_There was._--Here's explicitness! Here's directness! Here's
explanatoryness! In my pap days I learned that without a verb there
could not be a sentence, not even a judge's sentence. I know "was" ain't
much of a word all alone by itself, but then chuck it in among a lot of
other fellows, and how it does make them stand around. And then it's so
deliciously incomprehensible--there was. Mind you, it don't say that the
same thing isn't now. And, mind you, it don't say whether it refers to
the day before yesterday, or the commencement of the Franco-Prussian
opera bouffe, or our late unpleasantness, or the beginning of the world,
or before that. No, it can't go back of the beginning, for before that
there wasn't. Anyhow, it leaves you in such a pleasant state of
uncertainty that you very willingly pass on to.