The mixture will give you an approximate conception of a Nashville drizzle. It is not so fragrant as a mothball nor as thick as pea-soup; but ’tis enough—’twill serve.
I went to a hotel in a tumbril. It required strong self-suppression for me to keep from climbing to the top of it and giving an imitation of Sidney Carton. The vehicle was drawn by beasts of a bygone era and driven by something dark and emancipated.
I was sleepy and tired, so when I got to the hotel I hurriedly paid it the fifty cents it demanded (with approximate lagniappe, I assure you). I knew its habits; and I did not want to hear it prate about its old “marster” or anything that happened “befo’ de wah.”
-The hotel was one of the kind described as “renovated.” That means $20,000 worth of new marble pillars, tiling, electric lights and brass cuspidors in the lobby, and a new L. & N. time table and a lithograph of Lookout Mountain in each one of the great rooms above. The management was without reproach, the attention full of exquisite Southern courtesy, the service as slow as the progress of a snail and as good-humored as Rip Van Winkle. The food was worth traveling a thousand miles for. There is no other hotel in the world where you can get such chicken livers en brochette.
+The hotel was one of the kind described as “renovated.” That means $20,000 worth of new marble pillars, tiling, electric lights and brass cuspidors in the lobby, and a new L. & N. time table and a lithograph of Lookout Mountain in each one of the great rooms above. The management was without reproach, the attention full of exquisite Southern courtesy, the service as slow as the progress of a snail and as good-humored as Rip Van Winkle. The food was worth traveling a thousand miles for. There is no other hotel in the world where you can get such chicken livers en brochette.
At dinner I asked a Negro waiter if there was anything doing in town. He pondered gravely for a minute, and then replied: “Well, boss, I don’t really reckon there’s anything at all doin’ after sundown.”
Sundown had been accomplished; it had been drowned in the drizzle long before. So that spectacle was denied me. But I went forth upon the streets in the drizzle to see what might be there.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/a-night-in-new-arabia.xhtml b/src/epub/text/a-night-in-new-arabia.xhtml index 2dcf2f0..8da2c90 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/a-night-in-new-arabia.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/a-night-in-new-arabia.xhtml @@ -26,7 +26,7 @@When a man’s income becomes so large that the butcher actually sends him the kind of steak he orders, he begins to think about his soul’s salvation. Now, the various stages or classes of rich men must not be forgotten. The capitalist can tell you to a dollar the amount of his wealth. The trust magnate “estimates” it. The rich malefactor hands you a cigar and denies that he has bought the P. D. & Q. The caliph merely smiles and talks about Hammerstein and the musical lasses. There is a record of tremendous altercation at breakfast in a “Where-to-Dine-Well” tavern between a magnate and his wife, the rift within the loot being that the wife calculated their fortune at a figure $3,000,000 higher than did her future divorcé. Oh, well, I, myself, heard a similar quarrel between a man and his wife because he found fifty cents less in his pockets than he thought he had. After all, we are all human—Count Tolstoy, R. Fitzsimmons, Peter Pan, and the rest of us.
Don’t lose heart because the story seems to be degenerating into a sort of moral essay for intellectual readers.
There will be dialogue and stage business pretty soon.
-When Jacob first began to compare the eyes of needles with the camels in the zoo he decided upon organized charity. He had his secretary send a check for one million to the Universal Benevolent Association of the Globe. You may have looked down through a grating in front of a decayed warehouse for a nickel that you had dropped through. But that is neither here nor there. The Association acknowledged receipt of his favor of the 24th ult. with enclosure as stated. Separated by a double line, but still mighty close to the matter under the caption of “Oddities of the Day’s News” in an evening paper, Jacob Spraggins read that one “Jasper Spargyous” had “donated $100,000 to the U. B. A. of G.” A camel may have a stomach for each day in the week; but I dare not venture to accord him whiskers, for fear of the Great Displeasure at Washington; but if he have whiskers, surely not one of them will seem to have been inserted in the eye of a needle by that effort of that rich man to enter the K. of H. The right is reserved to reject any and all bids; signed, S. Peter, secretary and gatekeeper.
+When Jacob first began to compare the eyes of needles with the camels in the zoo he decided upon organized charity. He had his secretary send a check for one million to the Universal Benevolent Association of the Globe. You may have looked down through a grating in front of a decayed warehouse for a nickel that you had dropped through. But that is neither here nor there. The Association acknowledged receipt of his favor of the 24th ult. with enclosure as stated. Separated by a double line, but still mighty close to the matter under the caption of “Oddities of the Day’s News” in an evening paper, Jacob Spraggins read that one “Jasper Spargyous” had “donated $100,000 to the U. B. A. of G.” A camel may have a stomach for each day in the week; but I dare not venture to accord him whiskers, for fear of the Great Displeasure at Washington; but if he have whiskers, surely not one of them will seem to have been inserted in the eye of a needle by that effort of that rich man to enter the K. of H. The right is reserved to reject any and all bids; signed, S. Peter, secretary and gatekeeper.
Next, Jacob selected the best endowed college he could scare up and presented it with a $200,000 laboratory. The college did not maintain a scientific course, but it accepted the money and built an elaborate lavatory instead, which was no diversion of funds so far as Jacob ever discovered.
The faculty met and invited Jacob to come over and take his A B C degree. Before sending the invitation they smiled, cut out the C, added the proper punctuation marks, and all was well.
While walking on the campus before being capped and gowned, Jacob saw two professors strolling nearby. Their voices, long adapted to indoor acoustics, undesignedly reached his ear.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/a-ramble-in-aphasia.xhtml b/src/epub/text/a-ramble-in-aphasia.xhtml index de456aa..7901c09 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/a-ramble-in-aphasia.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/a-ramble-in-aphasia.xhtml @@ -38,7 +38,7 @@“Here’s another one of these fake aphasia cases,” he said, presently, handing me his newspaper, and laying his finger upon an article. “I don’t believe in ’em. I put nine out of ten of ’em down as frauds. A man gets sick of his business and his folks and wants to have a good time. He skips out somewhere, and when they find him he pretends to have lost his memory—don’t know his own name, and won’t even recognize the strawberry mark on his wife’s left shoulder. Aphasia! Tut! Why can’t they stay at home and forget?”
I took the paper and read, after the pungent headlines, the following:
-“Denver, June 12.—Elwyn C. Bellford, a prominent lawyer, is mysteriously missing from his home since three days ago, and all efforts to locate him have been in vain. Mr. Bellford is a well-known citizen of the highest standing, and has enjoyed a large and lucrative law practice. He is married and owns a fine home and the most extensive private library in the State. On the day of his disappearance, he drew quite a large sum of money from his bank. No one can be found who saw him after he left the bank. Mr. Bellford was a man of singularly quiet and domestic tastes, and seemed to find his happiness in his home and profession. If any clue at all exists to his strange disappearance, it may be found in the fact that for some months he has been deeply absorbed in an important law case in connection with the Q. Y. and Z. Railroad Company. It is feared that overwork may have affected his mind. Every effort is being made to discover the whereabouts of the missing man.”
+“Denver, June 12.—Elwyn C. Bellford, a prominent lawyer, is mysteriously missing from his home since three days ago, and all efforts to locate him have been in vain. Mr. Bellford is a well-known citizen of the highest standing, and has enjoyed a large and lucrative law practice. He is married and owns a fine home and the most extensive private library in the State. On the day of his disappearance, he drew quite a large sum of money from his bank. No one can be found who saw him after he left the bank. Mr. Bellford was a man of singularly quiet and domestic tastes, and seemed to find his happiness in his home and profession. If any clue at all exists to his strange disappearance, it may be found in the fact that for some months he has been deeply absorbed in an important law case in connection with the Q. Y. and Z. Railroad Company. It is feared that overwork may have affected his mind. Every effort is being made to discover the whereabouts of the missing man.”
“It seems to me you are not altogether uncynical, Mr. Bolder,” I said, after I had read the despatch. “This has the sound, to me, of a genuine case. Why should this man, prosperous, happily married, and respected, choose suddenly to abandon everything? I know that these lapses of memory do occur, and that men do find themselves adrift without a name, a history or a home.”
“Oh, gammon and jalap!” said Mr. Bolder. “It’s larks they’re after. There’s too much education nowadays. Men know about aphasia, and they use it for an excuse. The women are wise, too. When it’s all over they look you in the eye, as scientific as you please, and say: ‘He hypnotized me.’ ”
diff --git a/src/epub/text/confessions-of-a-humorist.xhtml b/src/epub/text/confessions-of-a-humorist.xhtml index 2142ea5..75e7d31 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/confessions-of-a-humorist.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/confessions-of-a-humorist.xhtml @@ -81,7 +81,7 @@For an answer I got up and began to do a polka step around the supper table. I am sure Louisa thought the trouble had driven me mad; and I think the children hoped it had, for they tore after me, yelling with glee and emulating my steps. I was now something like their old playmate as of yore.
“The theatre for us tonight!” I shouted; “nothing less. And a late, wild, disreputable supper for all of us at the Palace Restaurant. Lumpty-diddle-de-dee-de-dum!”
And then I explained my glee by declaring that I was now a partner in a prosperous undertaking establishment, and that written jokes might go hide their heads in sackcloth and ashes for all me.
-With the editor’s letter in her hand to justify the deed I had done, my wife could advance no objections save a few mild ones based on the feminine inability to appreciate a good thing such as the little back room of Peter Hef—no, of Heffelbower & Co’s. undertaking establishment.
+With the editor’s letter in her hand to justify the deed I had done, my wife could advance no objections save a few mild ones based on the feminine inability to appreciate a good thing such as the little back room of Peter Hef—no, of Heffelbower & Co.’s undertaking establishment.
In conclusion, I will say that today you will find no man in our town as well liked, as jovial, and full of merry sayings as I. My jokes are again noised about and quoted; once more I take pleasure in my wife’s confidential chatter without a mercenary thought, while Guy and Viola play at my feet distributing gems of childish humor without fear of the ghastly tormentor who used to dog their steps, notebook in hand.
Our business has prospered finely. I keep the books and look after the shop, while Peter attends to outside matters. He says that my levity and high spirits would simply turn any funeral into a regular Irish wake.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/holding-up-a-train.xhtml b/src/epub/text/holding-up-a-train.xhtml index 9d218fe..6c79909 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/holding-up-a-train.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/holding-up-a-train.xhtml @@ -67,7 +67,7 @@Now I propose to tell why it is easy to hold up a train, and, then, why no one should ever do it.
In the first place, the attacking party has all the advantage. That is, of course, supposing that they are old-timers with the necessary experience and courage. They have the outside and are protected by the darkness, while the others are in the light, hemmed into a small space, and exposed, the moment they show a head at a window or door, to the aim of a man who is a dead shot and who won’t hesitate to shoot.
But, in my opinion, the main condition that makes train robbing easy is the element of surprise in connection with the imagination of the passengers. If you have ever seen a horse that has eaten loco weed you will understand what I mean when I say that the passengers get locoed. That horse gets the awfullest imagination on him in the world. You can’t coax him to cross a little branch stream two feet wide. It looks as big to him as the Mississippi River. That’s just the way with the passenger. He thinks there are a hundred men yelling and shooting outside, when maybe there are only two or three. And the muzzle of a forty-five looks like the entrance to a tunnel. The passenger is all right, although he may do mean little tricks, like hiding a wad of money in his shoe and forgetting to dig-up until you jostle his ribs some with the end of your six-shooter; but there’s no harm in him.
-As to the train crew, we never had any more trouble with them than if they had been so many sheep. I don’t mean that they are cowards; I mean that they have got sense. They know they’re not up against a bluff. It’s the same way with the officers. I’ve seen secret service men, marshals, and railroad detectives fork over their change as meek as Moses. I saw one of the bravest marshals I ever knew hide his gun under his seat and dig up along with the rest while I was taking toll. He wasn’t afraid; he simply knew that we had the drop on the whole outfit. Besides, many of those officers have families and they feel that they oughtn’t to take chances; whereas death has no terrors for the man who holds up a train. He expects to get killed some day, and he generally does. My advice to you, if you should ever be in a holdup, is to line up with the cowards and save your bravery for an occasion when it may be of some benefit to you. Another reason why officers are backward about mixing things with a train robber is a financial one. Every time there is a scrimmage and somebody gets killed, the officers lose money. If the train robber gets away they swear out a warrant against John Doe et al. and travel hundreds of miles and sign vouchers for thousands on the trail of the fugitives, and the Government foots the bills. So, with them, it is a question of mileage rather than courage.
+As to the train crew, we never had any more trouble with them than if they had been so many sheep. I don’t mean that they are cowards; I mean that they have got sense. They know they’re not up against a bluff. It’s the same way with the officers. I’ve seen secret service men, marshals, and railroad detectives fork over their change as meek as Moses. I saw one of the bravest marshals I ever knew hide his gun under his seat and dig up along with the rest while I was taking toll. He wasn’t afraid; he simply knew that we had the drop on the whole outfit. Besides, many of those officers have families and they feel that they oughtn’t to take chances; whereas death has no terrors for the man who holds up a train. He expects to get killed some day, and he generally does. My advice to you, if you should ever be in a holdup, is to line up with the cowards and save your bravery for an occasion when it may be of some benefit to you. Another reason why officers are backward about mixing things with a train robber is a financial one. Every time there is a scrimmage and somebody gets killed, the officers lose money. If the train robber gets away they swear out a warrant against John Doe et al. and travel hundreds of miles and sign vouchers for thousands on the trail of the fugitives, and the Government foots the bills. So, with them, it is a question of mileage rather than courage.
I will give one instance to support my statement that the surprise is the best card in playing for a holdup.
Along in ’92 the Daltons were cutting out a hot trail for the officers down in the Cherokee Nation, Those were their lucky days, and they got so reckless and sandy, that they used to announce before hand what job they were going to undertake. Once they gave it out that they were going to hold up the M. K. & T. flyer on a certain night at the station of Pryor Creek, in Indian Territory.
That night the railroad company got fifteen deputy marshals in Muscogee and put them on the train. Beside them they had fifty armed men hid in the depot at Pryor Creek.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/hostages-to-momus.xhtml b/src/epub/text/hostages-to-momus.xhtml index fa29f1d..3fd802f 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/hostages-to-momus.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/hostages-to-momus.xhtml @@ -12,7 +12,7 @@I
I never got inside of the legitimate line of graft but once. But, one time, as I say, I reversed the decision of the revised statutes and undertook a thing that I’d have to apologize for even under the New Jersey trust laws.
Me and Caligula Polk, of Muskogee in the Creek Nation, was down in the Mexican State of Tamaulipas running a peripatetic lottery and monte game. Now, selling lottery tickets is a government graft in Mexico, just like selling forty-eight cents’ worth of postage-stamps for forty-nine cents is over here. So Uncle Porfirio he instructs the rurales to attend to our case.
-Rurales? They’re a sort of country police; but don’t draw any mental crayon portraits of the worthy constables with a tin star and a gray goatee. The rurales—well, if we’d mount our Supreme Court on broncos, arm ’em with Winchesters, and start ’em out after John Doe et al. we’d have about the same thing.
+Rurales? They’re a sort of country police; but don’t draw any mental crayon portraits of the worthy constables with a tin star and a gray goatee. The rurales—well, if we’d mount our Supreme Court on broncos, arm ’em with Winchesters, and start ’em out after John Doe et al. we’d have about the same thing.
When the rurales started for us we started for the States. They chased us as far as Matamoras. We hid in a brickyard; and that night we swum the Rio Grande, Caligula with a brick in each hand, absentminded, which he drops upon the soil of Texas, forgetting he had ’em.
From there we emigrated to San Antone, and then over to New Orleans, where we took a rest. And in that town of cotton bales and other adjuncts to female beauty we made the acquaintance of drinks invented by the Creoles during the period of Louey Cans, in which they are still served at the side doors. The most I can remember of this town is that me and Caligula and a Frenchman named McCarty—wait a minute; Adolph McCarty—was trying to make the French Quarter pay up the back trading-stamps due on the Louisiana Purchase, when somebody hollers that the johndarms are coming. I have an insufficient recollection of buying two yellow tickets through a window; and I seemed to see a man swing a lantern and say “All aboard!” I remembered no more, except that the train butcher was covering me and Caligula up with Augusta J. Evans’s works and figs.
When we become revised, we find that we have collided up against the State of Georgia at a spot hitherto unaccounted for in time tables except by an asterisk, which means that trains stop every other Thursday on signal by tearing up a rail. We was waked up in a yellow pine hotel by the noise of flowers and the smell of birds. Yes, sir, for the wind was banging sunflowers as big as buggy wheels against the weatherboarding and the chicken coop was right under the window. Me and Caligula dressed and went downstairs. The landlord was shelling peas on the front porch. He was six feet of chills and fever, and Hongkong in complexion though in other respects he seemed amenable in the exercise of his sentiments and features.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/taking-no-chances.xhtml b/src/epub/text/taking-no-chances.xhtml index 1781a73..b347425 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/taking-no-chances.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/taking-no-chances.xhtml @@ -12,7 +12,7 @@“That sounds promising,” said Mark Twain, running his hands through his busy curls, “read some more about it.”
“The people of Madagascar,” continued the genial manager, reading from his book, “are not a savage race and few of the tribes could be classed as barbarian people. There are many native orators among them, and their language abounds in figures, metaphors, and parables, and ample evidence is given of the mental ability of the inhabitants.”
“Sounds like it might be all right,” said the humorist, “read some more.”
-“Madagascar is the home,” read the manager, “of an enormous bird called the epyornis, that lays an egg 15½ by 9½ in. in size, weighing from ten to twelve pounds. These eggs—”
+“Madagascar is the home,” read the manager, “of an enormous bird called the epyornis, that lays an egg 15½ by 9½ in. in size, weighing from ten to twelve pounds. These eggs—”
“Never mind reading any more,” said Mark Twain. “We will not go to Madagascar.”