The $30,000 Bequest - Mark Twain (ebooks that read to you .txt) 📗

me. We met several times.

They proposed an indestructible memorial, to cost twenty-five

thousand dollars. The insane oddity of a monument set up in a village

to preserve a name that would outlast the hills and the rocks without

any such help, would advertise Elmira to the ends of the earth—

and draw custom. It would be the only monument on the planet

to Adam, and in the matter of interest and impressiveness could

never have a rival until somebody should set up a monument to the

Milky Way.

 

People would come from every corner of the globe and stop off

to look at it, no tour of the world would be complete that left out

Adam’s monument. Elmira would be a Mecca; there would be pilgrim

ships at pilgrim rates, pilgrim specials on the continent’s railways;

libraries would be written about the monument, every tourist would

kodak it, models of it would be for sale everywhere in the earth,

its form would become as familiar as the figure of Napoleon.

 

One of the bankers subscribed five thousand dollars, and I think

the other one subscribed half as much, but I do not remember with

certainty now whether that was the figure or not. We got designs made—

some of them came from Paris.

 

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. It seemed

to me that this petition ought to be presented, now—it would be

widely and feelingly abused and ridiculed and cursed, and would

advertise our scheme and make our ground-floor stock go off briskly.

So I sent it to General Joseph R. Hawley, who was then in the House,

and he said he would present it. But he did not do it. I think

he explained that when he came to read it he was afraid of it:

it was too serious, to gushy, too sentimental—the House might take it

for earnest.

 

We ought to have carried out our monument scheme; we could

have managed it without any great difficulty, and Elmira would

now be the most celebrated town in the universe.

 

Very recently I began to build a book in which one of the minor

characters touches incidentally upon a project for a monument to Adam,

and now the TRIBUNE has come upon a trace of the forgotten jest of

thirty years ago. Apparently mental telegraphy is still in business.

It is odd; but the freaks of mental telegraphy are usually odd.

***

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.—

Editor.]

 

TO THE EDITOR OF HARPER’S WEEKLY:

 

Dear Sir and Kinsman,—Let us have done with this frivolous talk.

The American Board accepts contributions from me every year:

then why shouldn’t it from Mr. Rockefeller? In all the ages,

three-fourths of the support of the great charities has been

conscience-money, as my books will show: then what becomes of

the sting when that term is applied to Mr. Rockefeller’s gift?

The American Board’s trade is financed mainly from the graveyards.

Bequests, you understand. Conscience-money. Confession of an old

crime and deliberate perpetration of a new one; for deceased’s

contribution is a robbery of his heirs. Shall the Board decline

bequests because they stand for one of these offenses every time and

generally for both?

 

Allow me to continue. The charge must persistently and resentfully

and remorselessly dwelt upon is that Mr. Rockefeller’s contribution is

incurably tainted by perjury—perjury proved against him in the courts.

IT MAKES US SMILE—down in my place! Because there isn’t a rich

man in your vast city who doesn’t perjure himself every year before

the tax board. They are all caked with perjury, many layers thick.

Iron-clad, so to speak. If there is one that isn’t, I desire

to acquire him for my museum, and will pay Dinosaur rates.

Will you say it isn’t infraction of the law, but only annual evasion

of it? Comfort yourselves with that nice distinction if you like—

FOR THE PRESENT. But by and by, when you arrive, I will show you

something interesting: a whole hell-full of evaders! Sometimes a

frank law-breaker turns up elsewhere, but I get those others every time.

 

To return to my muttons. I wish you to remember that my rich

perjurers are contributing to the American Board with frequency:

it is money filched from the sworn-off personal tax; therefore it

is the wages of sin; therefore it is my money; therefore it is I

that contribute it; and, finally, it is therefore as I have said:

since the Board daily accepts contributions from me, why should it

decline them from Mr. Rockefeller, who is as good as I am, let the

courts say what they may?

 

Satan.

***

INTRODUCTION TO “THE NEW GUIDE OF THE CONVERSATION IN

 

PORTUGUESE AND ENGLISH”

 

by Pedro Carolino

 

In this world of uncertainties, there is, at any rate, one thing

which may be pretty confidently set down as a certainty: and that is,

that this celebrated little phrase-book will never die while the

English language lasts. Its delicious unconscious ridiculousness,

and its enchanting na:ivet’e, as are supreme and unapproachable,

in their way, as are Shakespeare’s sublimities. Whatsoever is

perfect in its kind, in literature, is imperishable: nobody can

imitate it successfully, nobody can hope to produce its fellow;

it is perfect, it must and will stand alone: its immortality

is secure.

 

It is one of the smallest books in the world, but few big books have

received such wide attention, and been so much pondered by the grave

and learned, and so much discussed and written about by the thoughtful,

the thoughtless, the wise, and the foolish. Long notices of it

have appeared, from time to time, in the great English reviews,

and in erudite and authoritative philological periodicals; and it

has been laughed at, danced upon, and tossed in a blanket by nearly

every newspaper and magazine in the English-speaking world.

Every scribbler, almost, has had his little fling at it, at one time

or another; I had mine fifteen years ago. The book gets out of print,

every now and then, and one ceases to hear of it for a season;

but presently the nations and near and far colonies of our tongue

and lineage call for it once more, and once more it issues from some

London or Continental or American press, and runs a new course around

the globe, wafted on its way by the wind of a world’s laughter.

 

Many persons have believed that this book’s miraculous stupidities

were studied and disingenuous; but no one can read the volume

carefully through and keep that opinion. It was written in

serious good faith and deep earnestness, by an honest and upright

idiot who believed he knew something of the English language,

and could impart his knowledge to others. The amplest proof

of this crops out somewhere or other upon each and every page.

There are sentences in the book which could have been manufactured

by a man in his right mind, and with an intelligent and deliberate

purposes to seem innocently ignorant; but there are other sentences,

and paragraphs, which no mere pretended ignorance could ever achieve—

nor yet even the most genuine and comprehensive ignorance,

when unbacked by inspiration.

 

It is not a fraud who speaks in the following paragraph of the

author’s Preface, but a good man, an honest man, a man whose conscience

is at rest, a man who believes he has done a high and worthy work for

his nation and his generation, and is well pleased with his performance:

 

We expect then, who the little book (for the care what we wrote him,

and for her typographical correction) that may be worth the

acceptation of the studious persons, and especially of the Youth,

at which we dedicate him particularly.

 

One cannot open this book anywhere and not find richness.

To prove that this is true, I will open it at random and copy

the page I happen to stumble upon. Here is the result:

 

DIALOGUE 16

 

For To See the Town

 

Anothony, go to accompany they gentilsmen, do they see the town.

 

We won’t to see all that is it remarquable here.

 

Come with me, if you please. I shall not folget nothing what can

to merit your attention. Here we are near to cathedral; will you

come in there?

 

We will first to see him in oudside, after we shall go in there

for to look the interior.

 

Admire this master piece gothic architecture’s.

 

The chasing of all they figures is astonishing’ indeed.

 

The cupola and the nave are not less curious to see.

 

What is this palace how I see yonder?

 

It is the town hall.

 

And this tower here at this side?

 

It is the Observatory.

 

The bridge is very fine, it have ten arches, and is constructed

of free stone.

 

The streets are very layed out by line and too paved.

 

What is the circuit of this town?

 

Two leagues.

 

There is it also hospitals here?

 

It not fail them.

 

What are then the edifices the worthest to have seen?

 

It is the arsnehal, the spectacle’s hall, the Cusiomhouse,

and the Purse.

 

We are going too see the others monuments such that the public

pawnbroker’s office, the plants garden’s, the money office’s,

the library.

 

That it shall be for another day; we are tired.

 

DIALOGUE 17

 

To Inform One’self of a Person

 

How is that gentilman who you did speak by and by?

 

Is a German.

 

I did think him Englishman.

 

He is of the Saxony side.

 

He speak the french very well.

 

Tough he is German, he speak so much well italyan, french, spanish

and english, that among the Italyans, they believe him Italyan,

he speak the frenche as the Frenches himselves. The Spanishesmen

believe him Spanishing, and the Englishes, Englishman. It is

difficult to enjoy well so much several languages.

 

The last remark contains a general truth; but it ceases to be a truth

when one contracts it and apples it to an individual—provided that

that individual is the author of this book, Sehnor Pedro Carolino.

I am sure I should not find it difficult “to enjoy well so much

several languages”—or even a thousand of them—if he did the

translating for me from the originals into his ostensible English.

***

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.

 

If you have nothing but a rag-doll stuffed with sawdust, while one

of your more fortunate little playmates has a costly China one,

you should treat her with a show of kindness nevertheless.

And you ought not to attempt to make a forcible swap with her unless

your conscience would justify you in it, and you know you are able

to do it.

 

You ought never to take your little brother’s “chewing-gum” away

from him by main force; it is better to rope him in with the promise

of the first two dollars and a half you find floating down the

river on a grindstone. In the artless simplicity natural to this

time of life, he will regard