“No.”
“How did you know it was a shirt he was after?”
“I could see it in his eyes.”
We inquired around, but could hear of no Bermudian spider capable of
doing these things. Citizens said that their largest spiders could not
more than spread their legs over an ordinary saucer, and that they had
always been considered honest. Here was testimony of a clergyman against
the testimony of mere worldlings—interested ones, too. On the whole, I
judged it best to lock up my things.
Here and there on the country roads we found lemon, papaw, orange, lime,
and fig-trees; also several sorts of palms, among them the cocoa, the
date, and the palmetto. We saw some bamboos forty feet high, with stems
as thick as a man’s arm. Jungles of the mangrove-tree stood up out of
swamps, propped on their interlacing roots, as upon a tangle of stilts.
In dryer places the noble tamarind sent down its grateful cloud of
shade. Here and there the blossomy tamarisk adorned the roadside. There
was a curious gnarled and twisted black tree, without a single leaf on
it. It might have passed itself off for a dead apple tree but for the
fact that it had a star-like, red-hot flower sprinkled sparsely over its
person. It had the scattery red glow that a constellation might have
when glimpsed through smoked glass....
We saw a tree that bears grapes, and just as calmly and unostentatiously
as a vine would do it. We saw an india-rubber-tree, but out of season,
possibly, so there were no shoes on it, nor suspenders, nor anything
that a person would properly expect to find there. This gave it an
impressively fraudulent look. There was exactly one mahogany tree on the
island. I know this to be reliable, because I saw a man who said he had
counted it many a time and could not be mistaken. He was a man with a
harelip and a pure heart, and everybody said he was as true as steel.
Such men are all too few.
_FROM_ “PUDD’NHEAD WILSON’S CALENDAR” (1892–3)
Tell the truth or trump—but get the trick.
Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for
the apple’s sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The
mistake was in not forbidding the serpent. Then he would have eaten the
serpent.
Whosoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep
a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our
race. He brought death into the world.
Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one was, that they
escaped teething.
There is this trouble about special providences—namely, there is so
often a doubt as to which party was intended to be the beneficiary. In
the case of the children, the bears, and the prophet, the bears got more
real satisfaction out of the episode than the prophet did, because they
got the children.
Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower
is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
Remarks of Dr. Baldwin’s, concerning upstarts: We don’t care to eat
toadstools that think they are truffles.
Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker
will be sorry.
Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but
coaxed down-stairs a step at a time.
One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a
cat has only nine lives.
The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and
enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not
asked to lend money.
Consider well the proportions of things. It is better to be a young
junebug than an old bird of paradise.
Why is it that we rejoice at birth and grieve at a funeral? It is
because we are not the person involved.
It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition. There was once a
man who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal,
complained that there were too many prehistoric toads in it.
All say, “How hard it is that we have to die”—a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.
There are three infallible ways of pleasing an author, and the three
form a rising scale of compliment: 1, to tell him you have read one of
his books; 2, to tell him you have read all of his books; 3, to ask him
to let you read the manuscript of his forthcoming book. No. 1 admits you
to his respect; No. 2 admits you to his admiration; No. 3 carries you
clear into his heart.
As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.
Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is
brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word. Consider the
flea!—incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance
of fear were courage. Whether you are asleep or awake he will attack
you, caring nothing for the fact that in bulk and strength you are to
him as are the massed armies of the earth to a sucking child; he lives
both day and night and all days and nights in the very lap of peril and
the immediate presence of death, and yet is no more afraid than is the
man who walks the streets of a city that was threatened by an earthquake
ten centuries before. When we speak of Clive, Nelson and Putman as men
who “didn’t know what fear was,” we ought always to add the flea—and put
him at the head of the procession.
When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know have
gone to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life.
October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in
stocks in. The others are July, January, September, April, November,
May, March, June, December, August, and February.
The true Southern watermelon is a boon apart, and not to be mentioned
with commoner things. It is chief of this world’s luxuries, king by the
grace of God over all the fruits of the earth. When one has tasted it,
he knows what the angels eat. It was not a southern watermelon that Eve
took: we know it because she repented.
Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.
Behold, the fool saith, “Put not all thine eggs in the one basket”—which
is but a manner of saying, “Scatter your money and your attention”; but
the wise man saith, “Put all your eggs in the one basket and—_watch that
basket_.”
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite
you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
We know all about the habits of the ant, we know all about the habits of
the bee, but we know nothing at all about the habits of the oyster. It
seems almost certain that we have been choosing the wrong time for
studying the oyster.
Even popularity can be overdone. In Rome, along at first, you are full
of regrets that Michelangelo died; but by and by you only regret that
you didn’t see him do it.
_July 4._ Statistics show that we lose more fools on this day than on
all the other days of the year put together. This proves, by the number
left in stock, that one Fourth of July per year is now inadequate, the
country has grown so.
Thanksgiving Day. Let all give humble, hearty, and sincere thanks, now,
but the turkeys. In the island of Fiji they do not use turkeys; they use
plumbers. It does not become you and me to sneer at Fiji.
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good
example.
It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of
opinion that makes horse races.
Even the clearest and most perfect circumstantial evidence is likely to
be at fault, after all, and therefore ought to be received with great
caution. Take the case of any pencil, sharpened by any woman: if you
have witnesses, you will find she did it with a knife; but if you take
simply the aspect of the pencil, you will say she did it with her teeth.
_April 1._ This the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the
other three hundred and sixty-four.
It is often the case that the man who can’t tell a lie thinks he is the
best judge of one.
October 12, the _Discovery_. It was wonderful to find America, but it
would have been more wonderful to miss it.
_FROM_ “THE PRIVATE HISTORY OF A CAMPAIGN THAT FAILED” (1885)