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

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 move 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.

***

POST-MORTEM POETRY [1]

 

In Philadelphia they have a custom which it would be pleasant

to see adopted throughout the land. It is that of appending to

published death-notices a little verse or two of comforting poetry.

Any one 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 solacing poesy 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 inst., Clara, the daughter of Ephraim

and Laura Hawks, aged 21 months and 2 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 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:

 

Becket.—On Sunday morning, 19th inst., John P., infant son

of George and Julia Becket, aged 1 year, 6 months, and 15 days.

 

That merry shout no more I hear,

 

No laughing child I see,

 

No little arms are round 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 Johnnie 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 expression.

 

In the same journal, of the same date, I find the following

(surname suppressed, as before):

 

Wagner.—On the 10th inst., Ferguson G., the son of William

L. and Martha Theresa Wagner, aged 4 weeks and 1 day.

 

That merry shout no more I hear,

 

No laughing child I see,

 

No little arms are round 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 essentially 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 Johnnie, the depression and 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 5th inst., Mary C. Welch, wife of William B. Welch,

and daughter of Catharine and George W. Markland, in the 29th year

of her age.

 

A mother dear, a mother kind,

 

Has gone and left us all behind.

 

Cease 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, etc., 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 inst., Mary E., daughter of John

and Sarah F. Ball.

 

‘Tis sweet to rest in lively hope

 

That when my change shall come

 

Angels will hover round my bed,

 

To waft my spirit home.

 

The following is apparently the customary form for heads of families:

 

Burns.—On the 20th inst., Michael Burns, aged 40 years.

 

Dearest father, thou hast left us,

 

Hear thy loss we deeply feel;

 

But ‘tis God that has bereft us,

 

He can all our sorrows heal.

 

Funeral at 2 o’clock sharp.

 

There is 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 inst., of consumption, Philip Bromley,

in the 50th year of his age.

 

Affliction sore 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 to part;

 

An anxious care now sinks the thorn

 

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:

 

Doble.—On the 4th inst., Samuel Pervil Worthington Doble,

aged 4 days.

 

Our little Sammy’s gone,

 

His tiny spirit’s fled;

 

Our little boy we loved 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

Rev. T. K. Beecher was asked to preach the funeral sermon—

a man who abhors the lauding of people, either dead or alive,

except in dignified and simple language, and then only for merits

which they actually possessed or possess, 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 fervid 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 “hog-wash,” 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—for 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:

 

(Published by Request

 

LINES

 

Composed on the death of Samuel and Catharine Belknap’s children

 

by M. A. Glaze

 

Friends and neighbors all draw near,

 

And listen to what I have to say;

 

And never leave your children dear

 

When they are small, and go away.

 

But always think of that sad fate,

 

That happened in year of ‘63;

 

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 them reach,

 

Their little spirits had flown to heaven.

 

Their father he to war had gone,

 

And on the battle-field 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 some one to stay,

 

And