 Section 17 of the $30,000 Bequest in Other Stories. The $30,000 Bequest in Other Stories by Mark Twain. Section 17 How to Tell a Story. The humorous story, an 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 it around from face to face, collecting applause, and then repeat it again. It is a pathetic thing to see. 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. For in many cases, the teller will divert attention from that nub by dropping it in a carefully, casual, and indifferent way, with the pretense that he does not know it is a nub. Artemis Ward used that trick a good deal. Then 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 Satchel 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 head, you booby? Whereupon the soldier disposed 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 burst 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 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 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. 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 of 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 incongruities 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 at an incongruous remark in a soliloquizing way, and that was the remark intended to explode the mind. 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 is 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. If I got it the right length precisely, I could spring the finishing ejaculation with effect enough to make some impressable girl deliver a started little yelp and jump out of her seat, and that was what I was after. This story was called The Golden Arm, and was told in this fashion. You can practice 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 momous mean man, and he lived way out into prairie, all known by itself, except when he had a wife, and by and by she died, and he tucked and tottered her way out there into prairie and buried her. Well, 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 wanted that Golden Arm so bad. When it come midnight, he couldn't stand no more. So he get up, he did, and took his linen, and shoved out the stone, and dug her up, and got the Golden Arm. And he bent his head down, getting the wind, and plowed and plowed and plowed through the snow. Then all of a sudden he stopped, make a considerable pause here, and looked startled, and take a listening attitude, and said, my land, what's that? And he listened, and listened, and the wind said, set your teeth together, and imitate the wailing and wheezing singsong of the wind. And then way back yonder where the grave is, he hear a voice. He hear a voice, all mixed up in the wind, can hardly tell him apart. Oh, God, my Golden Arm. You must begin to shiver violently now. And he begin to shiver and shake, and said, oh, my, oh, my land, and the wind blow'd the linen out, and the snow and sleet blow'd in his face, and must choke him, and he start plowing, and knee deep toward the home, most dead. He's so scared, and pretty soon he hear the voice again, and pause. He's coming after him. Oh, God, my Golden Arm. When he get to the pasture, he hear again, close now, and coming, coming back to in the dark and the storm, repeat the wind and the voice. When he get to the house, he rush upstairs jumping to bed, and give up, head and ears, and laid as shivering and shaking, and the way out there, he hear again, and coming, and by me he hear pause, odd listening attitude. Pat, pat, pat, it's coming upstairs. Then he hear the latch, and he know it in the room. Then put as soon he know it's a standing by the bed, pause. Then he know it's a bending down over him, and he can't scare to get his breath, then he seem to feel something cold right down must against his head. Pause. Then voice right as ye, who got 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 that girl and yell, You've got it! If you 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 undertuck. End of How to Tell a Story, Recording by Robert D. Kinney. Section 18 General Washington's Negro Body Servant 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 and 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 sourful 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 are 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 1836, 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 reminiscence of stirring interest. Few white men died 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 7th 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 learned 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 the notices of his death I have quoted, and this ought to be correct. In them he uniformly and impartially died at the age of 95. 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 95, he was 151 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 20 years old when he witnessed the event. Wherefore it is safe to assert that the body servant of General Washington was in the neighborhood of 260 or 70 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 is 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 not put six different communities to the expense of burying him in state, and has swendled 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 the newspaper suffer the severest censure that shall ever, in all the future time, publish to the world that General Washington's favorite colored body servant has died again. End of Section 18. Section 19 of The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain. Section 19. Wit 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 remained 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. My father overheard that, and he hunted me for over four or five townships seeking to take my life. 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, for I was tired of trying to cut my teeth on people's fingers, and wanted to get hold of something that would enable me to hurry the thing through and get something else. Did you ever notice what a nuisance it was cutting your teeth on your nurse's finger or how backbreaking and tiresome it was trying to cut them on your big toe? And did you never get out of patience and wish your teeth were in Jericho long before you got them half cut? To me it seems as if these things happened 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 aunt said, What a little darling it is. My father said, Isaac is a good name, and Jacob is a good name. My father assented and said, No names are better. Let us add Isaac and Jacob to his names. I said, All right. Isaac and Jacob are good enough for yours truly. Pass me that rattle, if you please. I can't chew India rubber rings all day. Not a soul made a memorandum of these sayings of mine for publication. I saw that, and did it myself, else they would have been utterly lost. So far from meeting with a generous encouragement like other children when developing intellectually, I was now furiously scowled upon by my father. My mother looked grieved and anxious, and even my aunt had about her an expression of seeming to think that maybe I had gone too far. I took a vicious bite out of an India rubber ring, and covertly broke the rattle over the kitten's head, but said nothing. Presently my 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 times before he could come. And then I sallied forth, and that stern old man sallied forth after me. He overtook me at noon the following day, and when the interview was over, I had acquired the name of Samuel, and a thrashing, and other useful information. And by means of this compromise, my father's wrath was appeased, and a misunderstanding bridged over which might have been a permanent rupture if I had chosen to be unreasonable. But just judging by this episode, what would my father have done to me if I had ever uttered in his hearing one of the flat, sickly things these two-year-olds say in print now? In my opinion, there would have been a case of infanticide in our family, and of wit inspirations of the two-year-olds. Section 20 of the $30,000 bequest and other stories. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The $30,000 bequest and other stories by Mark Twain. Section 20, 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 more glorious instance to his string of trophies. The Saturday Review, in its number of October 8th, reviews his book of travels, which has been republished in England and reviews it seriously. We can't imagine the delight of the humorous 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, Review of New Books, The Innocence Abroad, A Book of Travels, by Mark Twain, London, Houghton Publisher, 1870. Lord McCauley died too soon. We never felt this so deeply as when we finished the last chapter of the above named extravagant work. McCauley 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 an eaten one in a frantic spirit of revenge. There is, of course, no truth in this. He gives at full length a theatrical program 17 or 1800 years old, which he professes to have found in the ruins of the Colosseum, among the dirt and mold 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 mule 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 contently till it was time to restore the beast to the path once more. He states that a growing youth among his ships 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 commonplace of matters, that he cut a Muslim into in broad daylight in Jerusalem. With God-free de Boillon'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 Saint 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 pairs 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 it. Will the reader longer marvel at the brutal ignorance that pervades the American nation when we tell him that we are informed upon the perfectly good authority that this extravagant compilation of falsehoods, this exhaustless mind of stupendous lies, this innocence abroad, has actually been adopted by the schools and colleges of several of the states as a text book. But if his falsehoods are distressing, his innocence and ignorance are enough to make one burn the book and despise the author. 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 the 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, terre annous, into an Italian's mouth. In Rome he unhesitatingly believes the legend that St. Philip Neary'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. Otherwise, says this gentle idiot, I should have felt a curiosity to know what Philip had for dinner. Our author makes a long, fatiguing journey to the Grotto del Cane, on purpose to test his poisoning powers on a dog, got elaborately ready for the experiment, and then discovered 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 straight away 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 Baldwin'sville, 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 only one. He did not know, until he got to Rome, that Michelangelo was dead, and then instead of crawling away and hiding his shameful ignorance somewhere, he proceeds to express the pious, grateful sort of satisfaction that he is gone and out of his troubles. No, 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 along the sublime creations of the old masters, trying to acquire the elegant proficiency in 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 Saint 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 Saint 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 Saint 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 thousand 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 bore. That we have shown this to be a remarkable book. We think that no one will deny. That is a pernicious book to place in the hands of the confiding and uniformed. 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 and kegs of gunpowder by the aid of two or three teaspoons of guano, about the moving of small arms from place to place at night in wheelbarrows to avoid taxes, and about a sort of cows and mules in the humble mines that climbed down chimneys and disturbed 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. Laterally I have received several letters and see a number of newspaper paragraphs all upon a certain subject and all about the same tenor. I here give honest specimens. 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 strange to me. I humbly endeavored 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 everyone said so, and we're even ready to shed a few tears, but since we're using it, we are bound to confess that next to Mark Twain's Jumping Frog, it is the finest bit of humor and sarcasm that we've come across in many a day. I do not get a compliment like that every day. I used to think that your writings were pretty good, but after reading the criticism in the Galaxy from the London Review, have discovered what an ass I must have been. 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 humor 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 the keep 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 allish density. He is a magnificent humorist himself. Now that is graceful and handsome. I take off my hat to my long-time 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 burlesque-ed 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. If any man doubts my word now, I will kill him. No, 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 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 is 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 on October 8th, which contains the real critique. Bless me, some people thought that I was the sold person. P.S. I cannot resist the temptation to toss in this most savory 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 fifty cent partaga, if kept in ignorance of the cost of the latter. The flavor of the partaga is too delicate for palates that have been accustomed to the Connecticut seed leaf. So it is with humor. The finer it is in quality, the more danger of it's not being recognized 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 humorist, but the Englishman's humor is so much finer than his that he mistakes it for solid earnest, and lasts most consumbly. 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 to amount to much, coming from an American. I will ever, then an Englishman wrote it, and that it is copied from a London journal. And then I will occupy a backseat 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 Enquirer, and is a falsehood. Come to the proof. If the Enquirer people, through any agent, will produce at the Galaxy office a London Saturday review of October 8th, containing an article which, on comparison, will be found to be identical with the one published in the Galaxy, I will pay to that agent $500 cash. Moreover, if at any specified time I fail to produce at the same place a copy of the London Saturday review of October 8th, containing a lengthy criticism upon the innocence abroad, entirely different in every paragraph and sentence, from the one I published in the Galaxy, I will pay to the Enquirer agent another $500 cash. I offer Sheldon and company, publishers, 500 Broadway in New York as my backers. Anyone in New York authorized by the Enquirer will receive prompt attention. It is an easy and profitable way for the Enquirer people to prove that they have not uttered a pitiful deliberate falsehood in the above paragraphs. Will they swallow that falsehood ignominiously, or will they send an agent to the Galaxy office? I think the Cincinnati Enquirer must be edited by children. End of an interesting article. Section 21 of the $30,000 bequest and other stories. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The $30,000 bequest and other stories by Mark Twain. Section 21, a letter to the Secretary of the Treasury. Riverdale on the Hudson, October 15, 1902. The Honorable the Secretary of the Treasury, Washington, D.C. Sir, prices for the customary kinds of winter fuel having reached an altitude which puts them out of reach of literary persons in straightened circumstances, I desire to place with you the following order. 45 tons best old dry government bonds, suitable for furnace, gold 7% 1864, preferred. 12 tons of early greenbacks, range size suitable for cooking. Eight barrels seasoned 25 and 50-cent postal currency, vintage of 1866, eligible for kindlings. Please deliver with all convenient dispatch at my house in Riverdale at lowest rates for spot cash and send Bill to your obliged servant, Mark Twain, who will be very grateful and will vote right. End of A Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury. Section 22 of the $30,000 bequest and other stories. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The $30,000 bequest and other stories by Mark Twain. Section 22. Amended Obituaries. To the Editor. Sir, I am approaching seventy. It is in sight. It is only three years away. Necessarily, I must go soon. It is but matter of course wisdom, then, that I should begin to set my worldly house in order now, so that it may be done calmly and with thoroughness in place of waiting until the last day when, as we have often seen, the attempt to set both houses in order at the same time has been marred by the necessity for haste and by the confusion and waste of time arising from the inability of the notary and the ecclesiastic to work together harmoniously, taking turn about and giving each other friendly assistance, not perhaps in fielding, which could hardly be expected, but at least in the minor offices of keeping game and umpiring. By consequence of which conflict of interests and absence of harmonious action, a draw has frequently resulted where this ill fortune could not have happened if the houses had been set in order one at a time and hurry avoided by beginning in season and giving to each the amount of time fairly and justly proper to it. In setting my earthly house in order, I find it of moment that I should attend in person to one or two matters which men in my position have long had the habit of leaving wholly to others, with consequences often most regrettable. I wish to speak of only one of these matters at this time, obituaries. Of necessity an obituary is a thing which cannot be so judiciously edited by any hand as by that of the subject of it. In such a work it is not the facts that are of chief importance, but the light which the obituarist shall throw upon them, the meaning which he shall dress them in, the conclusions which he shall draw from them, and the judgments which he shall deliver upon them. The verdicts you understand, that is the danger line. In considering this matter, in view of my approaching change, it has seemed to me wise to take such measures as may be feasible to acquire by courtesy of the press access to my standing obituaries with the privilege, if this is not asking too much, of editing not their facts but their verdicts. This not for the present profit, further than as concerns my family, but as a favorable influence usable on the other side, where there are some who are not friendly to me. With this explanation of my motives I will now ask you of your courtesy to make an appeal for me to the public press. It is my desire that such journals and periodicals as have obituaries of me lying in their pigeon holes, with a view to sudden use some day, will not wait longer but will publish them now and kindly send me a marked copy. My address is simply New York City. I have no other that is permanent and not transient. I will correct them, not the facts but the verdicts, striking out such clauses as could have a deleterious influence on the other side and replacing them with clauses of a more judicious character. I should of course expect to pay double rates for both the omissions and the substitutions. And I should also expect to pay quadruple rates for all obituaries which prove to be rightly and wisely worded in the originals, thus requiring no amendations at all. It is my desire to leave these amended obituaries neatly bound behind me as a perennial consolation and entertainment to my family, and as an heirloom which shall have the mournful but definite commercial value for my remote posterity. I beg, sir, that you will insert this advertisement one time every other week agate inside and send the bill to, yours very respectfully, Mark Twain. P.S., for the best obituary, one suitable for me to read in public and calculated to inspire regret, I desire to offer a prize consisting of a portrait of me done entirely by myself in pen and ink without previous instructions. The ink warranted to be the kind used by the very best artists. And of amended obituaries. Section 23 of the $30,000 bequest and other stories. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The $30,000 bequest and other stories by Mark Twain. Section 23. A Monument to Adam Someone has revealed to the Tribune that I once suggested to Reverend Thomas K. Beecher of Elmyra, New York, that we get up a monument to Adam, and that Mr. Beecher favored the project. There is more to it than that. The matter started as a joke, but it came somewhat near to materializing. It is long ago, thirty years. Mr. Darwin's descent of man has been in print five or six years, and the storm of indignation raised by it was still raging in pulpits and periodicals. In tracing the genesis of the human race back to its sources, Mr. Darwin had left Adam out altogether. We had monkeys and missing lynx and plenty of other kinds of ancestors, but no Adam. Justing with Mr. Beecher and other friends in Elmyra, I said there seemed to be a likelihood that the world would discard Adam and accept the monkey, and that in the course of time Adam's very name would be forgotten in the earth. Therefore, this calamity ought to be averted. A monument should accomplish this, and Elmyra ought not to waste this honorable opportunity to do Adam a favor and herself a credit. Then the unexpected happened. Two bankers came forward and took hold of the matter, not for fun, not for sentiment, but because they saw in the monument certain commercial advantages for the town. The project had seemed gently humorous before. It was more than that now, with this stern business gravity injected into it. The bankers discussed the monument with me. We met several times. They proposed an indestructible memorial to cost $25,000. The insane oddity of a monument set up in a village to preserve a name which would outlast the hills and the rocks without any such help would advertise Elmyra to the ends of the earth and draw custom. It would be the only monument on the planet to Adam, and in the matter of interest and impressiveness could never have a rival until somebody should set up a monument to the Milky Way. People would come from every corner of the globe and stop off to look at it. No tour of the world would be complete that left out Adam's monument. Elmyra would be a mecca. There would be pilgrim ships at pilgrim rates, pilgrim specials on the continent's railways. Libraries would be written about the monument. Every tourist would codec it. Models of it would be for sale everywhere in the earth. Its form would become as familiar as the figure of Napoleon. One of the bankers subscribed $5,000, and I think the other one subscribed half as much, but I do not remember with certainty now whether it was that figure or not. We got designs made, some of them came from Paris. In the beginning, as a detail of the project when it was yet a joke, I had framed a humble and beseeching and perforated petition to Congress, begging the government to build the monument as a testimony of the great republic's gratitude to the father of the human race, and as a token of her loyalty to him in this dark day of humiliation, when his older children were doubting and deserting him. It seemed to me that this petition ought to be presented now. It would be widely and feelingly abused and ridiculed and cursed, and would advertise our scheme and make our ground floor stock go off briskly. So I sent it to General Joseph R. Holly, who was then in the house, and he said he would present it, but he did not do it. I think he explained that when he came to read it, he was afraid of it. It was too serious, too gushy, too sentimental. The house might take it for earnest. We ought to have carried out our monument scheme. We could have managed it without any great difficulty, and Elmira would now be the most celebrated town in the universe. Very recently I began to build a book in which one of the minor characters touches incidentally upon a project for a monument to Adam, and now the Tribune has come upon a trace of the forgotten jest of thirty years ago. Apparently mental telegraphy is still in business. It is odd, but the freaks of mental telegraphy are usually odd. And of A Monument to Adam Section 24 of the $30,000 bequest and other stories. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The $30,000 bequest and other stories by Mark Twain, Section 24. A Humane Word from Satan The following letter signed by Satan and purporting to come from him, we have reason to believe was not written by him, but by Mark Twain, Editor. To the Editor of Harper's Weekly Dear sir and kinsmen, let us have done with this frivolous talk. The American Board accepts contributions from me every year. Then why shouldn't it from Mr. Rockefeller? In all the ages, three-fourths of the support of the great charities has been conscience money, as my books will show. Then what becomes of the sting when that term is applied to Mr. Rockefeller's gift? The American Board's trade is financed mainly from the graveyards, bequests you understand, conscience money, confession of an old crime, and deliberate perpetration of a new one, for deceased's contribution is a robbery of his heirs. Shall the Board decline bequests because they stand for one of these offenses every time and generally for both? Allow me to continue. The charge most persistently and resentfully and remorselessly dwelt upon is that Mr. Rockefeller's contribution is incurably tainted by perjury. Perjury proved against him in the courts. It makes us smile down in my place, because there isn't a rich man in your vast city who doesn't perjure himself every year before the tax board. They are all caked with perjury, many layers thick, iron clad so to speak. If there is one that isn't, I desire to acquire him for my museum and will pay dinosaur rates. Will you say it isn't infraction of the law, but only annual evasion of it? Comfort yourselves with that nice distinction if you like, for the present. But by and by, when you arrive, I will show you something interesting, a whole hell full of evaders. Sometimes a Frank Lawbreaker turns up elsewhere, but I get those others every time. To return to my muttons, I wish you to remember that my rich perjurers are contributing to the American board with frequency. It is money filched from the sworn-off personal tax, therefore it is the wages of sin, therefore it is my money, therefore it is I that contribute it, and finally it is therefore as I have said. Since the board daily accepts contributions from me, why should it decline them from Mr. Rockefeller, who is as good as I am, let the courts say what they may. Satan. And of A Humane Word From Satan. Section 25 of the $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories. This is a LibriBox recording. All LibriBox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriBox.org. The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain. Section 25. Introduction to The New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and English by Pedro Carolino. In this world of uncertainties, there is at any rate one thing which may be pretty confidently set down as a certainty, and that is that this celebrated little phrase book will never die while the English language lasts. Its delicious unconscious ridiculousness and its enchanting naivete, as are supreme and unapproachable in their way, as are Shakespeare's sublimities. Whatsoever is perfect in its kind in literature is imperishable. Nobody can imitate it successfully. Nobody can hope to produce its fellow. It is perfect. It must and will stand alone. Its immortality is secure. It is one of the smallest books in the world, but few big books have received such wide attention and been so much pondered by the grave and learned, and so much discussed and written about by the thoughtful, the thoughtless, the wise, and the foolish. Long notices of it have appeared from time to time in the great English reviews and in erudite and authoritative philological periodicals, and it has been laughed at, danced upon, and tossed in a blanket by nearly every newspaper and magazine in the English-speaking world. Every scribbler almost has had his little fling at it at one time or another. I had mine fifteen years ago. The book gets out of print every now and then, and one ceases to hear of it for a season. But presently the nations and near and far colonies of our tongue and lineage call for it once more, and once more it issues from some London or continental or American press and runs a new course round the globe, wafted on its way by the wind of a world's laughter. Many persons have believed that this book's miraculous stupidities were studied and disingenuous, but no one can read the volume carefully through and keep that opinion. It was written in serious good faith and deep earnestness by an honest and upright idiot who believed he knew something of the English language and could impart his knowledge to others. The ampless proof of this crops out somewhere or other upon each and every page. There are sentences in the book which could have been manufactured by a man in his right mind, and with an intelligent and deliberate purpose to seem innocently ignorant. But there are other sentences in paragraphs which no mere pretended ignorance could ever achieve, nor yet even the most genuine and comprehensive ignorance when unbacked by inspiration. It is not a fraud who speaks in the following paragraph of the author's preface, but a good man, an honest man, a man whose conscience is at rest, a man who believes he has done a high and worthy work for his nation and his generation and is well pleased with his performance. We expect, then, who the little book, for the care what we wrote him and for her typographical correction, that may be worth the acceptation of the studious persons and especially of the youth at which we dedicate him particularly. One cannot open this book anywhere and not find richness. To prove that this is true, I will open it at random and copy the page I happen to stumble upon. Here is the result. Dialogue 16. Poor to see the town. Anothony, go to a company they gentles men, do they see the town. We won't to see all that is remarkable here. Come with me, if you please. I shall not forget nothing that can to merit your attention. Here we are near to Cathedral. Will you come in there? We will first to see him in outside, after we shall go in there for to look the interior. Admire this masterpiece Gothic architectures. The chasing of all they figures is astonishing indeed. The cupola and the knave are not less curious to see. What is this palace how I see yonder? It is the town hall. And this tower here at this side? It is the observatory. The bridge is very fine. It have ten arches and is constructed of free stone. The streets are very laid out by line and too paved. What is the circuit of this town? Two leagues. There is it also hospitals here? It not fail them. What are then the edifices the worthest to have seen? It is the Arsena hall, the spectacles hall, the Cusium house, and the purse. We are going to see the others monuments such that the public pawnbrokers office, the plants gardens, the money offices, the library. That it shall be for another day we are tired. Dialogue 17 To inform oneself of a person. How is that gentleman who you did speak by and by? Dialogue 18 Is a German. I did think him Englishman. He is of the Saxony side. He speak French very well. Tough he is German, he speak so much well Italian, French, Spanish, and English that among the Italians they believe him Italian. He speak the French as the Frenches himself. The Spanish's men believe him Spanishing and the English's Englishmen. It is difficult to enjoy well so much several languages. This last remark contains a general truth, but it ceases to be a truth when one contracts it and applies it to an individual, provided that that individual is the author of this book, Senor Pedro Carolino. I am sure I should not find it difficult, quote, to enjoy well so much several languages, end quote, or even a thousand of them, if he did the translating for me from the originals into his ostensible English. End of Introduction to the New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and English Recording by Tricia G. Section 26 of the $30,000 bequest and other stories. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The $30,000 bequest and other stories by Mark Twain. Section 26 Advice to Little Girls Good little girls ought not to make mouths at their teachers for every trifling offense. This retaliation should only be resorted to under peculiarly aggravated circumstances. If you have nothing but a ragdoll stuffed with sawdust, while one of your more fortunate little playmates has a costly china one, you should treat her with a show of kindness, nevertheless. And you ought not to attempt to make a forcible swap with her, unless your conscience would justify you in it, and you know you are able to do it. You ought never to take your little brother's chewing gum away from him by main force. It is better to rope him in with the promise of the first two dollars and a half you find floating down the river on a grindstone. In the artless simplicity natural to this time of life, he will regard it as a perfectly fair transaction. In all ages of the world, this eminently plausible fiction has lured the obtuse infant to financial ruin and disaster. If at any time you find it necessary to correct your brother, do not correct him with mud. Never on any account throw mud at him, because it will spoil his clothes. It is better to scald him a little, for then you obtain desirable results. You secure his immediate attention to the lessons you are inculcating, and at the same time your hot water will have a tendency to remove impurities from his person and possibly the skin in spots. If your mother tells you to do a thing, it is wrong to reply that you won't. It is better and more becoming to intimate that you will do as she bids you, and then afterward act quietly in the matter according to the dictates of your best judgment. You should ever bear in mind that it is to your kind parents that you are indebted for your food and for the privilege of staying home from school when you let on that you are sick. Therefore you ought to respect their little prejudices and humor their little whims and put up with their little foibles until they get to crowding you too much. Good little girls always show marked deference for the aged. You ought never to sass old people unless they sass you first. And of Advice to Little Girls. which it would be pleasant to see adopted throughout the land. It is that of appending to published deft notices a little verse or two of comforting poetry. Anyone who is in the habit of reading the Daily Philadelphia Ledger must frequently be touched by these plaintive tributes to extinguished worth. In Philadelphia the departure of a child is a circumstance which is not more surely followed by a burial than by the accustomed solaceing policy in the public ledger. In that city death loses half its terror because the knowledge of its presence comes thus disguised in the sweet drapery of verse. For instance in a late ledger I find the following. I change the surname. Died Hawks. On the 17th instance Clara the daughter of Ephraim and Laura Hawks aged 21 months and two days. That merry shout no more I hear no laughing child I see. No the alarms are around my neck no feet upon my knee. No kisses drop upon my cheek these lips are sealed to me. Dear Lord how could I give Clara up to any but to thee. A child thus mourned could not die wholly discontented. From the ledger of the same date I make the following extract merely changing the surname as before. Beckett. On Sunday morning 19th instance John P. infant son of George and Julia Beckett aged one year six months and fifteen days. That merry shout no more I hear no laughing child I see. No little arms are around my neck no feet upon my knee. No kisses drop upon my cheek these lips are sealed to me. Dear Lord how could I give Johnny up to any but to thee. The similarity of the emotions as produced in the mourners in these two instances is remarkably evidenced by the singular similarity of thought which they experienced and the surprising coincidence of language used by them to give it the expression. In the same journal of the same date I find the following surname suppressed as before. Wagner. On the 10th instance Ferguson G. the son of William L. and Martha Teresa Wagner aged four weeks and one day. That merry shout no more I hear no laughing child I see. No little arms are around my neck no feet upon my knee. No kisses drop upon my cheek these lips are sealed to me. Dear Lord how could I give Ferguson up to any but to thee. It is strange what power the reiteration of an essential poetical thought has upon one's feelings. When we take up the ledger and read the poetry about little Clara we feel an unaccountable depression of the spirits. When we drift further down the column and read the poetry about little Johnny the depression in spirits acquires and added emphasis and we experience tangible suffering. When we saunter along down the column further still and read the poetry about little Ferguson the word torture but vaguely suggests the anguish that rends us. In the ledger same copy referred to above I find the following I alter surname as usual. Welch. On the fifth instance Mary C. Welch wife of William B. Welch and daughter of Catherine and George W. Markland in the 29th year of her age. A mother dear a mother kind has gone and left us all behind ceased to weep for tears are vain mother dear is out of pain farewell husband children dear serve thy God with filial fear and meet me in the land above where all is peace and joy and love. What could be sweeter than that no collection of salient facts without reduction to tabular form could be more succinctly stated than is done in the first stanza by the surviving relatives and no more concise and comprehensive program of farewells post mortuary general orders et cetera could be framed in any form than is done in verse by deceased in the last stanza. These things insensibly make us wiser and tenderer and better. Another extract. Ball. On the morning of the 15th instance Mary E. daughter of John and Sarah F. Ball. To sweet to rest in lively hope that when my chain shall come angels will hover around my bed to waft my spirit home. The following is apparently the customary form for heads of families. Burns on the 20th instant Michael Burns aged 40 years. Dearest father though has left us here they lost me deeply feel but his God that has bereft us he can all our sorrows heal. Funeral at two o'clock sharp. There's something very simple and pleasant about the following which in Philadelphia seems to be the usual form for consumptives of long standing. It deplores four distinct cases in the single copy of the ledger which lies on the memoranda editorial table. Bromley on the 29th instant of consumption Philip Bromley in the 50th year of his age. Affliction soar long time he bore. Physicians were in vain. Till God at last did hear him mourn and eased him of his pain. That friend whom death from us has torn we did not think so soon depart and anxious care now sinks the soaring still deeper in our bleeding heart. This beautiful creation loses nothing by repetition. On the contrary the oftener one sees it in the ledger the more grand and awe inspiring it seems. With one more extract I will close. Dobel on the fourth instance Samuel Pervil Worthington Dobel aged four days. Our little Sammy's gone his tiny spirits fled. Our little boy we love so dear lies sleeping with the dead. A tear within a father's eye a mother's aching heart can only tell the agony how hard it is to part. Could anything be more plaintive than that without requiring further concessions of grammar? Could anything be likely to do more toward reconciling deceased to circumstances and making him willing to go? Perhaps not. The power of song can hardly be estimated. There is an element about some poetry which is able to make even physical suffering and death cheerful things to contemplate and consummations to be desired. This element is present in the mortuary poetry of Philadelphia degree of development. The custom I have been treating of is one that should be adopted in all the cities of the land. It is said that once a man of small consequence died and the Reverend T. K. Beecher was asked to preach the funeral sermon. A man who abhors the lauding of people either dead or alive except indignified and simple language and then only for merits which they actually possessed or possessed not merits which they merely ought to have possessed. The friends of the deceased got up a stately funeral. They must have had misgivings that the corpse might not be praised strongly enough for they prepared some manuscript headings and notes in which nothing was left unsaid on that subject that a fervent imagination and an unabridged dictionary could compile. And these they handed to the minister as he entered the pulpit. They were merely intended as suggestions and so the friends were filled with consternation when the minister stood in the pulpit and proceeded to read off the curious odds and ends in ghastly detail and in a loud voice. And their consternation solidified to petrification when he paused at the end contemplated the multitude reflectively and then said impressively, The man would be a fool who tried to add anything to that. Let us pray. And with the same strict adhesion to truth it can be said that the man would be a fool who tried to add anything to the following transcendent obituary poem. There is something so innocent, so guileless, so complacent, so unearthly serene and self-satisfied about this peerless hogwash that the man must be made of stone who can read it without a dulcet ecstasy creeping along his backbone and quivering in his marrow. There is no need to say that this poem is genuine and in earnest for its proofs are written all over its face. An ingenious scribbler might imitate it after a fashion but Shakespeare himself could not counterfeit it. It is noticeable that the country editor who published it did not know that it was a treasure and the most perfect thing of its kind that the storehouses and museums of literature could show. He did not dare to say no to the dread poet or such a poet must have been something of an apparition but he just shoveled it into his paper anywhere that came handy and felt ashamed and put that disgusted published by request over it and hoped that his subscribers would overlook it or not feel an impulse to read it. Lines. Composed on the death of Samuel and Catherine Belknap's children by M.A. Glaze. Friends and neighbors all draw near and listen to what I have to say. I never leave your children dear when they are small and go away. But always think of that sad fate that happened in year of sixty-three. Four children with a house did burn. Think of their awful agony. Their mother she had gone away and left them there alone to stay. The house took fire and down did burn before their mother did return. Their piteous cry the neighbors heard and then the cry of fire was given but ah before they could then reach their little spirits had flown to heaven. Their father he to war had gone and on the battlefield was slain but little did he think when he went away but what on earth they would meet again. The neighbors often told his wife not to leave his children there unless she got someone to stay and of the little ones take care. The oldest he was years not six and the youngest only eleven months old but often she had left them there alone as by the neighbors I have been told. How can she bear to see the place where she so often has left them there without a single one to look to them or of the little ones to take good care. Ah can she look upon the spot where under their little burnt bones lay but what she thinks she hears them say it was God had pity and took us on high and there may she kneel down and pray and ask God her to forgive and she may lead a different life while she on earth remains to live. Her husband and her children too God has took from pain and woe. May she reform and mend her ways that she may also to them go and when it is God's holy will oh may she be prepared to meet her God and friends in peace and leave this world of care written in 1870 end of post mortem poetry section 28 of the $30,000 bequest and other stories this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Richard Kilmer the $30,000 bequest and other stories by Mark Twain section 28 the danger of lying in bed the man in the ticket office said have an accident insurance ticket also no I said after studying the matter over a little no I believe not I'm going to be traveling by rail all day today however tomorrow I don't travel give me one for tomorrow the man looked puzzled he said but it is for accident insurance and if you are going to travel by rail if I'm going to travel by rail I need it lying at home in bed is the thing I'm afraid of I had been looking into this matter last year I traveled 20,000 miles almost entirely by rail the year before I traveled over 25,000 miles half by sea and half by rail and the year before that I traveled in the neighborhood of 10,000 miles exclusively by rail I suppose if I put in all the little odd journeys here in there I may say I have traveled 60,000 miles during the three years I have mentioned and never an accident for a good while I said to myself every morning now I have escaped thus far and so the chances are just that much increased that I shall catch it this time I will be shrewd and buy an accident ticket and to a dead moral certainty I drew a blank and went to bed that night without a joint started where a bone splintered I got tired of that sort of daily bother and fell to buy an accident tickets that were good for a month I said to myself a man can't buy 30 blanks in one bundle but I was mistaken there was never a prize in the lot I could read of railway accidents every day the newspaper atmosphere was foggy with them but somehow they never came my way I found I had spent a good deal of money in the accident business and had nothing to show for it my suspicions were aroused and I began to hunt around for somebody that had won in this lottery I found plenty of people who had invested but not an individual that had ever had an accident or made a cent I stopped buying accident tickets and went to cyphering the result was astounding the peril lay not in traveling but in staying at home I hunted up statistics and was amazed to find that after all the glaring newspaper headlines concerning railroad disasters less than 300 less than 300 people had really lost their lives by those disasters in the preceding 12 months the eerie road was set down as the most murderous in the list it had killed 46 or 26 I do not exactly remember which but I know the number was double that of any other road but the fact straight away suggested itself that the eerie was an immensely long road and did more business than any other line in the country so the double of number killed ceased to be a matter for surprise by further figuring it appeared that between New York and Rochester the eerie ran eight passenger trains each way every day 16 all together and carried a daily average of 6000 persons that is about a million in six months the population of New York City well the eerie kills from 13 to 23 persons of its millions in six months and in the same time 13 000 of New York's millions die in their beds my flesh crept my hair stood on end this is appalling I said the danger isn't in traveling by rail but in trusting to those deadly beds I will never sleep in a bed again I had figured on considerably less than one half the length of the eerie road it was plain that the entire road must transport at least 11 or 12 000 people every day there are many short roads running out of Boston that do fully half as much a great many such roads there are many roads scattered about the union that do a prodigious passenger business therefore it was fair to presume that an average of 2500 passengers a day for each road in the country would be almost correct there are 846 railway lines in our country and 846 times 2500 are two million 115 000 so the railways of america move more than two millions of people every day 650 millions of people a year without counting the sundays they do that too there is no question about it though where they get the raw material is clear beyond the jurisdiction of my arithmetic for I have hunted the senses through and through and I find that there are not that many people in the united states by a matter of 610 million at the very least they must use some of the same people over again likely san francisco is one eighth as populous as new york there are 60 deaths a week in the former and 500 a week in the latter if they have luck that is 3 120 deaths a year in san francisco and eight times as many in new york say about 25 000 or 26 000 the health of the two places is the same so we will let it stand as a fair presumption that this will hold good all over the country and that consequently 25 000 out of every million of people we have must die every year that amounts to 140th of our total population 1 million of us then die annually out of this million 10 or 12 000 are stabbed shot drowned hanged poisoned or meet a similarly violent death in some other popular way such as perishing by kerosene lamp and hoop skirt conflagrations getting buried in coal mines falling off house tops breaking through church or lecture room floors taking patent medicines or committing suicide in other forms the eerie railroad kills 23 to 46 the other 845 railroads kill an average of one third of a man each and the rest of that million amounting in the aggregate to that appalling figure of 987 631 corpses die naturally in their beds you'll excuse me from taking any more chances on those beds the railroads are good enough for me and my advice all people is don't stay at home any more than you can help but when you have got to stay at home a while buy a package of those insurance tickets and sit up nights you cannot be too cautious one can see now why i answered that ticket agent in the manner recorded at the top of the sketch the moral of this composition is that thoughtless people grumble more than is fair about railroad management in the united states when we consider that every day and night of the year full 14 000 railway trains of various kinds freight it with life and armed with death go thundering over the land the marvel is not that they kill 300 human beings in a 12 month but they do not kill 300 times 300 end of the danger of lying in bed recording by richard kilmer real medina texas section 29 of the 30 000 dollar request and other stories this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org the 30 000 dollar request and other stories section 29 the portrait of king william the third by mark twain read by eric leech i never can look at those periodical portraits in the galaxy magazine without feeling a wild tempestuous ambition to be an artist i've seen thousands and thousands of pictures in my time acres of them here and leagues of them in the galleries of europe but never any that moved me as these portraits do there is a portrait of monsignor a capel in the november number how could anything be sweeter than that and there was bismarcks in the october number who can look at that without being purer and stronger and nobler for it and thorough and weeds picture in the september number i would not have died without seeing that no not for anything this world can give but look back still further and recall my own likeness as printed in the august number if i had been in my grave a thousand years when that happened i would have got up and visited the artist i sleep with all these portraits under my pillow every night so that i can go on studying them as soon as the day dawns in the morning i know them all as thoroughly as if i had made them myself i know every line and mark about them sometimes when company are present i shuffle the portraits all up together and then pick them out one by one and call their names without referring to the printing on the bottom i seldom make a mistake never when i am calm i've had the portraits framed for a long time waiting till my aunt gets everything ready for hanging them up in the parlor but first one thing and then another interferes and so the thing is delayed once she said they would have more of the peculiar kind of light they needed in the attic the old simpleton it's as dark as a tomb up there but she does not know anything about art and so she has no reverence for it when i showed her my map of the fortifications of paris she said it was rubbish well from nursing those portraits so long i've come at last to have a perfect infatuation for art i have a teacher now and my enthusiasm continually and tumultuously grows as i learned to use with more and more facility the pencil brush and graver i'm studying under demelville the house and portrait painter his name was smith when he lived in the west he does any kind of artist work a body once having a genius that's universal like michael angelo resembles that great artist in fact the back of his head is like this and he wears his hat bring tilted down on his nose to expose it i've been studying under demelville several months now the first month i painted fences and gave general satisfaction the next month i whitewashed a barn the third i was doing tin roofs the fourth common signs the fifth statuary to stand up before cigar shops this present month is only the sixth and i'm already in portraits the humble offering which accompanies these remarks see figure the portrait of his majesty william the third king of prussia is my fifth attempt in portraits and my greatest success it has received unbounded praise from all classes of the community but that which gratifies me most is the frequent and cordial verdict that it resembles the galaxy portraits those were my first love my earliest admiration the original source and incentive of my art ambition whatever i am in art today i owe to these portraits i ask no credit for myself i deserve none and i never take any either many a stranger has come to my exhibition for i've had my portrait of king william on exhibition at one dollar a ticket and would have gone away blessing me if i had let him but i never did i always stated where i got the idea king william wears large bushy side whiskers and some critics have thought that this portrait would have been more complete if they were added but it was not possible there was not room for side whiskers and epaulets both and so i let the whiskers go and put in the epaulets for the sake of style that thing on his hat is an eagle the the prussian eagle it's a national emblem when i say hat i mean helmet but it seems impossible to make a picture of a helmet that a body can have confidence in i wish kind friends everywhere would aid me in my endeavor to attract a little attention to the galaxy portraits i feel persuaded it can be accomplished if the course to be pursued with judgment i write for that magazine all the time and so do many abler men and if i can get these portraits into universal favor it's all i ask the reading matter will take care of itself commendations of the portrait there is nothing like it in the vatican pious the ninth it has none of that vagueness that dreamy spirituality about it which many of the first critics of arkansas have objected to in the mario school of art ruskin the expression is very interesting jw tshin parentheses keeps a macaroni store in venice at the old family stand and parentheses it is the neatest thing in still life i have seen for years rosa bond here the smile may be almost called unique bismarck i never saw such character portrayed in a picture face before demelville there is benign and simplicity about the execution of this work which warms the heart and toward it full as much as it fascinates the eye land seer one cannot see it without longing to contemplate the artist frederick william send me the entire edition together with the plate and the original portrait and name your own price and would you like to come over and stay a while with napoleon at willham show it shall not cost you ascent william the third this is the end of the portrait of king william the third read by eric leech