roma domani alle ore 1551. Return of the sovereigns to Rome, you see, and date of the telegram, Rome, November 24, 10 minutes before 23 o'clock. The telegram seems to say, the sovereigns and the royal children expect themselves at Rome tomorrow at 51 minutes after 15 o'clock. I do not know about Italian time, but I judge it begins at midnight and runs through the 24 hours without breaking bulk. In the following ad, the theaters open at half past 20. If these are not matinees, 20.30 must mean 8.30 p.m., by my reckoning. Spettacoli del D. 25, Teatro della Pergola, ore 20.30. Opera, po'em, Teatro Alfieri, compagno dramatica Drago, ore 20.30. La lege, Alambra, ore 20.30. Spettacolo variato. Sala Edison, grandioso spettacolo cinematographico. Covades, inaugurazione della Ciesa rusa, in coda al direttissimo. Redute di Firenze con gran movimento. America, transporto tronchi gigantici, i ladri in casa del diavolo. Cine, comice. Cinematographo via Brunelici, numero 4. Prograna straordinario, Don Cicciote, presi populari. The whole of that is intelligible to me, and sane and rational too, except a remark about the inauguration of a Russian cheese. That one oversized my hand. Give me five cards. This is a four-page paper, and as it is said in long primer lettered, and has a page of advertisements, there is no room for the crimes, disasters, and general sweepings of the outside world, thanks be. Today I find only a single importation of the off-color sword. Una principessa, ce fuge con un cociere. Parigi, 24. Il mattin a da Berlino, ce la principessa so vendare, Waldenbure, scomparve il 9 novembre. Sarebbe partita col suo cociere. La principessa a 27 anni. 27 years old, and a scomparve, scampered, on the 9th of November. You see by the added detail that she departed with her coachman. I hope Sarebbe has not made a mistake, but I'm afraid the chances are that she has sono dispiacentissimo. There are several fires, also a couple of accidents. This is one of them. Grave discrazia sul ponte vecchio. La mattina circa le 7.30, mentre Giuseppe Schiatti di anni 55, di Castellina e Tori, passava dal ponte vecchio, stando seduto sopra un baroccio carico di verdura, per se l'equilibrio e cade al suolo, reminendo con la gamba destra sotto una ruota del veicolo. Lo Schiatti fu subito raccolto da alcuni citadini, c'è per mezzo della pubblica vettura, numero 365, lo trasporto a San Giovanni di Dio. Ivi, il medico di Guardia, gli riscontrò la frattura della gamba destra e alcune lievi escorrianzoni chiudicandolo guaribile in 50 giorni salvo complicazioni. What it seems to say is this, serious disgrace on the old, old bridge. This morning about 7.30 Mr. Giuseppe Schiatti, age 55, of Castellina and Tori, while standing up in a sitting posture on top of a carico barro of verdura, foliage, hay, vegetables, lost his equilibrium and fell on himself, arriving with his left leg under one of the wheels of the vehicle. Said Schiatti was suddenly harvested, gathered in by several citizens who by means of public cab number 365 transported to St. John of God. Paragraph 3 is a little obscure, but I think it says that the medico set the broken left leg, right enough since there was nothing the matter with the other one, and that several are encouraged to hope that 50 days will fetch him around in quite giudicandolo guaribile way, if no complications intervene. I am sure I hope so myself. There is a great and peculiar charm about reading news scraps in a language which you are not acquainted with, the charm that always goes with the mysteries and the uncertain. You can never be absolutely sure of the meaning of anything you read in such circumstances. You are chasing an alert and gamey riddle all the time, and the baffling turns and dodges of the prey make the life of the hunt. A dictionary would spoil it. Sometimes a single word of doubtful purport will cast a veil of dreamy and golden uncertainty over a whole paragraph of cold and practical certainties, and leave steeped in a haunting and adorable mystery an incident which had been vulgar and commonplace, but for that benefaction. Would you be wise to draw a dictionary on that gracious word? Would you be properly grateful? After a couple of days' rest I now come back to my subject and seek a case in point. I find it without trouble in the morning paper, a cablegram from Chicago and Indiana by way of Paris. All the words say one are guessable by a person ignorant of Italian. Revolverate in Teatro, Parigi 47, La Patrie Ada Chicago, il guardiano del Teatro dell'Opera di Wallace, Indiana. Avendo voluto espellare, uno spettatore ce continuava a fumare malgrado il divietti, questo spalaggiato dei suoi amici dir o diversi colpi di rivoltea. Il guardiano del pose. Da che una scarzica generale, grande panico tra gli spettatori, nessun ferito. Translation. Revolveration in theater, Paris 27, La Patrie has come from Chicago. The cop of the theater of the opera of Wallace, Indiana, had willed to expel a spectator which continued to smoke in spite of the prohibition, who, spalaggiato by his friends, Tire, French and Glice pulled, many-fold revolver shots, the cop responded, result, a general scare, great panic among the spectators, nobody hurt. It is bettable that that harmless cataclysm in the theater of the opera of Wallace, Indiana excited not a person in Europe but me, and so came near to not being worth cabling to Florence by way of France. But it does excite me, it excites me because I cannot make out for sure what it was that moved the spectator to resist the officer. I was gliding along smoothly and without obstruction or accident until I came to that word, spalaggiato. Then the bottom fell out.  That is the charm of the thing, that is the delight of it. This is where you begin, this is where you revel. You can guess and guess, and have all the fun you like. You need not be afraid there will be an end to it, none is possible for no amount of guessing will ever furnish you a meaning for that word that you can be sure is the right one. All the other words give you hints, by their form, their sound, or their spelling. This one doesn't, this one throws out no hints, this one keeps its secret. If there is even the slightest, slight shadow of a hint anywhere, it lies in the very meagerly suggestive fact that spalaggiato carries our word egg in its stomach. Well, make the most out of it, and then where are you at? You conjecture that the spectator, which was smoking in spite of the prohibition and become rep prohibited by the guardians, was egged on by his friends, and that was owing to that evil influence that he initiated the revolveration in theatre that has galloped under the sea and gone crushing through the European press without exciting anybody but me. But are you sure?  No. Then the uncertainty remains, the mystery abides, and with it the charm. Guess again. If I had a phrase-book of a really satisfactory sort I would study it, and not give all my free time to undictionarial readings, but there is no such work on the market. The existing phrase-books are inadequate, they are well enough as far as they go, but when you fall down and skin your leg they don't tell you what to say. End of Section 25. I found that a person of large intelligence could read this beautiful language with considerable facility without a dictionary, but I presently found that, to such a person, a grammar could be of use at times. It is because if he does not know the wareses and the wases and the maybes and the hasbinses apart, confusions and uncertainties can arise. He can get the idea that a thing is going to happen next week when the truth is that it has already happened week before last, even more previously sometimes. Examination and inquiry showed me that the adjectives and such things were frank and fair-minded and straightforward and did not shuffle. It was the verb that mixed the hands. It was the verb that lacked stability. It was the verb that had no permanent opinion about anything. It was the verb that was always dodging the issue and putting out the light and making all the trouble. Further examination, further inquiry, further reflection confirmed this judgment and established beyond per-adventure the fact that the verb was the storm-center. This discovery made playing the right and wise course to pursue in order to acquire certainty and exactness in understanding the statements which the newspaper was daily endeavoring to convey to me. I must catch a verb and tame it. I must find out its ways. I must spot its eccentricities. I must penetrate its disguises. I must intelligently foresee and forecast at least the commoner of the dodges it was likely to try upon a stranger in given circumstances. I must get in on its main shifts and head them off. I must learn its game and play the limit. I had noticed, in other foreign languages, that verbs are bred in families, and that the members of each family have certain features or resemblances that are common to that family and distinguish it from the other families, the other kin, the cousins and whatnot. I had noticed that this family mark is not usually the nose or the hair, so to speak, but the tail, the termination, and that these tails are quite definitely differentiated, in so much that an expert can tell a plupurfect from a sub-conjunctive by its tail as easily and as certainly as a cowboy can tell a cow from a horse by the like process, the result of observation and culture. I should explain that I am speaking of legitimate verbs. Those verbs which in the slang of the grammar are called regular. There are other—I am not meaning to conceal this—others called irregular, born out of wetlock, of unknown and uninteresting parentage, and naturally destitute of family resemblances as regards to all features, tails included.  I do not approve of them. I do not encourage them. I am prudishly delicate and sensitive, and I do not allow them to be used in my presence. But as I have said, I decided to catch one of the others and break it into harness. One is enough. Once familiar with its assortment of tails, you are immune. After that no regular verb can conceal its specialty from you and make you think it is working the past or the future or the conditional or the unconditional when it is engaged in some other line of business. Its tail will give it away. I found out all these things by myself, without a teacher. I selected the verb, amare, to love. Not for any personal reason, for I am indifferent about verbs. I care no more for one verb than for another, and have little or no respect for any of them. But in foreign languages you always begin with that one. Why, I don't know. It is merely habit, I suppose. The first teacher chose it, Adam, was satisfied, and there hasn't been a successor since with originality enough to start a fresh one. For they are a pretty limited lot, you will admit that. Originality is not in their line. They can't think up anything new, anything to freshen up the old, moss-grown dullness of the language lesson, and put life and go into it, and charm and grace and picturesqueness. I knew I must look after those details myself. Therefore I thought them out, and wrote them down, and sent for the Faccino, and explained them to him, and said he must arrange a proper plant, and get together a good stock company among the Contadini, and design the costumes, and distribute the parts, and drill the troop, and be ready in three days to begin on this verb in a ship-shape and workman-like manner. I told him to put each grand division of it under a foreman, and each subdivision under a subordinate of the rank of sergeant or corporal or something like that, and to have a different uniform for each squad, so that I could tell a pluperfect from a compound future without looking at the book, the whole battery to be under his own special and particular command with a rank of brigadier, and I to pay the freight. I then inquired into the character and possibilities of the selected verb, and was much disturbed to find that it was over my size, it being chambered for fifty-seven rounds, fifty-seven ways of saying I love without reloading, and yet none of them likely to convince a girl that was laying for a title, or a title that was laying for rocks. It seemed to me that, with my inexperience, it would be foolish to go into action with this mitraeuse, so I ordered it to the rear, and told the Faccino to provide something a little more primitive to start with, something less elaborate, some gentle old-fashioned flintlock, smoothbore, double-barreled thing, calculated to cripple at two hundred yards and kill at forty, an arrangement suitable for a beginner who could be satisfied with moderate results on the off-start, and did not wish to take the whole territory in the first campaign. But in vain he was not able to mend the matter, all the verbs being of the same build, all gatlings, all of the same caliber and delivery, fifty-seven to the volley, and fatal at a mile and a half. But he said the auxiliary verb, avere, to have, was a tidy thing, and easy to handle in a seaway, and less likely to miss stays in going about than some of the others, so upon his recommendation I chose that one, and told him to take it along and scrape its bottom and break out its spinnaker and get it ready for business. I will explain that a Faccino is a general utility domestic. Mine was a horse-doctor in his better days, and a very good one. At the end of three days the Faccino doctor Brigadier was ready. I was also ready with a stenographer. We were in a room called the Rope Walk. This is a formatively long room, as is indicated by its facetious name, and is a good place for reviews. At nine-thirty the FDB took his place near me and gave the word of command. The drums began to rumble and thunder, the head of the forces appeared at an upper door, and the march-past was on. Down they filed, a blaze of variegated color, each squad gaudy in a uniform of its own, and bearing a banner inscribed with its verbal rank and quality. First the present tense in Mediterranean blue and old gold, then the past definite in scarlet and black, then the imperfect in green and yellow, then the indicative future in the stars and stripes, then the old red sandstone subjunctive in purple and silver, and so on, and so on. Fifty-seven privates and twenty commissioned and non-commissioned officers, certainly one of the most fiery and dazzling and eloquent sights I have ever beheld. I could not keep back the tears. Presently, I commanded the brigadier, front face, right dress. Stand at ease. One, two, three, indonesan, recite. It was fine. In one noble volume of sound of all the fifty-seven halves in the Italian language burst forth in an exulting and splendid confusion, then came the command's about face, eyes front, helm ali hard port, forward marge, and the drums let go again. When the last termination had disappeared, the commander said the instruction drill would now begin and asked for suggestions. I said, they say I have, thou hast, he has, and so on, but they don't say what. It will be better and more definite if they have something to have, just an object, you know, something, anything will do, anything that will give the listener a sort of personal as well as grammatical interest in their joys and complaints you see. He said, it is a good point, would a dog do? I said I did not know, but we could try a dog and see. So he sent out an aid to camp to give the order to add the dog. The six privates of the present tense now filed in, in charge of Sargent Avere, to have, and displaying their banner, they formed in line of battle and recited, one at a time, thus, I have a dog, thou hast a dog, egli ha un cane, he has a dog, noi abbiamo un cane, we have a dog, voi avete un cane, you have a dog, egli no hanno un cane, they have a dog. No comment followed. They returned to camp and I reflected awhile. The commander said, I fear you are disappointed. Yes, I said, they are too monotonous, too singsong, too dead and alive. They have no expression, no eloquution. It isn't natural. It could never happen in real life.  He is not on the fence. I never saw a case.  He thought maybe the trouble was with the dog. He said, these are contadini, you know, and they have prejudice against dogs, that is, against marimane.  In my judgment they have taken this dog for a marimane and how soured on him. I saw that the dog was a mistake and not functionable. We must try something else, something, if possible, that could evoke sentiment, interest, feeling. What is cat in Italian? I asked. Gatto. Is it a gentleman cat or a lady? Gentleman cat. How are these people as regards to that animal? Well, they, they... You hesitate. That is enough. How are they about chickens? He tilted his eyes toward heaven in mute ecstasy. I understood. What is chicken in Italian? I asked. Puyo pudere. Pudere is Italian for master. It is a title of courtesy and conveys reverence and admiration. Puyo is one chicken by itself. When there are enough present to constitute a plural, it is Puy. Very well, Puy will do. Which squad is detailed for duty next? The past definite. Send out and order it to the front, with chickens, and let them understand that we don't want any more of this cold indifference. He gave the order to an aide, adding, with a haunting tenderness in his tone and a watering mouth in his aspect, convey to them the conception that these are unprotected chickens. He turned to me, saluting with his hand to his temple, and explained, it will inflame their interest in the polteressire. A few minutes lapsed. Then the squad marched in and formed up their faces glowing with enthusiasm, and the file leader shouted, Ebi Puy, I had chickens. Good, I said. Go on, the next. Avest Puy, thou hast chickens. Fine, next. Ebi Puy, he had chickens. Molti moltissimo, go on, the next. Avemo Puy, we had chickens. Basta, basta aspetato avanti. Last man, charge. Ebero Puy, they had chickens. Then they formed an echelon by columns of fours, refused the left, and retired in great style on the double quick. I was enchanted, and said, now, doctor, that is something like. Chickens are the ticket, there is no doubt about it. What is the next squad? The imperfect. How does it go? Yo avena, I had. Tu avevi, thou hadst. Egli avena, he had. Noi, wait, we've just had the hads. What are you giving me? But this is another breed. What do you want of another breed? Isn't one breed enough? Had is had, and you're tricking it out in a fresh way of spelling isn't going to make it any hadder than it was before. Now you know that yourself. But there is a distinction. They are not just the same hads. How do you make it out? Well, you use that first had when you are referring to something that happened at a named and sharp and perfectly definite moment. Use the other when the thing happened that they vaguely defined time and in a more prolonged and indefinitely continuous way. Why, doctor, it is pure nonsense. You know it yourself. Look here, if I have had a had, or have wanted to have had a had, or was in a position right then and there to have had a had that hadn't had any chance to go out hadding on account of this foolish discrimination which lets one had go hadding in any kind of indefinite grammatical weather, but restricts the other one to definite and datable meteoric convulsions and keeps it pining around and watching the barometer all the time, and libel to get sick through confinement and lack of exercise, and all that sort of thing. Why, why, the inhumanity of it is enough, let alone the wanton superfluity and uselessness of any such a loafing, consumptive hospital bird of a had taking up room and cumbering the place for nothing. These finical refinements revolt me. It is not right. It is not honorable. It is constructive nepotism to keep in office a had, and is so delicate, it can't come out when the wind's in the northwest. I won't have this dude on the payroll. Cancel his Exequator, and look here, but you miss the point. It is like this. You see? Never mind explaining. I don't care anything about it. Six hads is enough for me. Anybody that needs twelve, let him subscribe. I don't want any stock in a had-trust. Knock out the prolonged and the indefinitely continuous. Four-fifths of it is water anyway, but I beg you, Pudere. It is often quite indispensable in cases where- Pipe the next squad to the assault. But it was not to be. For at that moment the dull boom of the noon gun floated up out of far-off Florence, followed by the usual softened jangle of church bells, Florentine and suburban, that bursts out in murmurous response. By labor union wall, the Colazione, note one, Colazione is Italian for a collection, a meeting, a seance, a sitting, MT. Must stop. Stop promptly, stop instantly, stop definitely, like the chosen and best of the breed of hads. End of section 26 This is section 27 of the $30,000 bequest and other stories by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. A burlesque biography. Two or three persons having at different times intimated that if I would write an autobiography they would read it when they got leisure. I yield at last to this frenzied public demand, and herewith tender my history. Ours is a noble house, and stretches a long way back into antiquity. The earliest ancestor the Twains have any record of, was a friend of the family by the name of Higgins. This was in the eleventh century when our people were living in Aberdeen County of Cork, England. Why it is that our long line has ever since borne the maternal name, except when one of them now and then took a playful refuge in an alias to avert foolishness. Instead of Higgins, is a mystery which none of us has ever felt much desire to stir. It is a kind of vague, pretty romance, and we leave it alone. All the old families do it that way. Arthur Twain was a man of considerable note, a solicitor on the highway in William Rufus's time. At about the age of thirty he went to one of those fine old English places of resort called Newgate to see about something, and never returned again. While there he died suddenly, Augustus Twain seems to have made something of a stir about the year eleven sixty. He was as full of fun as he could be, and used to take his old sabre and sharpen it up, and get in a convenient place on a dark night, and stick it through people as they went by, to see them jump. He was a born humorist, but he got to going too far with it, and the first time he was found stripping one of these parties, the authorities removed one end of him, and put it up on a nice high place on Temple Bar, where it could contemplate the people and have a good time. He never liked any situation so much, or stuck to it so long. Then for the next two hundred years the family tree shows a succession of soldiers, noble, high-spirited fellows, who always went into battle singing, right behind the army, and always went out a whooping, right ahead of it. This is a scathing rebuke to old dead Frozart's poor witticism that our family tree never had but one limb to it, and that that one stuck out at right angles, and bore fruit winter and summer. Early in the fifteenth century we had Bo Twain, called the Scholar. He wrote a beautiful, beautiful hand, and he could imitate anybody's hand so closely that it was enough to make a person laugh his head off to see it. He had infinite sport with his talent, but by and by he took a contract to break stone for a road, and the roughness of the work spoiled his hand. Still he enjoyed life all the time he was in the stone business, which, with inconsiderable intervals, was some forty-two years. In fact he died in harness. During all those long years he gave such satisfaction that he never was through with one contract a week till the government gave him another. He was a perfect pet, and he was always a favorite with his fellow artists, and was a conspicuous member of their benevolent secret society called the Chain Gang. He always wore his hair short, had a preference for striped clothes, and died lamented by the government. He was a sore loss to his country, for he was so regular. Some years later we have the illustrious John Morgan Twain. He came over to this country with Columbus in 1492 as a passenger. He appears to have been of a crusty, uncomfortable disposition. He complained of the food all the way over, and was always threatening to go ashore unless there was a change. He wanted fresh chad. Hardly a day passed over his head that he did not go idling about the ship with his nose in the air, sneering about the commander, and saying he did not believe Columbus knew where he was going to, or had ever been there before. The memorable cry of Land Ho thrilled every heart and the ship, but his. He gazed a while through a piece of smoked glass at the penciled line and lying on the distant water, and then said, Land Be Hanged, it's a raft! When this questionable passenger came on board the ship he brought nothing with him but an old newspaper containing a handkerchief marked B.G., one cotton sock marked L.W.C., one woollen one marked D.F., and a night shirt marked O.M.R., and yet during the voyage he worried more about his trunk and gave himself more ears about it than all the rest of the passengers put together. If the ship was down by the head and would not steer he would go and move his trunk further aft, and then watch the effect. If the ship was by the stern he would suggest to Columbus to detail some men to shift that baggage. In storms he had to be gagged, because his wailings about his trunk made it impossible for the men to hear the orders. The man does not appear to have been openly charged with any gravely unbecoming thing, but it is noted in the ship's log as a curious circumstance, that albeit he brought his baggage on board the ship in a newspaper, he took it ashore in four trunks, a Queensware crate, and a couple of champagne baskets. But when he came back insinuating in an insolent, swaggering way that some of his things were missing and was going to search the other passengers' baggage it was too much, and they threw him overboard. They watched long and wonderingly for him to come up, but not even a bubble rose on the quietly ebbing tide. But while everyone was most absorbed in gazing over the side, and the interest was momentarily increasing, it was observed with consternation that the vessel was adrift, and the anchor-cable hanging limp from the bow. Then in the ship's dimmed and ancient log we find this quaint note. In time it was discovered that the troublesome passenger had gone down and got the anchor, and took the same and sold it to the damn savages from the interior, saying he had founded it, his son of a gun. Yet this ancestor had good and noble instincts, and it is with pride that we call to mind the fact that he was the first white person who ever interested himself in the work of elevating and civilizing our Indians. He built a commodious jail and put up a gallows, and to his dying day he claimed with satisfaction that he had had a more restraining and elevating influence on the Indians than any other reformer that ever labored among them. At this point the chronicle becomes less frank and chatty, and closes abruptly by saying that the old voyager went to see his gallows perform on the first white man ever hanged in America, and while there received injuries which terminated in his death. The great grandson of the reformer flourished in 1600 and something, and was known in our annals as the Old Admiral, though in history he had other titles. He was long in command of fleets of swift vessels, well-armed and manned, and did great service in hurrying up merchantmen. Vessels which he followed and kept his eagle eye on always made good fair time across the ocean, but if a ship still loitered in spite of all he could do, his indignation would grow till he could contain himself no longer, and then he would take that ship home where he lived, and keep it there carefully, expecting the owners to come for it. But they never did. And he would try to get the idleness and sloth out of the sailors of that ship by compelling them to take invigorating exercise and a bath. He called it walking a plank. All the pupils liked it. At any rate they never found any fault with it after trying it. When the owners were late coming for their ships the Admiral always burnt them, so that the insurance money should not be lost.  Charles Henry Twain lived during the latter part of the seventeenth century and was a zealous and distinguished missionary. He converted sixteen thousand South Sea islanders, and taught them that a dog, tooth, necklace, and a pair of spectacles was not enough clothing to come to divine service in. His poor flock loved him very, very dearly, and when his funeral was over they got up in his body and came out of the restaurant with tears in their eyes, and saying, one to another, that he was a good tender missionary, and they wished they had some more of him. Pagotu Wawa Puka Tikiwis, mighty hunter with a hog-eye Twain, adorned the middle of the eighteenth century and aided General Braddock with all his heart to resist the oppressor Washington. It was this ancestor who fired seventeen times at our Washington, from behind a tree. So far the beautiful romantic narrative in the moral story books is correct, but when that narrative goes on to say that at the seventeenth round the awe-stricken savage said solemnly that that man was being reserved by the great spirit for some mighty mission, and he dared not lift his sacrilegious rifle against him again. The narrative seriously impairs the integrity of history. What he did say was, it ain't no, no use, that man so drunk he can stand still long enough for a man to hit him. I can't afford to fool away any more amnition on him. That was why he stopped at the seventeenth round, and it was a good plain matter of fact reason too, and one that easily commends itself to us by the eloquent persuasive flavor of probability there is about it. I always enjoyed the story-book narrative, but I felt a marring misgiving that every Indian at Prattoc's defeat who fired at a soldier a couple of times, too easily grows to seventeenth in a century, and missed him, jumped to the conclusion that the great spirit was reserving that soldier for some grand mission, and so I somehow feared that the only reason why Washington's case is remembered and the other's forgotten is that in his the prophecy came true, and in that of the others it didn't. There are not books enough on earth to contain the record of the prophecies Indians and other unauthorized parties have made, but one may carry in his overcoat pockets the record of all the prophecies that have been fulfilled. I will remark here in passing that certain ancestors of mine are so thoroughly well known in history by their aliases that I have not felt it to be worthwhile to dwell upon them, or even mention them in the order of their birth. Among these may be mentioned Richard Brinsley Twain, alias Guy Fawkes, John Wentworth Twain, alias Sixteen String Jack, William Hogarth Twain, alias Jack Shepherd, Ananias Twain, alias Baron Munchausen, John George Twain, alias Captain Kidd, and then there are George Francis Twain, Tom Pepper, Nebuchadnezzar, and Bollen's Ass, they all belong to our family, but to a branch of it somewhat distinctly removed from the honorable direct line, in fact a collateral branch whose members chiefly differ from the ancient stock in that in order to acquire the notoriety we have always yearned and hungered for, they have got into a low way of going to jail instead of getting hanged. It is not well, when writing an autobiography to follow your ancestry down too close to your own time, it is safest to speak only vaguely of your great-grandfather and then skip from there to yourself, which I now do. I was born without teeth, and there Richard the Third had the advantage of me, but I was born without a humpback, likewise, and there I had the advantage of him. My parents were neither very poor nor conspicuously honest, but now a thought occurs to me, my own history would really seem so tame contrasted with that of my ancestors that it is simply wisdom to leave it unwritten until I am hanged. If some other biographies I have read had stopped with the ancestry until a like event occurred, it would have been a felicitous thing for the reading public. How does it strike you? End of Section 27 This is Section 28 of The $30,000 Request and Other Stories by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. How to Tell a Story The humorous story and American development. Its difference from comic and witty stories. I do not claim that I can tell a story as it ought to be told. I only claim to know how a story ought to be told, for I have been almost daily in the company of the most expert storytellers for many years. There are several kinds of stories, but only one difficult kind, the humorous. I will talk mainly about that one. The humorous story is American. The comic story is English. The witty story is French. The humorous story depends for its effect upon the manner of the telling, the comic story and the witty story, upon the matter. The humorous story may be spun out to great length and may wander around as much as it pleases and arrive nowhere in particular, but the comic and witty stories must be brief and end with a point. The humorous story bubbles gently along, the others burst. The humorous story is strictly a work of art, high and delicate art, and only an artist can tell it. But no art is necessary in telling the comic and the witty story. Anybody can do it. The art of telling a humorous story—understand I mean by word of mouth, not print—was created in America and has remained at home. The humorous story is told gravely. The teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it. But the teller of the comic story tells you beforehand that it is one of the funniest things he has ever heard, then tells it with eager delight, and is the first person to laugh when he gets through. And sometimes, if he has had good success, he is so glad and happy that he will repeat the nub of it and glance around from face to face, collecting applause, and then repeat it again.  Very often, of course, the rambling and disjointed humorous story finishes with a nub, point, snapper, or whatever you like to call it. Then the listener must be alert, or in many cases the teller will divert attention from that nub by dropping it in a carefully casual and indifferent way with a pretense that he does not know it is a nub. Artemis Ward used that trick a good deal, and when the belated audience presently caught the joke, he would look up with innocent surprise as if wondering what they had found to laugh at. Dan Settrell used it before him. Nye and Riley and others use it today. But the teller of the comic story does not slur the nub. He shouts it at you every time, and when he prints it in England, France, Germany, and Italy, he italicizes it, puts some whopping exclamation points after it, and sometimes explains it in a parenthesis, all of which is very depressing and makes one want to renounce joking and lead a better life. Let me set down an instance of the comic method using an anecdote which has been popular all over the world for twelve or fifteen hundred years. The teller tells it in this way. The wounded soldier. In the course of a certain battle, a soldier whose leg had been shot off appealed to another soldier who was hurrying by to carry him to the rear, informing him at the same time of the loss which he had sustained, whereupon the generous son of Mars, shouldering the unfortunate, proceeded to carry out his desire. The bullets and cannon-balls were flying in all directions, and presently one of the latter took the wounded man's head off, without, however, his deliverer being aware of it. In no long time he was hailed by an officer who said, Where are you going with that carcass? To the rear, sir, he's lost his leg. His leg, forsooth, responded the astonished officer. You mean his hat, you booby! Whereupon the soldier dispossessed himself of his burden, and stood looking down upon it in great perplexity. At length he said, It is true, sir, just as you have said. Then after a pause he added, But he told me it was his leg! Here the narrator bursts into explosion after explosion of thunderous horse laughter, repeating that nub from time to time through his gasping and shriekings and suffocatings. It takes only a minute and a half to tell that in its comic story form, and it isn't worth the telling after all. Put into the humorous story form it takes ten minutes, and is about the funniest thing I have ever listened to, as James Whitcomb Riley tells it. He tells it in the character of a dull-witted old farmer, who has just heard it for the first time, thinks it is unspeakably funny, and is trying to repeat it to a neighbor. But he can't remember it. So he gets all mixed up, and wanders helplessly round and round, putting in tedious details that don't belong in the tale and only retard it, taking them out conscientiously, and putting in others that are just as useless, making minor mistakes now and then, and stopping to correct them, and explain how he came to make them, remembering things which he forgot to put in their proper place, and going back to put them in there, stopping his narrative a good while in order to try to recall the name of the soldier that was heard, and finally remembering that the soldier's name was not mentioned, and remarking placidly that the name is of no real importance anyway, and better, of course, if one knew it, but not essential after all, and so on, and so on, and so on. The teller is innocent, and happy, and pleased with himself, and has to stop every little while to hold himself in and keep from laughing outright, and does hold in, but his body quakes in a jelly-like way with interior chuckles, and at the end of the ten minutes the audience have laughed until they are exhausted, and the tears are running down their faces. The simplicity, and innocence, and sincerity, and unconsciousness of the old farmer are perfectly simulated, and the result is a performance which is thoroughly charming and delicious. This is art, and fine and beautiful, and only a master can compass it, but a machine could tell the other story. To string in congruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities, is the basis of the American art, if my position is correct. Another feature is the slurring of the point. A third is the dropping of a studied remark apparently without knowing it, as if one were thinking aloud. The fourth, and last, is the pause. Artemis Ward dealt in numbers three and four a good deal. He would begin to tell with great animation something which he seemed to think was wonderful, then lose confidence, and after an apparently absent-minded pause, add an incongruous remark in a soliloquizing way, and that was the remark intended to explode the mine, and it did. For instance, he would say eagerly, excitedly, I once knew a man in New Zealand who hadn't a tooth in his head! Here his animation would die out. A silent, reflective pause would follow, then he would say dreamily, and as if to himself, and yet that man could beat a drum better than any man I ever saw. The pause is an exceedingly important feature in any kind of story, and a frequently recurring feature too. It is a dainty thing and delicate, and also uncertain and treacherous, for it must be exactly the right length, no more and no less, or it fails of its purpose and makes trouble. If the pause is too short, the impressive point has passed, and the audience have had time to divine that a surprise is intended, and then you can't surprise them, of course. On the platform I used to tell a negro ghost story that had a pause in front of the snapper on the end, and that pause was the most important thing in the whole story.  This story was called The Golden Arm, and was told in this fashion, you can practice it with it yourself, and mind you look out for the pause and get it right. The Golden Arm Once upon a time there was a momless, mean man, and he lived way out in the prairie all alone by self, except he had a wife, and by and by she died, and he took and toted her way out down to prairie and bury her. While she had a golden arm, all solid gold, from the shoulder down, he was powerful, mean, powerful, and that night he couldn't sleep, because he want that golden arm so bad. When it come midnight he couldn't stand no more, so he get up, he did, and took his lantern, and shoved off through the storm, and dug her up, and got the golden arm, and then he pinned his head down, and again the wind, and plowed, and plowed, and plowed through the snow, then all of a sudden he stopped, make a considerable pause here, and look startled, and take a listening attitude, and say, My land, what's dead? And he listened, and listened, and then when say, set your teeth together, and imitate the wailing and wheezing sing-song of the wind, and then way back yonder, where the grave is, hear a voice, hear a voice all mix up in the wind, can't hardly tell apart, Bzzz, Bzzz, Oh, God, my golden arm! You must begin to shiver violently now, and he begin to shiver and shake, and say, Oh, my, Oh, my land, and the wind blow the lantern out, and the snow and sleep blow in his face, and most choke him, and he start to plow, and knee deep toward home, most dead, and so scared, and pretty soon he hear a voice again, and pause. It is coming after him, Bzzz, Bzzz, Oh, God, my golden arm! When you get to the pasture he hear again, close to now, and a common, a common back, die in the dark in the storm, repeat the wind and the voice. When you get to the house he rush upstairs and jump in the bed and cure up, head in years, and lay down shivering and shaking, and then way out down he hear it again, and a common, and blimey, he hear, pause, odd listening attitude, bat, bat, bat, it's a common upstairs! Then he hear the latch, and he know it's in the room, then pretty soon he knows it's a standing by the bed, pause, then he knows it's a bending down over him, and he can't scarcely get his breath, then, then he seem to feel something cold right down most again his head, pause, then the voice say, right at his ear, Oh, God, my golden arm! You must wail it out very plaintively and accusingly, then you stare steadily and impressively into the face of the farthest gone auditor, a girl preferably, and let that awe-inspiring pause begin to build itself in the deep hush. When it has reached exactly the right length, jump suddenly at the girl and yell, You've got it! If you've got the pause right she'll fetch a dear little yelp and spring right out of her shoes, but you must get the pause right, and you will find it the most troublesome and aggravating and uncertain thing you ever undertook. End of section 28. This is section 29 of the $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. General Washington's Negro Body Servant. A Biographical Sketch. The stirring part of this celebrated colored man's life properly began with his death. That is to say the notable features of his biography began with the first time he died. He had been little heard of up to that time, but since then we have never ceased to hear of him. We have never ceased to hear of him at stated, unfailing intervals. His was a most remarkable career, and I have thought that its history would make a valuable addition to our biographical literature. Therefore I have carefully collated the materials for such a work from authentic sources, and here present them to the public. I have rigidly excluded from these pages everything of a doubtful character with the object in view of introducing my work into the schools for the instruction of the youth of my country. The name of the famous body servant of General Washington was George. After serving his illustrious master faithfully for half a century, and enjoying throughout his long term his high regard and confidence, it became his sorrowful duty at last to lay that beloved master to rest in his peaceful grave by the Potomac. Ten years afterward, in 1809, full of years and honors, he died himself, mourned by all who knew him. The Boston Gazette of that date thus refers to the event. George, the favorite body servant of the lamented Washington, died in Richmond, Virginia last Tuesday at the ripe age of ninety-five years. His intellect was unimpaired, and his memory tenacious, up to within a few minutes of his decease. He was present at the second installation of Washington as President, and also at his funeral, and distinctly remembered all the prominent incidents connected with those noted events. From this period we hear no more of the favorite body servant of General Washington until May 1825, at which time he died again. A Philadelphia paper thus speaks of the sad occurrence. At Macon, Georgia last week, a colored man named George, who was the favorite body servant of General Washington, died at the advanced age of ninety-five years. Up to within a few hours of his dissolution, he was in full possession of all his faculties, and could distinctly recollect the second installation of Washington, his death and burial, the surrender of Cornwallis, the battle of Trenton, the griefs and hardships of Valley Forge, etc. Deceased was followed to the grave by the entire population of Macon. On the Fourth of July, 1830, and also of 1834 and 36, the subject of this sketch was exhibited in great state upon the rostrum of the orator of the day, and in November of 1840 he died again. The St. Louis Republican of the Twenty-fifth of that month spoke as follows. Another relic of the revolution gone. George, once the favorite body servant of General Washington, died yesterday at the house of Mr. John Leavenworth in this city at the venerable age of ninety-five years. He was in the full possession of his faculties up to the hour of his death, and distinctly recollected the first and second installations and death of President Washington, the surrender of Cornwallis, the battles of Trenton and Monmouth, the sufferings of the Patriot Army at Valley Forge, the proclamation of the Declaration of Independence, the speech of Patrick Henry in the Virginia House of Delegates, and many other old-time reminiscences of stirring interest. Few white men die lamented as was this aged negro. The funeral was very largely attended. During the next ten or eleven years the subject of this sketch appeared at intervals at Fourth of July celebrations in various parts of the country, and was exhibited upon the rostrum with flattering success. But in the fall of 1855 he died again. The California papers thus speak of the event. Another old hero gone. Died at Dutch Flat on the seventh of March, George, once the confidential body-servant of General Washington, at the great age of ninety-five years. His memory, which did not fail him till the last, was a wonderful storehouse of interesting reminiscences. He could distinctly recollect the first and second installations and death of President Washington, the surrender of Cornwallis, the battles of Trenton and Monmouth and Bunker Hill, the proclamation of the Declaration of Independence, and Braddock's defeat. George was greatly respected in Dutch Flat, and it is estimated that there were ten thousand people present at his funeral. The last time the subject of this sketch died was in June 1864, and until we learn the contrary it is just to presume that he died permanently this time. The Michigan papers thus refer to the sorrowful event. Another cherished remnant of the Revolution gone. George, a colored man and once the favorite body-servant of George Washington, died in Detroit last week at the patriarchal age of ninety-five years. To the moment of his death his intellect was unclouded, and he could distinctly remember the first and second installations and death of Washington, the surrender of Cornwallis, the battles of Trenton and Monmouth and Bunker Hill, the proclamation of the Declaration of Independence, Braddock's defeat, the throwing over of the tea in Boston Harbor, and the landing of the pilgrims. He died greatly respected and was followed to the grave by a vast concourse of people. The faithful old servant is gone. We shall never see him more until he turns up again. He has closed his long and splendid career of dissolution for the present, and sleeps peacefully, as only they sleep who have earned their rest. He was in all respects a remarkable man. He held his age better than any celebrity that has figured in history, and the longer he lived, the stronger and longer his memory grew. If he lives to die again, he will distinctly recollect the discovery of America. The above resume of his biography I believe to be substantially correct, although it is possible that he may have died once or twice in obscure places where the event failed of newspaper notoriety. One fault I find in all notices of his death, which I have quoted, and this ought to be correct. In them he uniformly and impartially died at the age of ninety-five. This could not have been. He might have done that once or maybe twice, but he could not have continued it indefinitely, allowing that when he first died he died at the age of ninety-five. He was a hundred and fifty-one years old when he died last in 1864. But his age did not keep pace with his recollections. When he died the last time he distinctly remembered the landing of the pilgrims, which took place in 1620. He must have been about twenty years old when he witnessed that event, wherefore it is safe to assert that the body servant of General Washington was in the neighborhood of two hundred and sixty or seventy years old when he departed this life finally. Having waited a proper length of time to see if the subject of his sketch had gone from us reliably and irrevocably, I now publish his biography with confidence and respectfully offer it to a mourning nation. P.S. I see by the papers that this infamous old fraud has just died again in Arkansas. This makes six times that he has known to have died and always in a new place. The death of Washington's body servant has ceased to be a novelty. Its charm is gone. The people are tired of it. Let it cease. This well-meaning but misguided Negro has now put six different communities to the expense of burying him in state, and has swindled tens of thousands of people into following him to the grave under the delusion that a select and peculiar distinction was being conferred upon them. Let him stay buried for good now, and let that newspaper suffer the severest censure that shall ever, in all future time, publish to the world that General Washington's favorite colored body servant has died again. End of Section 29 This is Section 30 of the $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, with inspirations of the two-year-olds. All infants appear to have an impertinent and disagreeable fashion nowadays of saying smart things on most occasions that offer, and especially on occasions when they ought not to be saying anything at all. Judging 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. He was a stern, unsmiling man, and hated all forms of precocity. If I had said some of the things I have referred to and said them in his hearing, he would have destroyed me. He would indeed. He would have provided the opportunity to remain with him. But it would not, for I would have had judgment enough to take some strict nine first, and say my smart thing afterward. The fair record of my life has been tarnished by just one pun.  If I had been full-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 smart 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, where 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 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 seemed as if these things happened yesterday, and they did, to some children. But I digress. I was lying there trying the India rubber rings. I remember looking at the clock, and noticing that in an hour and twenty-five minutes I would be two weeks old, and thinking how little I had done to merit the blessings that were so unsparingly 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 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.  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 father said, Samuel is a very excellent name. I saw that trouble was coming. Nothing could prevent 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 tin 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 entertainment. Then I put on my little frock and my little bonnet, and took my pygmy 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 worst, I am ready. Then I said aloud in a firm voice, Father, I cannot, cannot wear the name of Samuel. My son, 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? 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 could come. And then I salied forth, and that stern old man salied 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 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 nowadays? In my opinion there would have been a case of infanticide in our family. End of Section 30. This is Section 31 of the $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. An Entertaining Article I take the following paragraph from an article in the Boston Advertiser. An English Critic on Mark Twain. Perhaps the most successful flights of humor of Mark Twain have been descriptions of the persons who did not appreciate his humor at all. We have become familiar with the Californians who were thrilled with terror by his burlesque of a newspaper reporter's way of telling a story, and we have heard of the Pennsylvania clergyman who sadly returned his innocence 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 Review, 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 itself that he can hardly do better than reproduce the article in full in his next monthly memoranda. Publishing the above paragraph thus gives me a sort of authority for reproducing the Saturday Review's article in full in these pages. I dearly wanted to do it, for I cannot write anything half so delicious myself. If I had a cast iron dog that could read this English criticism and preserve his austerity, I would drive him off the doorstep. From the London Saturday Review Reviews of New Books The Innocence Abroad A Book of Travels, by Mark Twain London Houghton Publisher, 1870 Lord Macaulay died too soon. We never felt this so deeply as when we finished the last chapter of the above-named extravagant work. Macaulay died too soon, for none but he could meet out complete and comprehensive justice to the insolence, the impertinence, the presumption, the mendacity, and, above all, the majestic ignorance of this author. To say that the Innocence Abroad is a curious book would be to use the faintest language, would be to speak of the Matterhorn as a neat elevation, or of Niagara as being nice or pretty. Curious is too tame a word wherewith to describe the imposing insanity of this work. There is no word that is large enough or long enough. Let us therefore photograph a passing glimpse of book and author, and trust the rest to the reader. Let the cultivated English student of human nature picture to himself this Mark Twain as a person capable of doing the following described things, and not only doing them, but with incredible innocence printing them calmly and tranquilly in a book. For instance, he states that he entered a hairdressers in Paris to get shaved, and the first rake the barber gave him with his razor it loosened his hide, and lifted him out of the chair. This is unquestionably exaggerated. In Florence he was so annoyed by beggars that he pretends to have seized and eaten one in a frantic spirit of revenge. There is, of course, no truth in this. He gives at full length a theatrical program seventeen or eighteen hundred years old which he professes to have found in the ruins of the Coliseum, among the dirt and mould and rubbish. It is a sufficient comment upon this statement to remark that even a cast iron program would not have lasted so long under such circumstances. In Greece he plainly betrays both fright and flight upon one occasion, but with frozen effrontery puts the latter in this falsely tamed form we sidled toward the Piraeus. Sidled indeed, he does not hesitate to intimate that at Ephesus, when his mules strayed from the proper course, he got down, took him under his arm, carried him to the road again, pointed him right, remounted, and went to sleep contentedly till it was time to restore the beast to the path once more. He states that a growing youth among his ship's passengers was in the constant habit of appeasing his hunger with soap and oakum between meals. In Palestine he tells of ants that came eleven miles to spend the summer in the desert and brought their provisions with them, yet he shows by his description of the country that the feat was an impossibility. He mentions, as if it were the most common place of matters, that he caught a Muslim in two in broad daylight in Jerusalem, with Godfrey de Bouillon's sword, and would have shed more blood if he had had a graveyard of his own. These statements are unworthy a moment's attention. Mr. Twain, or any other foreigner who did such a thing in Jerusalem, would be mobbed and would infallibly lose his life. But why go on? Why repeat more of his audacious and exasperating falsehoods? Let us close fittingly with this one. He affirms that, in the mosque of St. Sophia at Constantinople, I got my feet so stuck up with a complication of gums, slime, and general impurity that I wore out more than two thousand pair of bootjacks getting my boots off that night, and even then some Christian hide peeled off with them. It is monstrous. Such statements are simply lies. There is no other name for them. Will the reader longer marvel at the brutal ignorance that pervades the American nation when we tell him that we are informed upon perfectly good authority that this extravagant compilation of falsehoods, this exhaustless mine of stupendous lies, this innocence abroad, has actually been adopted by the schools and colleges of several of the states as a text book.  In one place he was so appalled at the sudden spectacle of a murdered man, unveiled by the moonlight, that he jumped out of the window, going through sash and all, and then remarks with the most childlike simplicity that he was not scared, but was considerably agitated. It puts us out of patience to note that the simpleton is densely unconscious that Lucretia Borgia ever existed off the stage. He is vulgarly ignorant of all foreign languages, but is frank enough to criticize the Italian's use of their own tongue. He says they spell the name of their great painter, Vinci, but pronounce it Vinci, and then adds with a naivete, possible only to helpless ignorance, foreigners always spell better than they pronounce. In another place he commits the bald absurdity of putting the phrase Tare on Owens into an Italian's mouth. In Rome he unhesitatingly believes the legend that St. Philip Neri's heart was so inflamed with divine love that it burst his ribs, believes it wholly because an author with a learned list of university degrees strung after his name endorses it.  Our author makes a long, fatiguing journey to the Grotto del Cane, on purpose, to test his poisoning powers on a dog, and got elaborately ready for the experiment, and then discovered that he had no dog. A wiser person would have kept such a thing discreetly to himself, but with this harmless creature everything comes out. He hurts his foot in a rut two thousand years old in exhumed Pompeii, and presently when staring at one of the cinder-like corpses unearthed in the next square conceives the idea that maybe it is the remains of the ancient street-commissioner, and straightway his horror softens down to a sort of chirpy contentment with the condition of things. In Damascus he visits the well of Ananias, three thousand years old, and is as surprised and delighted as a child to find that the water is as pure and fresh as if the well had been dug yesterday. In the Holy Land he gags desperately at the hard Arabic and Hebrew Biblical names, and finally concludes to call them Baldwinsville, Williamsburg, and so on, for convenience of spelling. We have thus spoken freely of this man's stupefying simplicity and innocence, but we cannot deal similarly with his colossal ignorance. We do not know where to begin, and if we knew where to begin we certainly would not know where to leave off. We will give one specimen and one only. He did not know, until he got to Rome, that Michael Angelo was dead, and then, instead of crawling away and hiding his shameful ignorance somewhere, he proceeds to express a pious, grateful sort of satisfaction that he is gone and out of his troubles. Now the reader may seek out the author's exhibition of his uncultivation for himself. The book is absolutely dangerous, considering the magnitude and variety of its misstatements, and the convincing confidence with which they are made, and yet it is a textbook in the schools of America. The poor, blunderer mouses among the sublime creations of the old masters trying to acquire the elegant proficiency and art knowledge, which he has a groping sort of comprehension, is a proper thing for a traveled man to be able to display. But what is the manner of his study, and what is the progress he achieves? To what extent does he familiarize himself with the great pictures of Italy, and what degree of appreciation does he arrive at? Read. When we see a monk going about with a lion and looking up into heaven, we know that that is St. Mark. When we see a monk with a book and a pen, looking tranquilly up to heaven, trying to think of a word, we know that that is St. Matthew. When we see a monk sitting on a rock, looking tranquilly up to heaven, with a human skull beside him and without other baggage, we know that that is St. Jerome, because we know that he always went flying light in the matter of baggage. When we see other monks looking tranquilly up to heaven, but having no trademark, we always ask who those parties are. We do this because we humbly wish to learn. He then enumerates the thousands and thousands of copies of these several pictures which he has seen, and adds with a custom simplicity that he feels encouraged to believe that when he has seen some more of each, and had a larger experience, he will eventually begin to take an absorbing interest in them, the vulgar boar. That we have shown this to be a remarkable book we think no one will deny, that it is a pernicious book to place in the hands of the confiding and uninformed we think we have also shown, that the book is a deliberate and wicked creation of a diseased mind is apparent upon every page. Having placed our judgment thus upon record, let us close with what charity we can by remarking that even in this volume there is some good to be found. For whenever the author talks of his own country and lets Europe alone, he never fails to make himself interesting, and not only interesting but instructive. No one can read without benefit his occasional chapters and paragraphs about life in the gold and silver mines of California and Nevada, about the Indians of the plains and deserts of the West, and their cannibalism, about the raising of vegetables in kegs of gunpowder by the aid of two or three teaspoons of guano, about the moving of small farms from place to place at night, in wheel-barrows, to avoid taxes, and about a sort of cows and mules in the humbled mines that climb down chimneys and disturb the people at night. These matters are not only new, but are well worth knowing. It is a pity the author did not put in more of the same kind. His book is well written and is exceedingly entertaining, and so it just barely escaped being quite valuable also. One Month Later Laterly I have received several letters, and see a number of newspaper paragraphs, all upon a certain subject, and all of about the same tenor. I here give honest assessments. One is from a New York paper, one is from a letter from an old friend, and one is from a letter from a New York publisher who is a stranger to me. I humbly endeavour to make these bits toothsome with the remark that the article they are praising, which appeared in the December Galaxy, and pretended to be a criticism from the London Saturday Review on my Innocence Abroad, was written by myself every line of it. The Herald says the richest thing out is the serious critique in the London Saturday Review on Mark Twain's Innocence Abroad. We thought, before we read it, that it must be serious, as everybody said so, and we're even ready to shed a few tears, but since perusing it we are bound to confess that next to Mark Twain's jumping frog it's the best bit of humour and sarcasm that we've come across in many a day. I do not get a compliment like that every day.  If suggestions are in order, mine is, that you put that article in your next edition of the Innocence as an extra chapter. If you are not afraid to put your own humour in competition with it, it is as rich a thing as I ever read, which is strong commendation from a book publisher. The London Reviewer, my friend, is not the stupid, serious creature he pretends to be, I think, but on the contrary has a keen appreciation and enjoyment of your book. As I read his article in The Galaxy I could imagine him giving vent to many a hearty laugh, but he is writing for Catholics and established church people, and high-toned, antiquated, conservative gentility, whom it is a delight to him to help you shock, while he pretends to shake his head with owlish density. He is a magnificent humorist himself. Now that is graceful and handsome. I take off my hat to my lifelong friend and comrade, and with my feet together and my fingers spread over my heart I say in the language of Alabama, you do me proud. I stand guilty of the authorship of the article, but I did not mean any harm. I saw by an item in the Boston Advertiser that a solemn, serious critique on the English edition of my book had appeared in the London Saturday Review, and the idea of such a literary breakfast by a stolid, ponderous British ogre of the quill was too much for a naturally weak virtue, and I went home and burlesked it, reveled in it, I may say. I never saw a copy of the real Saturday Review criticism until after my burlesque was written and mailed to the printer, but when I did get hold of a copy, I found it to be vulgar, awkwardly written, ill-natured, and entirely serious and in earnest. The gentleman who wrote the newspaper paragraph above quoted had not been misled as to its character.  Now I will not kill him. I will win his money. I will bet him twenty to one, and let any New York publisher hold the stakes, that the statements I have above made as to the authorship of the article in question are entirely true. Perhaps I may get wealthy at this, for I am willing to take all the bets that offer, and if a man wants larger odds, I will give him all he requires. But he ought to find out whether I am betting on what his termed a sure thing or not before he ventures his money, and he can do that by going to a public library and examining the London Saturday Review of October 8, which contains the real article. Bless me, some people thought that I was the sold person. P.S. I cannot resist the temptation to toss in this most savoury thing of all, this easy, graceful philosophical disquisition with his happy chirping confidence. It is from the Cincinnati Inquirer. Nothing is more uncertain than the value of a fine cigar. Nine smokers out of ten would prefer an ordinary domestic article, three for a quarter, to a fifty cent partaga, if kept in ignorance of the cost of the latter. The flavour of the partaga is too delicate for palates that have been accustomed to Connecticut seed-leaf, so it is with humour. The finer it is in quality, the more danger of its not being recognised at all. Even Mark Twain has been taken in by an English review of his Innocence Abroad. Mark Twain is by no means a coarse humourist, but the Englishman's humour is so much finer than his that he mistakes it for solid earnest, and laughs most consumedly. A man who cannot learn stands in his own light. Hereafter, when I write an article which I know to be good, but which I may have reason to fear will not in some quarters be considered too amount too much, coming from an American, I will aver that an Englishman wrote it, and that it is copied from a London journal, and then I will occupy a back seat, and enjoy the cordial applause. Still later. Mark Twain at last sees that the Saturday review's criticism of his Innocence Abroad was not serious, and he is intensely mortified at the thought of having been so badly sold. He takes the only course left him, and in the last Galaxy claims that he wrote the criticism himself, and published it in the Galaxy to sell the public. This is ingenious, but unfortunately it is not true. If any of our readers will take the trouble to call at this office, we will show them the original article in the Saturday review of October 8th, which, on comparison, will be found to be identical with the one published in the Galaxy. The best thing for Mark to do will be to admit that he was sold, and say no more about it. The above is from the Cincinnati Inquirer, and is a falsehood. Come to the proof. If the Inquirer people, through any agent, will produce at the Galaxy office a London Saturday review of October 8th, containing an article which, on comparison,