The $30,000 Bequest by Mark Twain (top 5 ebook reader TXT) 📖

founde it, ye sonne

of a ghun!”

 

Yet this ancestor had good and noble instincts, and it is with

pride that we call to mind the fact that he was the first white

person who ever interested himself in the work of elevating

and civilizing our Indians. He built a commodious jail and put

up a gallows, and to his dying day he claimed with satisfaction

that he had had a more restraining and elevating influence on

the Indians than any other reformer that ever labored among them.

At this point the chronicle becomes less frank and chatty,

and closes abruptly by saying that the old voyager went to see

his gallows perform on the first white man ever hanged in America,

and while there received injuries which terminated in his death.

 

The great-grandson of the “Reformer” flourished in sixteen hundred

and something, and was known in our annals as “the old Admiral,”

though in history he had other titles. He was long in command of

fleets of swift vessels, well armed and manned, and did great service

in hurrying up merchantmen. Vessels which he followed and kept

his eagle eye on, always made good fair time across the ocean.

But if a ship still loitered in spite of all he could do,

his indignation would grow till he could contain himself no longer—

and then he would take that ship home where he lived and keep it

there carefully, expecting the owners to come for it, but they never did.

And he would try to get the idleness and sloth out of the sailors

of that ship by compelling them to take invigorating exercise and

a bath. He called it “walking a plank.” All the pupils liked it.

At any rate, they never found any fault with it after trying it.

When the owners were late coming for their ships, the Admiral always

burned them, so that the insurance money should not be lost.

At last this fine old tar was cut down in the fullness of his years

and honors. And to her dying day, his poor heartbroken widow believed

that if he had been cut down fifteen minutes sooner he might have

been resuscitated.

 

Charles Henry Twain lived during the latter part of the seventeenth

century, and was a zealous and distinguished missionary.

He converted sixteen thousand South Sea islanders, and taught them

that a dog-tooth necklace and a pair of spectacles was not enough

clothing to come to divine service in. His poor flock loved

him very, very dearly; and when his funeral was over, they got up

in a body (and came out of the restaurant) with tears in their eyes,

and saying, one to another, that he was a good tender missionary,

and they wished they had some more of him.

 

Pah-go-to-wah-wah-pukketekeewis (Mighty-Hunter-with-a-Hog-Eye-Twain)

adorned the middle of the eighteenth century, and aided General

Braddock with all his heart to resist the oppressor Washington.

It was this ancestor who fired seventeen times at our Washington

from behind a tree. So far the beautiful romantic narrative

in the moral story-books is correct; but when that narrative goes

on to say that at the seventeenth round the awe-stricken savage

said solemnly that that man was being reserved by the Great Spirit

for some mighty mission, and he dared not lift his sacrilegious rifle

against him again, the narrative seriously impairs the integrity

of history. What he did say was:

 

“It ain’t no (hic) no use. ‘At man’s so drunk he can’t stan’

still long enough for a man to hit him. I (hic) I can’t ‘ford

to fool away any more am’nition on him.”

 

That was why he stopped at the seventeenth round, and it was a good,

plain, matter-of-fact reason, too, and one that easily commends itself

to us by the eloquent, persuasive flavor of probability there is about it.

 

I also enjoyed the story-book narrative, but I felt a marring misgiving

that every Indian at Braddock’s Defeat who fired at a soldier

a couple of times (two easily grows to seventeen in a century),

and missed him, jumped to the conclusion that the Great Spirit

was reserving that soldier for some grand mission; and so I somehow

feared that the only reason why Washington’s case is remembered

and the others forgotten is, that in his the prophecy came true,

and in that of the others it didn’t. There are not books enough

on earth to contain the record of the prophecies Indians and other

unauthorized parties have made; but one may carry in his overcoat

pockets the record of all the prophecies that have been fulfilled.

 

I will remark here, in passing, that certain ancestors of mine are

so thoroughly well-known in history by their aliases, that I have

not felt it to be worth while to dwell upon them, or even mention

them in the order of their birth. Among these may be mentioned

Richard Brinsley Twain, alias Guy Fawkes; John Wentworth Twain,

alias Sixteen-String Jack; William Hogarth Twain, alias Jack Sheppard;

Ananias Twain, alias Baron Munchausen; John George Twain,

alias Captain Kydd; and then there are George Francis Twain,

Tom Pepper, Nebuchadnezzar, and Baalam’s Ass—they all belong

to our family, but to a branch of it somewhat distinctly removed

from the honorable direct line—in fact, a collateral branch,

whose members chiefly differ from the ancient stock in that, in order

to acquire the notoriety we have always yearned and hungered for,

they have got into a low way of going to jail instead of getting hanged.

 

It is not well, when writing an autobiography, to follow your ancestry

down too close to your own time—it is safest to speak only vaguely

of your great-grandfather, and then skip from there to yourself,

which I now do.

 

I was born without teeth—and there Richard III. had the advantage

of me; but I was born without a humpback, likewise, and there I

had the advantage of him. My parents were neither very poor nor

conspicuously honest.

 

But now a thought occurs to me. My own history would really seem

so tame contrasted with that of my ancestors, that it is simply wisdom

to leave it unwritten until I am hanged. If some other biographies I

have read had stopped with the ancestry until a like event occurred,

it would have been a felicitous thing for the reading public.

How does it strike you?

***

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 story-tellers 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 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.

 

Artemus 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 Setchell

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 dispossessed 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 bursts 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