Words of wisdom from Adam and Eve (and Mark Twain)

Words of wisdom from the Original First Lady, Eve, by way of Mark Twain, from Letters from the Earth.

 From "Extract of Eve's Autobiography"

But studying, learning, inquiring into the cause and nature and purpose of everything we came across, were passions with us, and this research filled our days with brilliant and absorbing interest. Adam was by constitution and proclivity a scientist; I may justly say I was the same, and we loved to call ourselves by that great name. Each was ambitious to beat the other in scientific discovery, and this incentive added a spur to our friendly rivalry, and effectively protected us against falling into idle and unprofitable ways and frivolous pleasure-seeking.

Our first memorable scientific discovery was the law that water and like fluids run downhill, not up. It was Adam that found this out. Days and days he conducted his experiments secretly, saying nothing to me about it; for he wanted to make perfectly sure before he spoke. I knew something of prime importance was disturbing his great intellect, for his repose was troubled and he thrashed about in his sleep a good deal. But at last he was sure, and then he told me. I could not believe it, it seemed so strange, so impossible. My astonishment was his triumph, his reward. He took me from rill to rill -- dozens of them -- saying always, "There -- you see it runs downhill -- in every case it runs downhill, never up. My theory was right; it is proven, it is established, nothing can controvert it." And it was a pure delight to see his exultation in this great discovery.

In the present day no child wonders to see the water run down and not up, but it was an amazing thing then, and as hard to believe as any fact I have ever encountered.

You see, that simple matter had been under my eyes from the day I was made, but I had never happened to notice it. It took me some time to accept it and adjust myself to it, and for a long time I could not see a running stream without voluntarily or involuntarily taking note of the dip of the surface, half expecting to see Adam's law violated; but at last I was convinced and remained so; and from that day forth I should have been startled and perplexed to see a waterfall going up the wrong way. Knowledge has to be acquired by hard work; none of it is flung at our heads gratis.

That law was Adam's first great contribution to science; and for more than two centuries it went by his name -- Adam's Law of Fluidic Precipitation. Anybody could get on the soft side of him by dropping a casual compliment or two about it in his hearing.

He was a good deal inflated -- I will not try to conceal it -- but not spoiled. Nothing ever spoiled him, he was so good and dear and right-hearted. He always put it by with a deprecating gesture, and said it was no great thing, some other scientist would have discovered it by and by; but all the same, if a visiting stranger had audience of him and was tactless enough to forget to mention it, it was noticeable that that stranger was not invited to call again. After a couple of centuries, the discovery of the law got into dispute, and was wrangled over by scientific bodies for as much as a century, the credit being finally given to a more recent person. It was a cruel blow. Adam was never the same man afterward. He carried that sorrow in his heart for six hundred years, and I have always believed that it shortened his life. Of course throughout his days he took precedence of kings and of all the race as First Man, and had the honors due to that great rank, but these distinctions could not compensate him for that lamented ravishment, for he was a true scientist and the First; and he confided to me, more than once, that if he could have kept the glory of Discoverer of the Law of Fluidic Precipitation he would have been content to pass as his own son and Second Man. I did what I could to comfort him. I said that as First Man his fame was secure; and that a time would come when the name of the pretended discoverer of the law that water runs downhill would fade and perish and be forgotten in the earth. And I believe that. I have never ceased to believe it. That day will surely come.

I scored the next great triumph for science myself: to wit, how the milk gets into the cow. Both of us had marveled over that mystery a long time. We had followed the cows around for years -- that is, in the daytime -- but had never caught them drinking a fluid of that color. And so, at last we said they undoubtedly procured it at night. Then we took turns and watched them by night. The result was the same -- the puzzle remained unsolved. These proceedings were of a sort to be expected in beginners, but one perceives, now, that they were unscientific. A time came when experience had taught us better methods. 

One night as I lay musing, and looking at the stars, a grand idea flashed through my head, and I saw my way! My first impulse was to wake Adam and tell him, but I resisted it and kept my secret. I slept no wink the rest of the night. The moment the first pale streak of dawn appeared I flitted stealthily away; and deep in the woods I chose "a small grassy spot and wattled it in, making a secure pen; then I enclosed a cow in it. I milked her dry, then left her there, a prisoner. There was nothing there to drink -- she must get milk by her secret alchemy, or stay dry.

All day I was in a fidget, and could not talk connectedly I was so preoccupied; but Adam was busy trying to invent a multiplication table, and did not notice. Toward sunset he had got as far as 6 times 9 are 27, and while he was drunk with the joy of his achievement and dead to my presence and all things else, I stole away to my cow. My hand shook so with excitement and with dread failure that for some moments I could not get a grip on a teat; then I succeeded, and the milk came! Two gallons. Two gallons, and nothing to make it out of. I knew at once the explanation: the milk was not taken in by the mouth, it was condensed from the atmosphere through the cow's hair. I ran and told Adam, and his happiness was as great as mine, and his pride in me inexpressible.

Presently he said, "Do you know, you have not made merely one weighty and far-reaching contribution to science, but two." And that was true. By a series of experiments we had long ago arrived at the conclusion that atmospheric air consisted of water in invisible suspension; also, that the components of water were hydrogen and oxygen, in the proportion of two parts of the former to one of the latter, and expressible by the symbol H2O. My discovery revealed the fact that there was still another ingredient -- milk. We enlarged the symbol to H2O,M.

INTERPOLATED EXTRACTS FROM "EVE'S DIARY"

Another discovery. One day I noticed that William McKinley was not looking well. He is the original first lion, and has been a pet of mine from the beginning. I examined him, to see what was the matter with him, and found that a cabbage which he had not chewed, had stuck in his throat. I was unable to pull it out, so I took the broomstick and rammed it home. This relieved him. In the course of my labors I had made him spread his jaws, so that I could look in, and I noticed that there was something peculiar about his teeth. I now subjected the teeth to careful and scientific examination, and the result was a consuming surprise: the lion is not a vegetarian, he is carnivorous, a flesh-eater! Intended for one, anyway.

I ran to Adam and told him, but of course he scoffed, saying, "Where would he find flesh?"

I had to grant that I didn't know.

"When the Buffalo Climbed a Tree" - Mark Twain

(Mark Twain was known as a man who could stretch the truth to limits that would seem impossible--but in his words, turn doubt to probability. Here is the tale of such a potential about "The Buffalo that Climbed a Tree.")

It did seem strange enough to see a town again after what appeared to us such a long acquaintance with deep, still, almost lifeless and houseless solitude! We tumbled out into the busy street feeling like meteoric people crumbled off the corner of some other world, and wakened up suddenly in this. For an hour we took as much interest in Overland City as if we had never seen a town before. The reason we had an hour to spare was because we had to change our stage (for a less sumptuous affair, called a "mud-wagon") and transfer our freight of mails.

Presently we got underway again. We came to the shallow, yellow, muddy South Platte, with its low banks and its scattering flat sand-bars and pigmy islands--a melancholy stream straggling through the centre of the enormous flat plain, and only saved from being impossible to find with the naked eye by its sentinel rank of scattering trees standing on either bank. The Platte was "up," they said--which made me wish I could see it when it was down, if it could look any sicker and sorrier. They said it was a dangerous stream to cross, now, because its quicksands were liable to swallow up horses, coach and passengers if an attempt was made to ford it. But the mails had to go, and we made the attempt. Once or twice in midstream the wheels sunk into the yielding sands so threateningly that we half believed we had dreaded and avoided the sea all our lives to be shipwrecked in a "mud-wagon" in the middle of a desert at last. But we dragged through and sped away toward the setting sun.

Next morning, just before dawn, when about five hundred and fifty miles from St. Joseph, our mud-wagon broke down. We were to be delayed five or six hours, and therefore we took horses, by invitation, and joined a party who were just starting on a buffalo hunt. It was noble sport galloping over the plain in the dewy freshness of the morning, but our part of the hunt ended in disaster and disgrace, for a wounded buffalo bull chased the passenger Bemis nearly two miles, and then he forsook his horse and took to a lone tree. He was very sullen about the matter for some twenty-four hours, but at last he began to soften little by little, and finally he said:

    "Well, it was not funny, and there was no sense in those gawks making themselves so facetious over it. I tell you I was angry in earnest for awhile. I should have shot that long gangly lubber they called Hank, if I could have done it without crippling six or seven other people--but of course I couldn't, the old 'Allen's' so confounded comprehensive. I wish those loafers had been up in the tree; they wouldn't have wanted to laugh so. If I had had a horse worth a cent--but no, the minute he saw that buffalo bull wheel on him and give a bellow, he raised straight up in the air and stood on his heels. The saddle began to slip, and I took him round the neck and laid close to him, and began to pray. Then he came down and stood up on the other end awhile, and the bull actually stopped pawing sand and bellowing to contemplate the inhuman spectacle.

"Then the bull made a pass at him and uttered a bellow that sounded perfectly frightful, it was so close to me, and that seemed to literally prostrate my horse's reason, and make a raving distracted maniac of him, and I wish I may die if he didn't stand on his head for a quarter of a minute and shed tears. He was absolutely out of his mind--he was, as sure as truth itself, and he really didn't know what he was doing. Then the bull came charging at us, and my horse dropped down on all fours and took a fresh start--and then for the next ten minutes he would actually throw one hand-spring after another so fast that the bull began to get unsettled, too, and didn't know where to start in--and so he stood there sneezing, and shoveling dust over his back, and bellowing every now and then, and thinking he had got a fifteen-hundred dollar circus horse for breakfast, certain. Well, I was first out on his neck--the horse's, not the bull's--and then underneath, and next on his rump, and sometimes head up, and sometimes heels--but I tell you it seemed solemn and awful to be ripping and tearing and carrying on so in the presence of death, as you might say. Pretty soon the bull made a snatch for us and brought away some of my horse's tail (I suppose, but do not know, being pretty busy at the time), but something made him hungry for solitude and suggested to him to get up and hunt for it.

"And then you ought to have seen that spider legged old skeleton go! and you ought to have seen the bull cut out after him, too--head down, tongue out, tail up, bellowing like everything, and actually mowing down the weeds, and tearing up the earth, and boosting up the sand like a whirlwind! By George, it was a hot race! I and the saddle were back on the rump, and I had the bridle in my teeth and holding on to the pommel with both hands. First we left the dogs behind; then we passed a jackass rabbit; then we overtook a coyote, and were gaining on an antelope when the rotten girth let go and threw me about thirty yards off to the left, and as the saddle went down over the horse's rump he gave it a lift with his heels that sent it more than four hundred yards up in the air, I wish I may die in a minute if he didn't. I fell at the foot of the only solitary tree there was in nine counties adjacent (as any creature could see with the naked eye), and the next second I had hold of the bark with four sets of nails and my teeth, and the next second after that I was astraddle of the main limb and blaspheming my luck in a way that made my breath smell of brimstone. I had the bull, now, if he did not think of one thing. But that one thing I dreaded. I dreaded it very seriously. There was a possibility that the bull might not think of it, but there were greater chances that he would. I made up my mind what I would do in case he did. It was a little over forty feet to the ground from where I sat. I cautiously unwound the lariat from the pommel of my saddle----"

"Your saddle? Did you take your saddle up in the tree with you?"

"Take it up in the tree with me? Why, how you talk. Of course I didn't. No man could do that. It fell in the tree when it came down."

"Oh--exactly."

"Certainly. I unwound the lariat, and fastened one end of it to the limb. It was the very best green raw-hide, and capable of sustaining tons. I made a slip-noose in the other end, and then hung it down to see the length. It reached down twenty-two feet--half way to the ground. I then loaded every barrel of the Allen with a double charge. I felt satisfied. I said to myself, if he never thinks of that one thing that I dread, all right--but if he does, all right anyhow--I am fixed for him. But don't you know that the very thing a man dreads is the thing that always happens? Indeed it is so. I watched the bull, now, with anxiety--anxiety which no one can conceive of who has not been in such a situation and felt that at any moment death might come. Presently a thought came into the bull's eye. I knew it! said I--if my nerve fails now, I am lost. Sure enough, it was just as I had dreaded, he started in to climb the tree----"

"What, the bull?"

"Of course--who else?"

"But a bull can't climb a tree."

"He can't, can't he? Since you know so much about it, did you ever see a bull try?"

"No! I never dreamt of such a thing."

"Well, then, what is the use of your talking that way, then? Because you never saw a thing done, is that any reason why it can't be done?"

"Well, all right--go on. What did you do?"

"The bull started up, and got along well for about ten feet, then slipped and slid back. I breathed easier. He tried it again--got up a little higher--slipped again. But he came at it once more, and this time he was careful. He got gradually higher and higher, and my spirits went down more and more. Up he came--an inch at a time--with his eyes hot, and his tongue hanging out. Higher and higher--hitched his foot over the stump of a limb, and looked up, as much as to say, 'You are my meat, friend.' Up again--higher and higher, and getting more excited the closer he got. He was within ten feet of me! I took a long breath,--and then said I, 'It is now or never.' I had the coil of the lariat all ready; I paid it out slowly, till it hung right over his head; all of a sudden I let go of the slack, and the slipnoose fell fairly round his neck! Quicker than lightning I out with the Allen and let him have it in the face. It was an awful roar, and must have scared the bull out of his senses. When the smoke cleared away, there he was, dangling in the air, twenty foot from the ground, and going out of one convulsion into another faster than you could count! I didn't stop to count, anyhow--I shinned down the tree and shot for home."

"Bemis, is all that true, just as you have stated it?"

"I wish I may rot in my tracks and die the death of a dog if it isn't."

"Well, we can't refuse to believe it, and we don't. But if there were some proofs----"

"Proofs! Did I bring back my lariat?"

"No."

"Did I bring back my horse?"

"No."

"Did you ever see the bull again?"

"No."

"Well, then, what more do you want? I never saw anybody as particular as you are about a little thing like that."

I made up my mind that if this man was not a liar he only missed it by the skin of his teeth.

Mark Twain - "1601" or Conversation As It Was at the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors (1876).

 (With thanks to www.horntip.com)

Mark Twain's "1601"

or Conversation As It Was at the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors (1876)

(My personal apologies extended to those with a weak spirit. It's about to be jolted.)

The following is supposed to be an extract from the diary of the Pepys of that day, the same being cup-bearer to Queen Elizabeth. It is supposed that he is of ancient and noble lineage; that he despises those canaille; that his soul consumes with wrath to see the Queen stooping to talk to such; and that the old man feels his nobility defiled by contact with Shakespeare, etc., and yet he has got to stay there till Her Majesty chooses to dismiss him.

 ---------------------------

YESTERNIGHT TOOK Her Majestie, ye Queen, a fantasie such as she sometimes hath, and hadde to her closet certain that do write playes, bookes, and such like -- these being by Lord Bacon, his worship, Sir Walter Raleigh, Mr. Ben Jonson, and ye childe Francis Beaumont, which being but sixteen hath yet turned his hande to ye doing of ye Latin masters into our English tongue with great discretion and much applause.

Also came with those ye famous Shaxpur. A right strange mingling of mightie blood with meane, ye more in especial since ye Queene's Grace was present, as likewise these following to wit: Ye Duchesse of Bilgewater, twenty-two years of age; ye Countess of Granby, thirty-six; her tower, ye Lady Helen; as also yet two maides of honor to wit: Ye Lady Margery Bothby, sixty-five; ye Lady Alice Dilbur, turned seventy, she being two years ye Queene's Graces elder.

  I, being Her Majestie's cup-bearer, had no choice but to remain and behold rank forgot, and ye high hold converse with ye low as upon equal termes, & a great scandal did ye world heare thereof. In ye heate of ye talke, it befel that one did breake wynde, yielding an exceeding mightie and distressful stinke, whereat all did laffe full sore, and then:

 Ye Queene: Verily, in mine eight and sixty years have I not hearde ye fellow to this fartte. Meseemth by ye greate sound and clamour of it, it was male, yet ye bellie it did lurke behind should now falle lene and flat against ye spine of him that hath been delivered of so stately & so vaste a bulke, whereas ye guts of them that doe quiff-splitters beare, stand comely, stille and rounde. Prithee, let ye author confess ye offspring. Will my Lady Alice testify?

  

Lady Alice: Goode, your Grace, an' I hadde roome for such a thundergust within mine ancient bowels, 'tis not in reason I could discharge the same and live to thank God for that he did chuse handmayd so humble to show his power. Nay, 'tis not I that have brought forth this rych o'ermastering fog, this fragrant gloom, so pray seek ye further.

 Ye Queene: Mayhap ye Lady Margery hath done ye companie this favour?

 Lady Margery: So please you, Madame, my limbs are feeble with ye weighte and drouthe of five and sixty winters, and it behooveth that I be tender with them. In ye good providence of Good, an' hadde I contained this wonder forsooth would I have given ye whole evening of my sinking life to ye dribbling of it forthe with trembling and uneasy soul, not launched it sudden in its matchless might, taking my own life with violence, rending my weake frame like rotten rags. It was not I, Your Majestie.

  

Ye Queene: In God's name who hath favoured us? Hath it come to pass that a fartte shall fartte itself? Not such a one as this I trow. Young Master Beaumont? But no, 'twould have wafted him to Heaven like down of goose's bodie. "Twas not ye little Lady Helen, -- nay, ne'er blush, my childe, thou'lt tickle thy tender maiden-hedde with many a mousie squeak before thou learn'st to blow a hurricant. Wasn't you, my learned and ingenius Jonson?

 Jonson: So felle a blaste hath ne'er mine ears saluted, nor yet a stenche so all-pervading and immortal. 'Twas not a novice did it, good Your Majestie, but one of veteran experience -- else had he failed of confidence. In sooth it was not I.

  

Ye Queene: My Lord Bacon?

 Lord Bacon: Not from my lene entrailes hath this prodigie burst forth, so please Your Grace. Nau't doth so befit ye greate as greate performance; and haply shall ye find that 'tis not form mediocrity this miracle hath issued. Tho ye subject bee but a fartte, yet will this tedious sink of learning ponderously philosphize. Meantime did ye foul and deadly sinke pervade all places to that degree, that never smelt I ye like, yet dared I not leave ye Presence, albeit I was like to suffocate.

  

Ye Queene: What saith your worshipful Master Shaxpur?

  

Shaxpur: In ye greate hande of God, I stande and so proclaim my innocence. Tho' ye sinlesse hostess of Heaven hadde fortold ye coming of this most desolating breathe, proclaiming it a worke of uninspired man; its quaking thunders, its firmament-clogging rottenness his own achievement in due course of nature, yet hadde I not believed it; but hadde said, "ye Pit itself hath furnished forth ye stinke and Heaven's artillery hath shook ye globe in admiration of it."

  

Then there was a silence, and each did turne him toward ye worshipful Sir Walter Raleigh, that browned, embattled, bloudy swashbucker, who rousing up did smile and simpering say:

  

 Most gracious Majestie, 'Twas I that did it; but, indeed, it was so poor and fragile a note comparied with such as I am wont to furnish, that in sooth I was ashamed to call ye weakling mine in so august a Presence. It was nothing -- less than nothing -- Madame. I did it but to clear my nether throat; but hadde I come prepared then hadde I delivered something worthie. Beare with me, please your Grace, till I can make amends.

 Then delivered he himself of such a god-lesse and rock-shivering blaste, that all were fain to stop their ears, and following it did come so dense and foul a stinke, that that which went before did seem a poor and trifling thing beside it. Then saith he, feigning that he blushed and was confused, 'I perceive that I am weake today and cannot justice doe unto my powers,' and sat him down as who should say, -- There, it is not much, yet he that hath an arse to spare, let him follow that, an' he think he can. By God, and I were ye Queene, I would e'en tip this swaggering bragggart out o' ye court, and let him air his grandeurs and breake his intolerable wynd before ye deaf and such as suffocation pleaseth.

 Then fell they to talk about ye manners and customs of many peoples, and master Shaxpur spake of ye booke of Sir Michael Montaine, wherein was mention of ye custom of widows of Perigord, to wear upon ye headdress, in sign of widowhood, a jewel in ye similitude of a man's member wilted and limber, whereat ye Queened did laffe and say, widows in England do wear prickers too, but 'twixt ye thyghs and not wilted either, till coition hath done that office for them.

 Master Shaxpur did also observe that the Sieur de Montaine hath also spoken of a certain emperor of such mightie prowess that he did take ten maiden-heddes in ye compass of a single night, and while his empress did entertain two and twenty lusty knights atween her sheets and yet was not satisfied; whereat ye merrie Countess Granby saith, a ram is yet ye Emperor's superior, since he will top above a hundred ewes 'twixt sun and sun, and after, if he can have none more to shag, will masturbate until he hath enryched whole acres with hys seed.

Then spake ye dammed wynd-mill, Sir Walter, of a people in ye uttermost parts of America, that copulate not until they be five and thirty yeares of age, ye women being eight and twenty, and do it then but once in seven yeares.

 Ye Queene: How doth that like my little Lady Helen? Shall we send thee thither and preserve thy belly? 

 Lady Helen: Please your Highness' Grace, mine olde nurse hath told me there bee more ways of serve God than by locking the thyghs together; yet I am ready to serve him in that way too, since your Highness' Grace hath set ye example.

 Ye Queene: God's woundes, a good answer, childe.

 Lady Alice: Mayhap 'twill weaken when ye hair sprouts below ye naval.

  

Lady Helen: Nay, it sprouted two years since; I can scurce more than cover it with my hand now.

 Ye Queene: Heare ye that, my little Beaumont? Have you not a small birdie about ye that stirs at hearing of so sweet a neste?

  

Beaumont: 'Tis not insensible, moste illustrious Madame; but mousing owls and bats of low degree may not aspire to bliss so overwhelming and ecstatic as is found in the downy nestes of birdes of Paradise.

 Ye Queene: By ye gullet of God, 'tis a neet turned compliment. With such a tongue as thyne, lad, thou'lt spread the ivorie thyghs of many a willing maide in thy goode time, an' thy cod-piece be as handy as thy speach.

 Then spake ye Queene of how she met old Rabelais when she was turned of fifteen, & hee did tell her of a man his father knew that hadd a couple pair of bollocks, whereon a controversy followed as concerning ye most just way to spell ye word, ye controversy running high 'twixt ye learned Bacon and ye ingenious JOnson, until at last ye olde Lady Margery, wearing of it, saith,

 GENTLES, WHAT MATTERETH IT HOW YE SPELL YE WORD?I WARRANT YE WHEN YE USE YOUR BOLLOCKS YE SHALL NOT THINK OF IT; AND MY LADY GRANBY, BEE YE CONTENT, LET YE SPELLING BE; YE SHALL ENJOY YE BEATING OF THEM ON YOUR BUTTOCKS JUST YE SAME I TROW. BEFORE I HAD GAINED MY FOURTEENTH YEARE, I HADDE LEARNED THAT THEM THAT WOULD EXPLORE A CUNT, STOPP'D NOT TO CONSIDER YE SPELLING O'T.

  

Sir Walter: In sooth, when a shift's turned uppe, delay is meete for naught but dalliance. Bocaccio hath a story of a priest that did beguile a mayd into his cell, then knelt him in a corner to pray for grace that he bee rightly thankful for this tender maiden-hedde the Lorde hadd sent him, but the abbot spying through ye keyhole did see a tuft of brownish hair with fair white flesh about it, wherefore, when ye priest's prayer was done his chance was gone, forasmuch as ye little mayd hadde but ye one cunt and that was already occupide to her content.

 Then conversed they of religion and mightie worke ye olde deade Luther did doe by ye grace of God. Then next about poetry, and Master Shaxpur did read a part of his Kyng Henrie IV, the which it seemeth to mee is not of the value of an arseful of ashes, yet they prised it bravely, one and all.

  

The same did rede a portion of his Venus & Adonis to their prodigious admiration, whereas, I being sleepy and fatigured withal, did deem it but paltry stuffe & was ye more discomfitted in that ye bloudy buccaneer hadde got wynd again and did turn his minde to fartting with such villain zeil that presently I was like to choke once more. God damn this wyndy ruffian and all his breeds. I would that helle might get hym.

  

They talked about the wonderful defence which olde Nicholas Throgmorton did make for himself before ye judges in ye time of Mary, which was unlucky matter for to broach, since it fetched out ye Queene with a pity that he, having so much wit, had yet not enough to save his daugher's maiden-hedde sound for her marriage bedde, and ye Queene did give ye damned Sir Walter a look that made him wince -- for she hath not forgot that he was her own love in ye olden days.

There was a silent uncomfortableness now, 'twas not a goode turne for talke to take, since if ye Queen must find offense in a little harmless debauching, when pricks were stiff and cunts not loath to take the stiffness out of them, who of the companie was sinless.

Beholde, was not ye wife of Master Shaxpur four months gone with childe when she stoode uppe before ye altar? Was not her grace of Bilgewater rogered by four lords before she hadde a husband? Was not little Lady Helen borne on her mother's wedding day? And beholde, were not ye Lady Alice and; Lady Margery there, mouthing religion, whores from the cradle? In time came they to discourse of Cervantes & of ye new painter Rubens, that is beginning to be heard of. Fine words and dainty wrought phrases from ye ladies now, one or two of them beeing, in other days, pupils of that poore ass, Lillie, himselfe: I marked how that Jonson & Shaxpur did fidget to discharge some venom of sarcasm, yet dared they not in ye presence, ye Queene's grace beeing ye very flower in ye that, having a specialtie and admiring it in themselves, bee jealous when a neighbor doth essay it nor can abide it in them long.  Wherefore it was observed that ye Queene waxed uncontent; & in time a labourd grandiose speeche out of ye mouth of Lady Alice, who manifestly did mightylie pride herself thereon, did quite exhaust ye Queene's endurance, who listened till ye gaudy speeche was doen, then lifting up her brows and with a vast irony, mincing, said, "O SHIT!" Whereat they all did laffe, but not ye Lady Alice, that olde foole bitche.

Now was Sir Walter minded of a tale he once did heare ye ingenious Margaret of Navarre relate about a mayd, which being like to suffer rape by an olde arch-bishop, did smartly contrive a device to save her maidenhedde, and said to him: "first, my Lord, prithee take out thy toole and pisse before me," which doing, Lo! his member fell & would not rise again.

Mark Twain: "Jim Wolf and the Wasps"

One of Mark Twain's favorite topics was misbehavior--and its rewards.  Obviously, the legacies of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn bear this out as they are two of the most widely-read books in English and literature courses and class!  What makes Twain so honest in his writing is the concept of realism:  he is direct in his approach and style, showing the reader what it was like to be viewing (or experiencing) the situation at hand.  What Twain was really displaying in stories like this are the cause-and-effect balance of choice:  we get what we ask for, even though the consequences may not be what we desired! 

Twain was also trying to say that humanity talks a great deal about virtue and sincerity, then goes out and praises those who do deeds that are not of merit.  This dual standard of morals and scruples is one of Twain's strongest views:  he truly deplored the dishonest ways of Mankind and the ways that we treat each other.  This, however, does not excuse him personally from the mischief he created!  In this short story, we see how he treated a young man who was a guest at the Clemens home:  Jim Wolf, a farm boy who was not the brightest lad in the county, but certainly one of the most patient ones (for enduring young Sam's jokes).

One final point:  no, Twain's punctuation is not correct; there are places where a comma should go.  But I'm not going to fix that; for one, it's not my story, and two, he's a far better known writer than I am. 

So, for your composition choice, should young Sam be repentent for what he did to Jim? Why doesn't he regret his decision, even years later? (Why is it so funny, and how does it show in his story?) 

"Jim Wolf and the Wasps"

Mark Twain’s brother Henry was not the only boy on whom he played tricks during his youth.  He also enjoyed tormenting a simple-hearted (and-minded) country boy named Jim Wolf who lived with the Clemens family.  As was custom during those times, in order to save space in the house, young children would often share a room and bed—hence the opportunity that Twain found to harass Jim.

 
One afternoon I found the upper part of the window in Jim’s bedroom thickly cushioned with wasps.  Jim always slept on the side of his bed that was against the window.  I had what seemed to me a happy inspiration:  I turned back the bedclothes and at cost of one or two stings, brushed the wasps down and collected a few hundred of them on the sheet on that side of the bed, then turned down the covers over them and made prisoners of them.  I made a deep crease down the center of the bed to protect the front side from invasion by them, and then at night I offered to sleep with Jim.  He was willing.

I made it a point to be in bed first to see if my side of it was still a safe place to rest in.  It was.  None of the wasps had passed the frontier.  As soon as Jim was ready for bed I blew out the candle and let him climb in the dark.  He was talking as usual but I couldn’t answer, because by anticipation I was suffocating with laughter, and although I gagged myself with a hatful of the sheet I was on the point of exploding all the time.  Jim stretched himself out comfortably, still pleasantly chatting; then his talk began to break and become disjointed; separations intervened between his words and each separation was emphasized by a more or less sudden and violent twitch of his body, and I knew that the immigrants were getting in their work.  I knew I ought to evince some sympathy, and ask what was the matter, but I couldn’t do it because I should laugh if I tried.  Presently he stopped talking altogether—that is on the subject which he had been pursuing—and he said, “There is something in this bed.”

I knew it but held my peace.

He said, “There’s thousands of them.”

Then he said he was going to find out what it was.  He reached down and began to explore.  The wasps resented this intrusion and began to stab him all over and everywhere.  The he said he had captured one of them and asked me to strike a light.  I did it, and when he climbed out of bed his shirt was black with half-crushed wasps dangling by one hind leg, and in his two hands he held a dozen prisoners that were stinging and stabbing him with energy, but his grit was good and he held them fast. By the light of the candle he identified them and said, “Wasps!”

It was his last remark for the night.  He added nothing to it.  In silence he uncovered his side of the bed and, dozen by dozen, he removed the wasps to the floor and beat them to a pulp with the bootjack, with earnest and vindictive satisfaction, while I shook the bed with mute laughter—laughter which was not all a pleasure to me, for I had the sense that his silence was ominous.  The work of extermination being finally completed, he blew out the light and returned to bed and seemed to compose himself to sleep—in fact he did lie stiller than anybody else could have done in the circumstances.

I remained awake as long as I could and did what I could to keep my laughter from shaking the bed and provoking suspicion, but even my fears could not keep me awake forever and I finally fell asleep and presently woke again—under persuasion of circumstances.  Jim was kneeling on my chest and pounding me in the face with both fists.  It hurt—but he was knocking all the restraints of my laughter loose; I could not contain it any longer and I laughed until all my body was exhausted, and my face, as I believed, battered to a pulp.

Jim never afterward referred to that episode, and I had better judgment than to do it myself, for he was a third longer than I was, although not any wider.

I played many practical jokes upon him but they were all cruel and all barren of wit.  Any brainless swindler could have invented them.  When a person of mature age perpetrates a practical joke it is fair evidence, I think, that he is weak in the head and hasn’t enough heart to signify.

Mark Twain: "Not Wasting a Watermelon"

By thunder, I admire this man, for he is my favorite author of all time.  There's no mistaking that face:  it is the master of Mankind's foils, the esteemed Samuel Langhorne Clemens, more fondly known as Mark Twain.  I honor him for his ability to tell stories and show the true nature of humanity: with forked tail, pitchfork, and all the trimmings of our deceptive capabilities.   We shall indeed see more of him on this blog soon enough.

This is one of my favorite Twain stories.  In it, he describes his rambunctious youthful nature as well as the opposite:  his brother Henry, who was the role model for "Sid" in Tom Sawyer.  As a writing sample, consider this as the main theme in your essay response: How did Twain show irony and exaggeration in this story (with examples, please). How did he use it effectively?  How does it lend to the story (in its entire summation and also the conclusion)?  

“Not Wasting a Watermelon”

When Mark Twain was a boy, he worked in a newspaper office in Hannibal, Missouri.  Residents of the town still point to the window where the incident described below took place.
 
It was during my first year’s apprenticeship in the Courier office that I did a thing which I have been trying to regret for fifty-five years.  It was a summer afternoon and just the kind of weather that a boy prizes for river excursions and other frolics, but I was a prisoner.  The others were all gone holidaying.  I was alone and sad.  I had committed a crime of some sort and this was the punishment.  I must lose my holiday, and spend the afternoon in solitude besides.  I had the printing office all to myself, there in the third story.  I had one comfort, and it was a generous one while it lasted.  It was the half of a long and broad watermelon, fresh and red and ripe.

I gouged it out with a knife, and I found accommodation for the whole of it in my person—though it did crowd me until the juice ran out of my ears.  There remained then the shell, the hollow shell.  It was big enough to do duty as a cradle.  I didn’t want to waste it, and I couldn’t think of anything to do with it which could afford entertainment.  I was sitting at the open window which looked out upon the sidewalk of the main street three stories below, when it occurred to me to drop it on someone’s head.

I doubted the judiciousness of this, and I had some compunctions about it, too, because so much of the resulting entertainment would fall to my share and so little to the other person.  But I thought I would chance it.  I watched out of the window for the right person to come along—the safe person—but he didn’t come.  Every time there was a candidate he or she turned out to be an unsafe one, and I had to restrain myself.

But at last I saw the right one coming.  It was my brother Henry.  He was the best boy in the whole region.  He never did harm to anybody, he never offended anybody.  He was exasperatingly good.  He had an overflowing abundance of goodness—but not enough to save him this time.
 
I watched his approach with eager interest.  He came strolling along, dreaming his pleasant summer dream and not doubting that Providence had in His care.  If he had known where I was he would have less confidence in that superstition.  As he approached his form became more and more foreshortened.  When he was almost under me he was so foreshortened that nothing of him was visible from my high place except the end of his nose and his alternately approaching feet.  Then I poised the watermelon, calculated my distance, and let it go, hollow side down.

The accuracy of that gunnery was beyond admiration.  He had about six steps to make when I let that canoe go, and it was lovely to see those two bodies gradually closing in on each other.  If he had seven steps to make, or five steps to make, my gunnery would have been a failure.  But he had exactly the right number to make, and that shell smashed down right on the top of his head and drove him into the earth up to the chin, the chunks of that broken melon flying in every direction like a spray.

I wanted to go down there and condole with him, but it would not have been safe.  He would have suspected me at once.  I expected him to suspect me, anyway, but as he said nothing about this adventure for two or three days—I was watching him in the meanwhile in order to keep out of danger—I was deceived into believing that this time he didn’t suspect me. 

It was a mistake.  He was only waiting for a sure opportunity.  Then he landed a cobblestone on the side of my head which raised a bump there so large that I had to wear two hats for a time.  I carried this crime to my mother, for I was always anxious to get Henry into trouble with her and could never succeed.  I thought that I had a sure case this time when she should come to see that murderous bump.  I showed it to her, but she said it was no matter.  She didn’t need to inquire into the circumstances.  She knew I had deserved it, and the best way would be for me to accept it as a valuable lesson, and thereby get profit out of it.