 10 Days and days went by now, and no Satan. It was dull without him, but the astrologer who had returned from his excursion to the moon went about the village, braving public opinion and getting a stone in the middle of his back now and then when some witch-hater got a safe chance to throw it and dodge out of sight. Meantime two influences had been working well for Margit, that Satan, who was quite indifferent to her, had stopped going to her house after a visit or two, had hurt her pride, and she had set herself the task of banishing him from her heart. Reports of Wilhelm Meidling's dissipation, brought to her from time to time by old Ursula, had touched her with remorse, jealousy of Satan being the cause of it, and so now these two matters working upon her together she was getting a good profit out of the combination. Her interest in Satan was steadily cooling, her interest in Wilhelm as steadily warming. All that was needed to complete her conversion was that Wilhelm should brace up and do something that should cause favorable talk and incline the public toward him again. The opportunity came now. Margit sent and asked him to defend her uncle in the approaching trial, and he was greatly pleased and stopped drinking and began his preparations with diligence, with more diligence than hope, in fact, for it was not a promising case. He had many interviews in his office with Seppi and me, and threshed out our testimony pretty thoroughly, thinking to find some valuable grains among the chaff, but the harvest was poor, of course. If Satan would only come, that was my constant thought. He could invent some way to win the case, for he had said it would be won, so he necessarily knew how it could be done, but the days dragged on and still he did not come. Of course I did not doubt that it would be won and that Father Peter would be happy for the rest of his life, since Satan had said so. Yet I knew I should be much more comfortable if he would come and tell us how to manage it. It was getting high time for Father Peter to have a saving change toward happiness, for by general report he was worn out with his imprisonment and the ignominy that was burdening him, and was like to die of his miseries unless he got relief soon. At last the trial came on and the people gathered from all around to witness it. Among them many strangers from considerable distances. Yes, everybody was there, except the accused. He was too feeble in body for the strain, but Margit was present and keeping up her hope and her spirit the best she could. The money was present, too. It was emptied on the table and was handled and caressed and examined by such as were privileged. The astrologer was put in the witness box. He had on his best hat and robe for the occasion. Question. You'll claim that this money is yours? Answer. I do. How did you come by it? I found the bag in the road when I was returning from a journey. When? More than two years ago. What did you do with it? I brought it home and hid it in a secret place in my observatory intending to find the owner if I could. You endeavoured to find him. I made diligent inquiry during several months, but nothing came of it. And then I thought it not worthwhile to look further and was minded to use the money in finishing the wing of the Foundling Asylum connected with the Priory and Nunnery. So I took it out of its hiding-place and counted it to see if any of it was missing. And then why did you stop? Proceed. I am sorry to have to say this, but just as I had finished and was restoring the bag to its place I looked up and there stood Father Peter behind me. Several murmured that looks bad, but others answered, ah, but he is such a liar. That made you uneasy? No. I thought nothing of it at the time, for Father Peter often came to me, unannounced, to ask for a little help in his need. Margaret blushed crimson at hearing her uncle falsely and impudently charged with begging, especially from one he had always denounced as a fraud and was going to speak, but remembered herself in time and held her peace. Proceed. In the end I was afraid to contribute the money to the Foundling Asylum, but elected to wait yet another year and continue my inquiries. When I heard of Father Peter's find I was glad and no suspicion entered my mind. When I came home a day or two later and discovered that my own money was gone, I still did not suspect until three circumstances connected with Father Peter's good fortune struck me as being singular coincidences. Pray, name them! Father Peter had found his money in a path. I had found mine in a road. Father Peter's find consisted exclusively of gold dockets, mine also. Father Peter found eleven hundred and seven dockets. I exactly the same. This closed his evidence and certainly it made a strong impression on the house one could see that. Wilhelm Meidling asked him some questions, then called us boys and we told our tale. It made the people laugh and we were ashamed. We were feeling pretty badly anyhow because Wilhelm was hopeless and showed it. He was doing as well as he could poor young fellow, but nothing was in his favor and such sympathy as there was was now plainly not with his client. It might be difficult for court and people to believe the astrologer's story considering his character, but it was almost impossible to believe Father Peter's. We were already feeling badly enough, but when the astrologer's lawyer said he believed he would not ask us any questions, for our story was a little delicate and it would be cruel for him to put any strain upon it. Everybody tittered and it was almost more than we could bear. Then he made a sarcastic little speech and got so much fun out of our tale and it seemed so ridiculous and childish and every way impossible and foolish that it made everybody laugh till the tears came and at last Margit could not keep up her courage any longer, but broke down and cried and I was so sorry for her. Now I noticed something that braced me up. It was Satan standing alongside of Wilhelm and there was such a contrast. Satan looked so confident, had such a spirit in his eyes and face and Wilhelm looked so depressed and despondent. We two were comfortable now and judged that he would testify and persuade the bench and the people that black was white and white black or any other color he wanted it. We glanced around to see what the strangers in the house thought of him, for he was beautiful you know, stunning in fact, but no one was noticing him, so we knew by that that he was invisible. The lawyer was saying his last words and while he was saying them Satan began to melt into Wilhelm. He melted into him and disappeared and then there was a change when his spirit began to look out of Wilhelm's eyes. That lawyer finished quite seriously and with dignity. He pointed to the money and said, the love of it is the root of all evil. There it lies the ancient tempter, newly read with the shame of its latest victory, the dishonor of a priest of God and his two poor juvenile helpers in crime. If it could but speak let us hope that it would be constrained to confess that of all its conquests. This was the basest and the most pathetic. He sat down. Wilhelm rose and said, from the testimony of the accuser I gather that he found this money in a road more than two years ago. Correct me, sir, if I misunderstood you. The astrologer said his understanding of it was correct. And the money so found was never out of his hands, thenceforth up to a certain definite date, the last day of last year. Correct me, sir, if I am wrong. The astrologer nodded his head. Wilhelm turned to the bench and said, if I prove that this money here was not that money, then it is not his. Certainly not, but this is irregular. If you had such a witness it was your duty to give proper notice of it and have him here to— He broke off and began to consult with the other judges. Meantime that other lawyer got up excited and began to protest against allowing new witnesses to be brought into the case at this late stage. The judges decided that his contention was just and must be allowed. But this is not a new witness, said Wilhelm. It has already been partly examined. I speak of the coin. The coin? What can the coin say? It can say it is not the coin that the astrologer once possessed. It can say it was not in existence last December. By its date it can say this. And it was so. There was the greatest excitement in the court, while that lawyer and the judges were reaching for coins and examining them and exclaiming, and everybody was full of admiration of Wilhelm's brightness in happening to think of that neat idea. At last order was called and the court said, all of the coins but four are of the date of the present year. The court tenders its sincere sympathy to the accused and its deep regret that he, an innocent man, through an unfortunate mistake, has suffered the undeserved humiliation of imprisonment and trial. The case is dismissed. So the money could speak after all, though that lawyer thought it couldn't. The court rose and almost everybody came forward to shake hands with Margit and congratulate her, and then to shake with Wilhelm and praise him. And Satan had stepped out of Wilhelm and was standing around looking on, full of interest, and people walking through him every which way not knowing he was there. And Wilhelm could not explain why he only thought of the date on the coins at the last moment, instead of earlier. He said it just occurred to him all of a sudden, like an inspiration, and he brought it right out without any hesitation for, although he didn't examine the coins, he seemed somehow to know it was true. That was honest of him and like him. Another would have pretended he had thought of it earlier and was keeping it back for a surprise. He had dulled down a little now, not much, but still you could notice that he hadn't that luminous look in his eyes that he had while Satan was in him. He nearly got it back, though, for a moment when Margit came and praised him and thanked him and couldn't keep him from seeing how proud she was of him. The astrologer went off dissatisfied and cursing and Solomon Isaacs gathered up the money and carried it away. It was Father Peter's for good and all now. Satan was gone. I judged that he had spirited himself away to the jail to tell the prisoner the news, and in this I was right. Margit and the rest of us hurried thither at our best speed in a great state of rejoicing. Well, what Satan had done was this. He had appeared before that poor prisoner exclaiming the child is over, and you stand forever disgraced as a thief. By verdict of the court the shock unseated the old man's reason. When we arrived ten minutes later he was parading pompously up and down and delivering commands to this and that and the other constable or jailer, and calling them grand chamberlain and prince diss and prince that and admiral of the fleet, field marshal in command and such fustion, and was as happy as a bird. He thought he was emperor. Margit flung herself on his breast and cried, and indeed everybody was moved almost to heartbreak. He recognized Margit, but could not understand why she should cry. He patted her on the shoulder and said, don't do it, dear. Remember there are witnesses and it is not becoming in the crown princess. Tell me your trouble. It shall be mended. There is nothing the emperor cannot do. Then he looked around and saw old Ursula with her apron to her eyes. He was puzzled at that and said, and what is the matter with you? Through her sobs she got out words explaining that she was distressed to see him so. He reflected over that a moment, then muttered as if to himself a singular thing the dowager duchess. Means well, but is always snuffling and never able to tell what it is about. It is because she doesn't know. His eyes fell on Wilhelm. Prince of India, he said, I divine that it is you that the crown princess is concerned about. Her tears shall be dried. I will no longer stand between you. She shall share your throne, and between you you shall inherit mine. There, little lady, have I done well. You can smile now, isn't it so? He petted Margit and kissed her, and was so contented with himself and with everybody that he could not do enough for us all, but began to give away kingdoms and such right and left, and the least that any of us got was a principality. And so, at last being persuaded to go home, he marched in an imposing state, and when the crowds along the way saw how it gratified him to be hurried at, they humoured him to the top of his desire, and he responded with condescending bows and gracious smiles, and often stretched out a hand and said, Bless you, my people, as pitiful a sight as ever I saw. And Margit, an old Ursula, crying all the way, on my road home I came upon Satan and reproached him with deceiving me with that lie. He was not embarrassed, but said quite simply and composedly, Ah, you mistake. It was the truth. I said he would be happy the rest of his days, and he will, for he will always think he is the emperor, and his pride in it and his joy in it will endure to the end. He is now and will remain the one utterly happy person in this empire. But the method of it, Satan, the method! Couldn't you have done it without depriving him of his reason? It was difficult to irritate Satan, but that accomplished it. What an ass you are, he said. Are you so unobservant as not to have found out that sanity and happiness are an impossible combination? No sane man can be happy, for to him life is real, and he sees what a fearful thing it is. Only the mad can be happy, and not many of those. The few that imagine themselves kings or gods are happy. The rest are no happier than the sane. Of course, no man is entirely in his right mind at any time, but I have been referring to the extreme cases. I have taken from this man that trumpery thing which the race regards as a mind. I have replaced his tin life with a silver-guilt fiction. You see the result, and you criticise. I said I would make him permanently happy, and I have done it. I have made him happy, by the only means possible to his race, and you were not satisfied. He heaved a discouraged sigh and said, It seems to me that this race is hard to please. There it was, you see. He didn't seem to know any way to do a person a favour, except by killing him or making a lunatic out of him. I apologised as well as I could, but privately I did not think much of his processes at that time. Satan was accustomed to say that our race lived a life of continuous and uninterrupted self-deception. It duped itself from cradle to grave with shams and delusions which it mistook for realities, and this made its entire life a sham. Of the score of fine qualities which it imagined it had and was vain of, it really possessed hardly one. It regarded itself as gold and was only brass. One day when he was in this vein he mentioned a detail, the sense of humour. I cheered up then and took issue. I said we possessed it. There spoke the race, he said, always ready to claim what it hasn't got and mistake its ounce of brass filings for a ton of gold dust. You have a mongrel perception of humour, nothing more. A multitude of you possess that. This multitude see the comic side of a thousand low-grade and trivial things, broad in congruities mainly. Grotesqueries, absurdities, evokers of the horse laugh. The ten thousand high-grade comicalities which exist in the world are sealed from their dull vision. Will a day come when the race will detect the funniness of these juvenileities and laugh at them, and by laughing at them destroy them? For your race in its poverty has unquestionably one really effective weapon. Laughter, power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution, these can lift at a colossal humbug, push it a little, weaken it a little century by century, but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand. You're always fussing and fighting with your other weapons. Do you ever use that one? No. You leave it lying, rusting. As a race do you ever use it at all? No. You lack sense and the courage. We were travelling at the time and stopped at a little city in India and looked on while a juggler did his tricks before a group of natives. They were wonderful, but I knew Satan could beat that game and I begged him to show off a little, and he said he would. He changed himself into a native in turban and breechcloth, and very considerably conferred on me a temporary knowledge of the language. The juggler exhibited a seed, covered it with earth in a small flower pot, then put a rag over the pot. After a minute the rag began to rise. In ten minutes it had risen a foot, then the rag was removed, and a little tree was exposed, with leaves upon it and ripe fruit. We ate the fruit, and it was good. But Satan said, why do you cover the pot? Can't you grow the tree in sunlight? No, said the juggler. No one can do that. You are only an apprentice. You don't know your trade. Give me the seed. I will show you. He took the seed and said, What shall I raise from it? It is a cherry seed. Of course, you will raise a cherry. Oh no, that is a trifle. Any novice can do that. Shall I raise an orange tree from it? Oh yes, and the juggler laughed. And shall I make it bear other fruits as well as oranges? If God wills. And they all laughed. Satan put the seed in the ground, put a handful of dust on it, and said, Rise. A tiny stem shot up and began to grow and grew so fast that in five minutes it was a great tree, and we were sitting in the shade of it. There was a murmur of wonder, then all looked up and saw a strange and pretty sight, for the branches were heavy with fruits of many kinds and colors, oranges, grapes, bananas, peaches, cherries, apricots, and so on. Baskets were brought, and the unlading of the tree began, and the people crowded around Satan and kissed his hand and praised him, calling him the Prince of Jugglers. The news went about the town, and everybody came running to see the wonder, and they remembered to bring baskets, too. But the tree was equal to the occasion. It put out new fruits as fast as any were removed. Baskets were filled by the score, and by the hundred, but always the supply remained undiminished. At last a foreigner in white linen and sun helmet arrived, and exclaimed angrily, Away from here! Clear out, you dogs! The tree is on my lands and is my property. The natives put down their baskets and made humble obeisance. Satan made humble obeisance, too, with his fingers to his forehead in the native way, and said, Please let them have their pleasure for an hour, sir. Only that, and no longer. Afterward you may forbid them, and you will still have more fruit than you and the state together can consume in a year. This made the foreigner very angry, and he cried out, Who are you, you vagabond, to tell your betters what they may do and what they meant? And he struck Satan with his cane and followed this error with a kick. The fruits rotted on the branches, and the leaves withered and fell. The foreigner gazed at the bear limbs with the look of one who is surprised and not gratified. Satan said, Take good care of the tree for its health and yours are bound together. It will never bear again, but if you tend it well it will live long. Water its roots once in each hour every night, and do it yourself. It must not be done by proxy, and to do it in daylight will not answer. If you fail only once in any night, the tree will die and you likewise. Do not go home to your own country any more. You would not reach there. Make no business or pleasure engagements which require you to go outside your gate at night. You cannot afford the risk. Do not rent or sell this place. It would be injudicious. The foreigner was proud and wouldn't beg, but I thought he looked as if he would like to. While he stood gazing at Satan, we vanished away and landed in Ceylon. I was sorry for that man. Sorry Satan hadn't been his customary self and killed him or made him a lunatic. It would have been a mercy. Satan overheard the thought and said, I would have done it, but for his wife who has not offended me. She is coming to him presently from their native land Portugal. She is well, but has not longed to live and has been yearning to see him and persuade him to go back with her next year. She will die without knowing he can't leave that place. He won't tell her. He, he will not trust that secret with any one. He will reflect that it could be revealed in sleep, in the hearing of some Portuguese guests, servant some time or other. Did none of those natives understand what you said to him? None of them understood, but he will always be afraid that some of them did. That fear will be torture to him, for he has been a harsh master to them. In his dreams he will imagine them chopping his tree down. That will make his days uncomfortable. I have already arranged for his nights. It grieved me, though not sharply, to see him take such a malicious satisfaction in his plans for this foreigner. Does he believe what you told him, Satan? He thought he didn't, but our vanishing helped. The tree where there had been no tree before that helped. The insane and uncanny variety of fruits, the sudden withering, all these things are helps. Let him think as he may, reason as he may. One thing is certain he will water the tree, but between this and night he will begin his changed career with a very natural precaution for him. What is that? He will fetch a priest to cast out the tree's devil. You are such a humorous race, and don't suspect it. Will he tell the priest? No. He will say a juggler from Bombay created it, and that he wants the juggler's devil driven out of it, so that it will thrive and be fruitful again. The priest's incantations will fail, then the Portuguese will give up that scheme and get his watering part ready. But the priest will burn the tree. I know it, he will not allow it to remain. Yes, and anywhere in Europe he would burn the man, too. But in India the people are civilized, and these things will not happen. The man will drive the priest away and take care of the tree. I reflected a little, then said, Satan, you have given him a hard life, I think. Comparatively, it must not be mistaken for a holiday. We flitted from place to place around the world as we had done before, Satan showing me a hundred wonders, most of them reflecting in some way the weakness and triviality of our race. He did this now every few days. Not out of malice, I am sure of that. It only seemed to amuse and interest him, just as a naturalist might be amused and interested by a collection of ants. in Fort Mill, South Carolina, during April 2008. For as much as a year Satan continued these visits, but at last he came less often, and then for a long time he did not come at all. This always made me lonely and melancholy. I felt that he was losing interest in our tiny world, and might at any time abandon his visits entirely. When one day he finally came to me I was overjoyed, but only for a little while. He had come to say goodbye, he told me, and for the last time. He had investigations and undertakings in other corners of the universe, he said, that would keep him busy for a longer period than I could wait for his return. And you are going away and will not come back any more? Yes, he said. We have come rotted long enough, and it has been pleasant, pleasant for both, but I must go now, and we shall not see each other any more. In this life, Satan, but in another, we shall meet in another surely. Then, all tranquilly and soberly he made the strange answer, there is no other. A subtle influence blew upon my spirit from his, bringing with it a vague, dim, but blessed, and hopeful feeling that the incredible words might be true, even must be true. Have you never suspected this, Theodore? No, how could I? But if it can only be true, it is true. A gust of thankfulness rose in my breast, but a doubt checked it before it could issue in words, and I said, but we have seen that future life, seen it in its actuality, and so it was a vision. It had no existence. I could hardly breathe for the great hope that was struggling in me, a vision. Life itself is only a vision, a dream. It was electrical by God. I had had that very thought a thousand times in my musings. Nothing exists, all is a dream. God, man, the world, the sun, the moon, the wilderness of stars, a dream. All a dream. They have no existence. Nothing exists, save empty space, and you. I, and you are not you. You have no body, no blood, no bones. You are but a thought. I myself have no existence. I am but a dream. Your dream, creature of your imagination. In a moment you will have realized this. Then you will banish me from your visions, and I shall dissolve into the nothingness out of which you made me. I am perishing already. I am failing. I am passing away. In a little while you will be alone in sureless space to wander its limitless solitudes without friend or comrade, forever. For you will remain a thought, the only existent thought, and by your nature inextinguishable, indestructible. But I, your poor servant, have revealed you to yourself and set you free. Dream other dreams, and better. Strange that you should not have suspected years ago, centuries, ages, eons ago, for you have existed companionless through all the eternities. Strange, indeed, that you should not have suspected that your universe and its contents were only dreams, visions, fiction. Strange, because they are so frankly and hysterically insane. Like all dreams, a god who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones, who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one, who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short, who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it, who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body, who mouths justice and invented hell, mouths mercy and invented hell, mouths golden rules and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven and invented hell, who mouths morals to other people and has none himself, who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all, who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs upon himself, and finally with altogether divine obtuseness invites this poor abused slave to worship him. You perceive now that these things are all impossible except in a dream. You perceive that they are pure and pure isle, insanities, the silly creations of an imagination that is not conscious of its freaks, in a word that they are a dream, and you the maker of it. The dream marks are all present. You should have recognized them earlier. It is true that which I have revealed to you. There is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream, a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you, and you are but a thought, a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities. He vanished and left me appalled, for I knew and realized that all he had said was true. End The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories by Mark Twain A Fable Once upon a time an artist who had painted a small and very beautiful picture placed it so that he could see it in the mirror. He said, this doubles the distance and softens it, and it is twice as lovely as it was before. The animals out in the woods heard of this through the house cat, who was greatly admired by them because he was so learned and so refined and civilized, and so polite and high-bred, and could tell them so much which they didn't know before, and were not certain about afterward. They were much excited about this new piece of gossip, and they asked questions so as to get a full understanding of it. They asked what a picture was, and the cat explained. It is a flat thing, he said, wonderfully flat, marvelously flat, enchantingly flat and elegant, and oh, so beautiful. That excited them almost to a frenzy, and they said they would give the world to see it. Then the bear asked, what is it that makes it so beautiful? It is the looks of it, said the cat. This filled them with admiration and uncertainty, and they were more excited than ever. Then the cow asked, what is a mirror? It is a hole in the wall, said the cat. You look in it, and there you see the picture, and it is so dainty and charming and ethereal and inspiring in its unimaginable beauty that your head turns round and round and you almost swoon with ecstasy. The ass had not said anything as yet. He now began to throw doubts. He said there had never been anything as beautiful as this before and probably wasn't now. He said that when it took a whole basketful of sesquipedalian adjectives to whoop up a thing of beauty, it was time for suspicion. It was easy to see that these doubts were having an effect upon the animals, so the cat went off offended. The subject was dropped for a couple of days, but in the meantime curiosity was taking a fresh start, and there was a revival of interest perceptible. Then the animals assailed the ass for spoiling what could possibly have been a pleasure to them on a mere suspicion that the picture was not beautiful without any evidence that such was the case. The ass was not troubled. He was calm and said there was one way to find out who was in the right himself or the cat. He would go and look in that hole and come back and tell what he found there. The animals felt relieved and grateful and asked him to go at once, which he did. But he did not know where he ought to stand, and so through error he stood between the picture and the mirror. The result was that the picture had no chance and didn't show up. He returned home and said the cat lied. There was nothing in that hole but an ass. There wasn't a sign of a flat thing visible. It was a handsome ass and friendly, but just an ass and nothing more. The elephant asked, Did you see it good and clear? Were you close to it? I saw it good and clear, O' Hothie, King of Beasts. I was so close that I touched noses with it. This is very strange, said the elephant. The cat was always truthful before, as far as we could make out. Let another witness try. Go, Baloo, look in the hole and come and report. So the bear went. When he came back he said, Both the cat and the ass have lied. There was nothing in the hole but a bear. Crate was the surprise and puzzlement of the animals. Each was now anxious to make the test himself and get at the straight truth. The elephant sent them one at a time. First the cow. She saw nothing in the hole but a cow. The tiger found nothing in it but a tiger. The lion found nothing in it but a lion. The leopard found nothing in it but a leopard. The camel found a camel and nothing more. Then Hothie was wroth and said he would have the truth if he had to go and fetch it himself. When he returned he abused his whole subjectory for liars and was in an unappeasable fury with the moral and mental blindness of the cat. He said that anybody but a near-sighted fool could see that there was nothing in the hole but an elephant. Moral by the cat. You can find in a text whatever you bring if you will stand between it and the mirror of your imagination. You may not see your ears but they will be there. Hunting the Deceitful Turkey. When I was a boy my uncle and his big boys hunted with the rifle. The youngest boy Fred and I with a shotgun. A small single-barreled shotgun which was properly suited to our size and strength. It was not much heavier than a broom. We carried it turn about half an hour at a time. I was not able to hit anything with it but I like to try. Fred and I hunted feathered small game. The others hunted deer, squirrels, wild turkeys and such things. My uncle and the big boys were good shots. They killed hawks and wild geese and such like on the wing and they didn't wound or kill squirrels they stunned them. When the dogs treat a squirrel the squirrel would scamper aloft and run out on a limb and flatten himself along it hoping to make himself invisible in that way and not quite succeeding. You could see his wee little ears sticking up. You couldn't see his nose but you knew where it was. Then the hunter despising a rest for his rifle stood up and took off hand aim at the limb and sent a bullet into it immediately under the squirrel's nose and down tumbled the animal unwounded but unconscious. The dogs gave him a shake and he was dead. Sometimes when the distance was great and the wind not accurately allowed for the bullet would hit the squirrel's head. The dogs could do as they pleased with that one. The hunter's pride was hurt and he wouldn't allow it to go into the game bag. In the first faint gray of the dawn the stately wild turkeys would be stalking around in great flocks and ready to be sociable and answer invitations to come and converse with other excursionists of their kind. The hunter concealed himself and imitated the turkey call by sucking the air through the leg bone of a turkey which had previously answered a call like that and lived only just long enough to regret it. There is nothing that furnishes a perfect turkey call except that bone. Another of nature's treacheries, you see. She is full of them. Half the time she doesn't know which she likes best to betray her child or protect it. In the case of the turkey she is badly mixed. She gives it a bone to be used in getting it into trouble and she also furnishes it with a trick for getting itself out of the trouble again. When a mama turkey answers an invitation and finds she has made a mistake in accepting it, she does as the mama partridge does. Remembers a previous engagement and goes limping and scrambling away pretending to be very lame and at the same time she is saying to her not visible children, Lilo, keep still. Don't expose yourselves. I should be back as soon as I have beguiled this shabby swindler out of the country. When a person is ignorant and confiding, this immoral device can have tiresome results. I followed an ostensibly lame turkey over a considerable part of the United States one morning because I believed in her and could not think she would deceive a mere boy and one who was trusting her and considering her honest. I had the single-barreled shotgun, but my idea was to catch her alive. I often got within rushing distance of her and then made my rush, but always, just as I made my final plunge and put my hand down where her back had been, it wasn't there. It was only two or three inches from there, and I brushed the tail feathers as I landed on my stomach, a very close call, but still not quite close enough. That is not close enough for success, but just close enough to convince me that I could do it next time. She always waited for me a little piece away and led on to be resting and greatly fatigued, which was a lie, but I believed it for I still thought her honest long after I ought to have begun to doubt her, suspecting that this was no way for a high-minded bird to be acting. I followed and followed and followed, making my periodical rushes and getting up and brushing the dust off and resuming the voyage with patient confidence. Indeed, with a confidence which grew, for I could see by the change of climate and vegetation that we were getting up into the high latitudes, and as she always looked a little tireder and a little more discouraged after each rush, I judged that I was safe to win in the end, the competition being purely a matter of staying power and the advantage lying with me from the start because she was lame. Along in the afternoon I began to feel fatigued myself. Neither of us had had any rest since we first started on the excursion, which was upwards of ten hours before, though laterally we had paused a while after rushes, I letting on to be thinking about something else, but neither of us sincere and both of us waiting for the other to call game, but in no real hurry about it, for indeed those little evanescent snatches of rest were very grateful to the feelings of us both. It would naturally be so skirmishing along like that ever since dawn and not a bite in the meantime. At least for me, though sometimes as she lay on her side fanning herself with a wing and praying for strength to get out of this difficulty, a grasshopper happened along whose time had come, and that was well for her unfortunate, but I had nothing, nothing the whole day. More than once after I was very tired I gave up taking her alive and was going to shoot her, but I never did, although it was my right, for I did not believe I could hit her, and besides she always stopped and posed when I raised a gun, and this made me suspicious that she knew about me and my marksmanship, and so I did not care to expose myself to remarks. I did not get her at all. When she got tired of the game at last, she rose from almost under my hand and flew aloft with the rush and whir of a shell and lit on the highest limb of a great tree, and sat down and crossed her legs and smiled down at me, and seemed gratified to see me so astonished. I was ashamed and also lost, and it was while wandering the woods hunting for myself that I found a deserted log cabin, and had one of the best meals there that in my life days I have eaten. The weed-grown garden was full of ripe tomatoes, and I ate them ravenously, though I had never liked them before. Not more than two or three times since have I tasted anything that was so delicious as those tomatoes. I surfeted myself with them, and did not taste another one until I was in middle life. I can eat them now, but I do not like the look of them. I suppose we have all experienced a surfit at one time or another. Once in stressful circumstances I ate part of a barrel of sardines, there being nothing else at hand, but since then I have always been able to get along without sardines. The McWilliams's and the burglar alarm. The conversation drifted smoothly and pleasantly along from weather to crops, from crops to literature, from literature to scandal, from scandal to religion, then took a random jump and landed on the subject of burglar alarms, and now for the first time Mr. McWilliams showed feeling. Whenever I perceived this sign on this man's dial I comprehend it and lapse into silence and give him opportunity to unload his heart. Said he, with but ill-controlled emotion, I do not go one single cent on burglar alarms, Mr. Twain, not a single cent, and I will tell you why. When we were finishing our house we found we had a little cash left over, on account of the plumber not knowing it. I was for enlightening the heathen with it, for I was always unaccountably down on the heathen somehow, but Mrs. McWilliams said no, let's have a burglar alarm. I agreed to this compromise. I will explain that whenever I want a thing and Mrs. McWilliams wants another thing, and we decide upon the thing that Mrs. McWilliams wants, as we always do, she calls that a compromise. Very well. The man came up from New York and put in the alarm and charged three hundred and twenty-five dollars for it, and said we could sleep without uneasiness now. So we did for a while, say a month. Then one night we smelled smoke, and I was advised to get up and see what the matter was. I lit a candle and started toward the stairs, and met a burglar coming out of a room with a basket of tinware which he had mistaken for solid silver in the dark. He was smoking a pipe. I said, my friend, we do not allow smoking in this room. He said he was a stranger and could not be expected to know the rules of the house. Said he had been in many houses just as good as this one, and it had never been objected to before. He added that as far as his experience went, such rules had never been considered to apply to burglars anyway. I said, smoke along, then, if it is to custom, though I think that the conceding of a privilege to a burglar which is denied to a bishop is a conspicuous sign of the looseness of the times. But waving all that, what business have you to be entering this house in this furtive and clandestine way without ringing the burglar alarm? He looked confused and ashamed and said with embarrassment, I beg a thousand pardons. I did not know you had a burglar alarm, else I would have rung it. I beg you will not mention it where my parents may hear of it, for they are old and feeble, and such a seemingly wanton breach of the hallowed conventionalities of our Christian civilization might all too rudely sunder the frail bridge which hangs darkling between the pale and evanescent present and the solemn great deeps of the eternities. May I trouble you for a match? I said, your sentiments do you honor, but if you will allow me to say it, metaphor is not your best hold. Spare your thigh. This kind light only on the box and seldom there, in fact, if my experience may be trusted. But to return to business, how did you get in here? Through a second-story window. It was even so. I redeemed the tinware at pawnbroker's rates, less cost of advertising, bade the burglar good night, closed the window after him, and retired to headquarters to report. Next morning we sent for the burglar alarm man, and he came up and explained that the reason the alarm did not go off was that no part of the house but the first floor was attached to the alarm. This was simply idiotic. One might as well have no armour on at all in battle as to have it only on his legs. The expert now put the whole second story on the alarm, charged three hundred dollars for it, and went on his way. By and by, one night, I found a burglar in the third story about to start down a ladder with a lot of miscellaneous property. My first impulse was to crack his head with a billiard cue, but my second was to refrain from his attention because he was between me and the cue rack. The second impulse was plainly the soundest, so I refrained and proceeded to compromise. I redeemed the property at former rates after deducting ten percent for use of ladder, it being my ladder, and next day we sent down for the expert once more and had the third story attached to the alarm for three hundred dollars. By this time the annunciator had grown to formidable dimensions. It had forty-seven tags on it marked with the names of the various rooms and chimneys, and it occupied the space of an ordinary wardrobe. The gong was the size of a washbowl and was placed above the head of our bed. There was a wire from the house to the coachman's quarters in the stable and a noble gong alongside his pillow. We should have been comfortable now, but for one defect. Every morning at five the cook opened the kitchen door in the way of business and ripped with that gong. The first time this happened I thought the last day was come sure. I didn't think it in bed, no, but out of it, for the first effect of that frightful gong is to hurl you across the house and slam you against the wall, and then curl you up and squirm you like a spider on a stove lid till somebody shuts the kitchen door. In solid fact there is no clamour that is even remotely comparable to the dire clamour which that gong makes. Well, this catastrophe happened every morning regularly at five o'clock and lost us three hours sleep, for mind you when that thing wakes you it doesn't merely wake you in spots. It wakes you all over, conscience and all, and you are good for eighteen hours of wide awakeness subsequently, eighteen hours of the very most inconceivable wide awakeness that you ever experienced in your life. A stranger died on our hands one time, and we vacated and left him in our room overnight. Did that stranger wait for the general judgment? No, sir. He got up at five the next morning in the most prompt and un-ostentatious way. I knew he would, I knew it mighty well. He collected his life insurance and lived happily ever after, for there was plenty of proof as to the perfect squareness of his death. Well, we were gradually fading toward a better land on account of the daily loss of sleep, so we finally had the expert up again, and he ran a wire to the outside of the door and placed a switch there, whereby Thomas the butler always made one little mistake. He switched the alarm off at night when he went to bed, and switched it on again at daybreak in the morning, just in time for the cook to open the kitchen door and enable that gong to slam us across the house, sometimes breaking a window with one or the other of us. At the end of the week, we recognized that this switch business was a delusion and a snare. We also discovered that a band of burglars had been lodging in the house the whole time, not exactly to steal, for there wasn't much left now, but to hide from the police, for they were hot pressed, and they shrewdly judged that the detectives would never think of a tribe of burglars taking sanctuary in a house notoriously protected by the most imposing and elaborate burglar alarm in America. Sent down for the expert again, and this time he struck a most dazzling idea, he fixed the thing so that opening the kitchen door would take off the alarm. It was a noble idea, and he charged accordingly. But you already foresee the result. I switched on the alarm every night at bedtime, no longer trusting on Thomas's frail memory, and as soon as the lights were out, the burglars walked in at the kitchen door, thus taking the alarm off without waiting for cook to do it in the morning. You see how aggravatingly we were situated. For months we couldn't have any company, not a spare bed in the house, all occupied by burglars. Finally, I got up a cure of my own. The expert answered the call and ran another ground wire to the stable and established a switch there so that the coachman could put on and take off the alarm. That worked first rate, and a season of peace ensued, during which we got to inviting company once more and enjoying life. But by and by the irrepressible alarm invented a new kink. One winter's night we were flung out of bed by the sudden music of that awful gong, and when we hobbled to the annunciator turned up the gas and saw the word nursery exposed, Mrs. McWilliams fainted dead away, and I came precious near doing the same thing myself. I seized my shotgun and stood timing the coachman whilst that appalling buzzing went on. I knew that his gong had flung him out too, and that he would be along with his gun as soon as he could jump into his clothes. When I judged that the time was ripe, I crept to the room next to the nursery, glanced through the window, and saw the dim outline of the coachman in the yard below, standing at present arms and waiting for a chance. Then I hopped into the nursery and fired, and in the same instant the coachman fired at the red flash of my gun. Both of us were successful. I crippled a nurse, and he shot off all my back hair. We turned up the gas and telephoned for a surgeon. There was not a sign of a burglar and no window had been raised. One glass was absent, but that was where the coachman's charge had come through. Here was a fine mystery, a burglar alarm going off at midnight of its own accord and not a burglar in the neighborhood. The expert answered the usual call and explained that it was a false alarm. Said it was easily fixed, so he overhauled the nursery window, charged a remunerative figure for it, and departed. What we suffered from false alarms for the next three years no stylographic pen can describe. During the next three months I always flew with my gun to the room indicated, and the coachman always sallied forth with his battery to support me, but there was never anything to shoot at. Windows all tight and secure. We always sent down for the expert next day, and he fixed those particular windows so they would keep quiet a week or so, and always remembered to send us a bill about like this. Wire, $2.15. Nipple, $0.75. Two hours labor, $1.50. Wax, $0.47. Tape, $0.34. Screws, $0.15. Recharging battery, $0.98. Three hours labor, $2.25. String, $0.02. Lard, $0.66. Ponds extract, $1.25. Springs at 50, $2. Railroad fairs, $7.25. At length a perfectly natural thing came about after we had answered three or four hundred false alarms. To it we stopped answering them. Yes, I simply rose up calmly when slammed across the house by the alarm, calmly inspected the enunciator, took note of the room indicated, and then calmly disconnected that room from the alarm, and went back to bed as if nothing had happened. Moreover, I left that room off permanently and did not send for the expert. Well, it goes without saying that in the course of time all the rooms were taken off, and the entire machine was out of service. It was at this unprotected time that the heaviest calamity of all happened. The burglars walked in one night, and carried off the burglar alarm. Yes, sir. Every hide and hair of it ripped it out tooth and nail, springs, bells, gongs, battery, and all. They took a hundred and fifty miles of copper wire. They just cleaned her out, bag and baggage, and never left us a vestige of her to swear at. Swear by, I mean. We had a time of it to get her back, but we accomplished it finally for money. The alarm firm said that what we needed now was to have her put in right with their new patent springs in the windows, to make false alarms impossible, and their new patent clock attached to take off and put on the alarm morning and night without human assistance. That seemed a good scheme. They promised to have the whole thing finished in ten days. They began work, and we left for the summer. They worked a couple of days, then they left for the summer, after which the burglars moved in and began their summer vacation. When we returned in the fall, the house was as empty as a beer closet in premises where painters had been at work. We refurnished, and then sent down to hurry up the expert. He came up and finished the job, and said, now this clock is set to put on the alarm every night at ten, and take it off every morning at five forty five. All you've got to do is wind her up every week, and then leave her alone. She will take care of the alarm herself. After that we had a most tranquil season during three months. The bill was prodigious, of course, and I had said I would not pay it until the new machinery had proved itself to be flawless. The time stipulated was three months. So I paid the bill, and the very next day the alarm went to buzzing like ten thousand bee swarms at ten o'clock in the morning. I turned the hands around twelve hours according to instructions, and this took off the alarm. But there was another hitch at night, and I had to set her ahead twelve hours once more to get her to put the alarm on again. That sort of nonsense went on for a week or two, then the expert came up and put in a new clock. He came up every three months during the next three years and put in a new clock. But it was always a failure. His clocks all had the same perverse defect. They would put the alarm on in the daytime, and they would not put it on at night, and if you forced it on yourself, they would take it off again the minute your back was turned. Now there is the history of that burglar alarm. Everything just as it happened. Nothing extenuated and not set down in malice. Yes, sir. And when I had slept nine years with burglars and maintained an expensive burglar alarm the whole time for their protection, not mine, and at my sole cost, for not a damned scent could I ever get them to contribute, I just said to Mrs. McWilliams that I had had enough of that kind of pie. So with her full consent I took the whole thing out and traded it off for a dog, and shot the dog. I don't know what you think about it, Mr. Twain, but I think those things are made solely in interest of the burglars. Yes, sir, a burglar alarm combines in its person all that is objectionable about a fire, a riot, and a harem, and at the same time had none of the compensating advantages of one sort or another that customarily belong with that combination. Goodbye, I get off here. End of the Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories by Mark Twain. This has been a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories, read for you by Ted DeLorm in Fort Mill, South Carolina, during May 2008. Thank you for listening.