Read Online The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain by Mark Twain, Charles Neider - Free Book Online Page B

nose. Ingenious Smith!—gifted Smith!—noble Smith! Author of all our bliss! Hark! Do you know what that wheeze means? Mary, that cub has got the whooping-cough. Will you
never
learn to take care of the children!”
    THE END
    The Capitoline Venus is still in the Capitol at Rome, and is still the most charming and most illustrious work of ancient art the world can boast of. But if ever it shall be your fortune to stand before it and go into the customary ecstasies over it, don’t permit this true and secret history of its origin to mar your bliss—and when you read about a gigantic Petrified Man being dug up near Syracuse, in the State of New York, or near any other place, keep your own counsel—and if the Barnum that buried him there offers to sell to you at an enormous sum, don’t you buy. Send him to the Pope!
    1869
    NOTE : The above sketch was written at the time the famous swindle of the “Petrified Giant” was the sensation of the day in the United States.

JOURNALISM IN TENNESSEE
                                                                                                                                       
    T HE EDITOR of the Memphis
Avalanche
swoops thus mildly down upon a correspondent who posted him as a Radical:—“While he was writing the first word, the middle, dotting his i’s, crossing his t’s, and punching his period, he knew he was concocting a sentence that was saturated with infamy and reeking with falsehoods.”
Exchange
             
    I was told by the physician that a Southern climate would improve my health, and so I went down to Tennessee, and got a berth on the
Morning Glory and Johnson County War-Whoop
as associate editor. When I went on duty I found the chief editor sitting tilted back in a three-legged chair with his feet on a pine table. There was another pine table in the room and another afflicted chair, and both were half buried under newspapers and scraps and sheets of manuscript. There was a wooden box of sand, sprinkled with cigar stubs and “old soldiers,” and a stove with a door hanging by its upper hinge. The chief editor had a long-tailed black cloth frock-coat on, and white linen pants. His boots were small and neatly blacked. He wore a ruffled shirt, a large seal-ring, a standing collar of obsolete pattern, and a checkered neckerchief with the ends hanging down. Date of costume about 1848. He was smoking a cigar, and trying to think of a word, and in pawing his hair he rumpled his locks a good deal. He was scowling fearfully, and I judged that he was concocting a particularly knotty editorial. He told me to take the exchanges and skim through them and write up the “Spirit of the Tennessee Press,” condensing into the article all of their contents that seemed of interest.
    I wrote as follows:

    SPIRIT OF THE TENNESSEE PRESS

    The editors of the
Semi-Weekly Earthquake
evidently labor under a misapprehension with regard to the Ballyhack railroad. It is not the object of the company to leave Buzzardville off to one side. On the contrary, they consider it one of the most important points along the line, and consequently can have no desire to slight it. The gentlemen of the
Earthquake
will, of course, take pleasure in making the correction
.
    John W. Blossom, Esq., the able editor of the Higginsville
Thunderbolt and Battle Cry of Freedom,
arrived in the city yesterday. He is stopping at the Van Buren House.
    We observe that our contemporary of the Mud Springs
Morning Howl
has fallen into the error of supposing that the election of Van Werter is not an established fact, but he will have discovered his mistake before this reminder reaches him, no doubt. He was doubtless misled by incomplete election returns.
    It is pleasant to note that the city of Blathersville is endeavoring to contract with some New York gentlemen to pave its