“Miss C. L. B. had her fine nose elegantly enameled, and the easy grace with which she blew it from time to time marked her as a cultivated and accomplished woman of the world; its exquisitely modulated tone excited the admiration of all who had the happiness to hear it.”
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“Party Cries” In Ireland
“…Every man in the community is a missionary and carries a brick to admonish the erring with. The law has tried to break this up, but not with perfect success.”
A Couple of Sad Experiences
“Shall I tell the real reason why I have unintentionally succeeded in fooling so many people? It is because some of them only read a little of the squib I wrote and jumped to the conclusion that it was serious, and the rest did not read it at all, but heard…second-hand.”
A Fashion Item
“There were other ladies present, but I only took notes of one as a specimen. I would gladly enlarge upon the subject were I able to do it justice.”
A Fine Old Man
John Wagner, the oldest man in Buffalo—one hundred and four years old—recently walked a mile and a half in two weeks. He is as cheerful and bright as any of these other old men that charge around so persistently and tiresomely in the newspapers, and in every way as remarkable.
A Helpless Situation
“I say to myself, “I have seen you a thousand times, you always look the same way, yet you are always a wonder, and you are always impossible; to contrive you is clearly beyond human genius—you can’t exist, you don’t exist, yet here you are!”
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.” — Introductory remark from the Editor, Harper’s Weekly
A Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury
Riverdale-on-the-Hudson, OCTOBER 15, 1902. THE HON. 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 the reach of literary persons in straitened circumstances, I desire to place with you the following order…
A Memory
A Short Essay by Mark Twain
As published in The Curious Republic of Gondour and Other Whimsical Sketches.
When I say that I never knew my austere father to be enamoured of but one poem in all the long half century that he lived, persons who knew him will easily believe me; when I say that [...]
A Monument to Adam
In the beginning—as a detail of the project when it was yet a joke—I had framed a humble and beseeching and perfervid petition to Congress begging the government to built 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…
A Mysterious Visit
By working on my vanity, the stranger had seduced me into declaring an income of two hundred and fourteen thousand dollars. By law, one thousand dollars of this was exempt from income tax—the only relief I could see, and it was only a drop in the ocean. At the legal five per cent., I must pay to the government the sum of ten thousand six hundred and fifty dollars, income tax! [I may remark, in this place, that I did not do it.]
A New Crime
Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against insanity. There is where the true evil lies.
A Reminiscence of the Back Settlements
He cracked his whip and went lumbering away with his ancient ruin of a hearse, and I continued my walk with a valuable lesson learned—that a healthy and wholesome cheerfulness is not necessarily impossible to any occupation. The lesson is likely to be lasting, for it will take many months to obliterate the memory of the remarks and circumstances that impressed it.
A Royal Compliment
A Short Essay by Mark Twain
As published in The Curious Republic of Gondour and Other Whimsical Sketches.
The latest report about the Spanish crown is, that it will now beoffered to Prince Alfonso, the second son of the King of Portugal,who is but five years of age. The Spaniards have hunted through allthe nations of [...]
A Scrap of Curious History
That is the very mistake which was at first made in the Missourian village half a century ago. The mistake was repeated and repeated—just as France is doing in these later months.
A Simplified Alphabet
This article, written during the autumn of 1899, was about the last writing done by Mark Twain on any impersonal subject.
A Telephonic Conversation
A man delivers a single brutal “Good-by,” and that is the end of it. Not so with the gentle sex—I say it in their praise; they cannot abide abruptness.
About Barbers
“All things change except barbers, the ways of barbers, and the surroundings of barbers. These never change.”
About Play-Acting
“You are trying to make yourself believe that life is a comedy, that its sole business is fun, that there is nothing serious in it. You are ignoring the skeleton in your closet. “
About Smells
“If the subject of these remarks had been chosen among the original Twelve Apostles, he would not have associated with the rest, because he could not have stood the fishy smell of some of his comrades who came from around the Sea of Galilee.”
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.”
Amended 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.”
An Ideal French Address
I am told that a French sermon is like a French speech—it never names an historical event, but only the date of it; if you are not up in dates, you get left.
Answers to Correspondents
“I don’t want any of your statistics; I took your whole batch and lit my pipe with it.”
