Mark twain pdf

The community is eminently Portuguese—that is to say, it is slow, poor, shiftless, sleepy, and lazy. There is a civil governor, appointed by the King of Portugal, and also a military governor, who can assume supreme control and suspend the civil government at his pleasure. The islands contain a population of about ,, almost entirely Portuguese. Everything is staid and settled, for the country was one hundred years old when Columbus discovered America. The principal crop is corn, and they raise it and grind it just as their great-great-great-grandfathers did.

They plow with a board slightly shod with iron; their trifling little harrows are drawn by men and women; small windmills grind the corn, ten bushels a day, and there is one assistant superintendent to feed the mill and a general superintendent to stand by and keep him from going to sleep.

When the wind changes they hitch on some donkeys and actually turn the whole upper half of the mill around until the sails are in proper position, instead of fixing the concern so that the sails could be moved instead of the mill. Oxen tread the wheat from the ear, after the fashion prevalent in the time of Methuselah.

There is not a wheelbarrow in the land—they carry everything on their heads, or on donkeys, or in a wicker-bodied cart, whose wheels are solid blocks of wood and whose axles turn with the wheel.

There is not a modern plow in the islands or a threshing machine. All attempts to introduce them have failed. The good Catholic Portuguese crossed himself and prayed God to shield him from all blasphemous desire to know more than his father did before him. The climate is mild; they never have snow or ice, and I saw no chimneys in the town. The donkeys and the men, women, and children of a family all eat and sleep in the same room, and are unclean, are ravaged by vermin, and are truly happy.

The people lie, and cheat the stranger, and are desperately ignorant, and have hardly any reverence for their dead. The latter trait shows how little better they are than the donkeys they eat and sleep with. The only well-dressed Portuguese in the camp are the half a dozen well-to-do families, the Jesuit priests, and the soldiers of the little garrison. The wages of a laborer are twenty to twenty-four cents a day, and those of a good mechanic about twice as much.

They count it in reis at a thousand to the dollar, and this makes them rich and contented. Fine grapes used to grow in the islands, and an excellent wine was made and exported. But a disease killed all the vines fifteen years ago, and since that time no wine has been made. The islands being wholly of volcanic origin, the soil is necessarily very rich. Nearly every foot of ground is under cultivation, and two or three crops a year of each article are produced, but nothing is exported save a few oranges—chiefly to England.

Nobody comes here, and nobody goes away. News is a thing unknown in Fayal. A thirst for it is a passion equally unknown. A Portuguese of average intelligence inquired if our civil war was over. Because, he said, somebody had told him it was—or at least it ran in his mind that somebody had told him something like that! And when a passenger gave an officer of the garrison copies of the Tribune, the Herald, and Times, he was surprised to find later news in them from Lisbon than he had just received by the little monthly steamer.

He was told that it came by cable. It is in communities like this that Jesuit humbuggery flourishes. We visited a Jesuit cathedral nearly two hundred years old and found in it a piece of the veritable cross upon which our Saviour was crucified. It was polished and hard, and in as excellent a state of preservation as if the dread tragedy on Calvary had occurred yesterday instead of eighteen centuries ago.

But these confiding people believe in that piece of wood unhesitatingly. In a chapel of the cathedral is an altar with facings of solid silver—at least they call it so, and I think myself it would go a couple of hundred to the ton to speak after the fashion of the silver miners —and before it is kept forever burning a small lamp.

A devout lady who died, left money and contracted for unlimited masses for the repose of her soul, and also stipulated that this lamp should be kept lighted always, day and night. She did all this before she died, you understand. It is a very small lamp and a very dim one, and it could not work her much damage, I think, if it went out altogether. The great altar of the cathedral and also three or four minor ones are a perfect mass of gilt gimcracks and gingerbread.

And they have a swarm of rusty, dusty, battered apostles standing around the filagree work, some on one leg and some with one eye out but a gamey look in the other, and some with two or three fingers gone, and some with not enough nose left to blow—all of them crippled and discouraged, and fitter subjects for the hospital than the cathedral.

The walls of the chancel are of porcelain, all pictured over with figures of almost life size, very elegantly wrought and dressed in the fanciful costumes of two centuries ago. The design was a history of something or somebody, but none of us were learned enough to read the story.

The old father, reposing under a stone close by, dated , might have told us if he could have risen. As we came down through the town we encountered a squad of little donkeys ready saddled for use. The saddles were peculiar, to say the least. They consisted of a sort of saw-buck with a small mattress on it, and this furniture covered about half the donkey.

A pack of ragged Portuguese muleteers crowded around us, offering their beasts at half a dollar an hour—more rascality to the stranger, for the market price is sixteen cents. Half a dozen of us mounted the ungainly affairs and submitted to the indignity of making a ridiculous spectacle of ourselves through the principal streets of a town of 10, inhabitants. We started.

It was not a trot, a gallop, or a canter, but a stampede, and made up of all possible or conceivable gaits. No spurs were necessary. These rascals were all on foot, but no matter, they were always up to time—they can outrun and outlast a donkey.

Altogether, ours was a lively and a picturesque procession, and drew crowded audiences to the balconies wherever we went. Blucher could do nothing at all with his donkey. The beast scampered zigzag across the road and the others ran into him; he scraped Blucher against carts and the corners of houses; the road was fenced in with high stone walls, and the donkey gave him a polishing first on one side and then on the other, but never once took the middle; he finally came to the house he was born in and darted into the parlor, scraping Blucher off at the doorway.

He turned a corner suddenly, and Blucher went over his head. And, to speak truly, every mule stumbled over the two, and the whole cavalcade was piled up in a heap. No harm done. A fall from one of those donkeys is of little more consequence than rolling off a sofa. The donkeys all stood still after the catastrophe and waited for their dismembered saddles to be patched up and put on by the noisy muleteers.

Blucher was pretty angry and wanted to swear, but every time he opened his mouth his animal did so also and let off a series of brays that drowned all other sounds. It was fun, scurrying around the breezy hills and through the beautiful canyons.

There was that rare thing, novelty, about it; it was a fresh, new, exhilarating sensation, this donkey riding, and worth a hundred worn and threadbare home pleasures. The roads were a wonder, and well they might be.

Here was an island with only a handful of people in it—25,—and yet such fine roads do not exist in the United States outside of Central Park. Everywhere you go, in any direction, you find either a hard, smooth, level thoroughfare, just sprinkled with black lava sand, and bordered with little gutters neatly paved with small smooth pebbles, or compactly paved ones like Broadway.

They talk much of the Russ pavement in New York, and call it a new invention—yet here they have been using it in this remote little isle of the sea for two hundred years! Every street in Horta is handsomely paved with the heavy Russ blocks, and the surface is neat and true as a floor—not marred by holes like Broadway.

And every road is fenced in by tall, solid lava walls, which will last a thousand years in this land where frost is unknown. They are very thick, and are often plastered and whitewashed and capped with projecting slabs of cut stone. Trees from gardens above hang their swaying tendrils down, and contrast their bright green with the whitewash or the black lava of the walls and make them beautiful. The trees and vines stretch across these narrow roadways sometimes and so shut out the sun that you seem to be riding through a tunnel.

The pavements, the roads, and the bridges are all government work. The bridges are of a single span—a single arch—of cut stone, without a support, and paved on top with flags of lava and ornamental pebblework. Everywhere are walls, walls, walls, and all of them tasteful and handsome—and eternally substantial; and everywhere are those marvelous pavements, so neat, so smooth, and so indestructible.

And if ever roads and streets and the outsides of houses were perfectly free from any sign or semblance of dirt, or dust, or mud, or uncleanliness of any kind, it is Horta, it is Fayal. The lower classes of the people, in their persons and their domiciles, are not clean—but there it stops—the town and the island are miracles of cleanliness. When we were dismounted and it came to settling, the shouting and jawing and swearing and quarreling among the muleteers and with us was nearly deafening.

One fellow would demand a dollar an hour for the use of his donkey; another claimed half a dollar for pricking him up, another a quarter for helping in that service, and about fourteen guides presented bills for showing us the way through the town and its environs; and every vagrant of them was more vociferous, and more vehement and more frantic in gesture than his neighbor.

We paid one guide and paid for one muleteer to each donkey. The mountains on some of the islands are very high. We sailed along the shore of the island of Pico, under a stately green pyramid that rose up with one unbroken sweep from our very feet to an altitude of 7, feet, and thrust its summit above the white clouds like an island adrift in a fog!

We got plenty of fresh oranges, lemons, figs, apricots, etc. But I will desist. I am not here to write Patent Office reports. We are on our way to Gibraltar, and shall reach there five or six days out from the Azores. And the last night of the seven was the stormiest of all. There was no thunder, no noise but the pounding bows of the ship, the keen whistling of the gale through the cordage, and the rush of the seething waters.

But the vessel climbed aloft as if she would climb to heaven—then paused an instant that seemed a century and plunged headlong down again, as from a precipice. The sheeted sprays drenched the decks like rain. The blackness of darkness was everywhere. At long intervals a flash of lightning clove it with a quivering line of fire that revealed a heaving world of water where was nothing before, kindled the dusky cordage to glittering silver, and lit up the faces of the men with a ghastly luster!

Fear drove many on deck that were used to avoiding the night winds and the spray. Some thought the vessel could not live through the night, and it seemed less dreadful to stand out in the midst of the wild tempest and see the peril that threatened than to be shut up in the sepulchral cabins, under the dim lamps, and imagine the horrors that were abroad on the ocean.

And once out—once where they could see the ship struggling in the strong grasp of the storm—once where they could hear the shriek of the winds and face the driving spray and look out upon the majestic picture the lightnings disclosed, they were prisoners to a fierce fascination they could not resist, and so remained.

It was a wild night—and a very, very long one. But dull eyes soon sparkled with pleasure, pallid cheeks flushed again, and frames weakened by sickness gathered new life from the quickening influences of the bright, fresh morning. Yea, and from a still more potent influence: the worn castaways were to see the blessed land again!

On our left were the granite-ribbed domes of old Spain. The strait is only thirteen miles wide in its narrowest part. At short intervals along the Spanish shore were quaint-looking old stone towers—Moorish, we thought—but learned better afterwards. In former times the Morocco rascals used to coast along the Spanish Main in their boats till a safe opportunity seemed to present itself, and then dart in and capture a Spanish village and carry off all the pretty women they could find.

It was a pleasant business, and was very popular. The Spaniards built these watchtowers on the hills to enable them to keep a sharper lookout on the Moroccan speculators. But while we stood admiring the cloud-capped peaks and the lowlands robed in misty gloom a finer picture burst upon us and chained every eye like a magnet—a stately ship, with canvas piled on canvas till she was one towering mass of bellying sail!

She came speeding over the sea like a great bird. Africa and Spain were forgotten. All homage was for the beautiful stranger. While everybody gazed she swept superbly by and flung the Stars and Stripes to the breeze!

Quicker than thought, hats and handkerchiefs flashed in the air, and a cheer went up! She was beautiful before—she was radiant now. To see it is to see a vision of home itself and all its idols, and feel a thrill that would stir a very river of sluggish blood!

The other, the great Rock of Gibraltar, was yet to come. The ancients considered the Pillars of Hercules the head of navigation and the end of the world. Even the prophets wrote book after book and epistle after epistle, yet never once hinted at the existence of a great continent on our side of the water; yet they must have known it was there, I should think.

In a few moments a lonely and enormous mass of rock, standing seemingly in the center of the wide strait and apparently washed on all sides by the sea, swung magnificently into view, and we needed no tedious traveled parrot to tell us it was Gibraltar. There could not be two rocks like that in one kingdom. The Rock of Gibraltar is about a mile and a half long, I should say, by 1, to 1, feet high, and a quarter of a mile wide at its base.

One side and one end of it come about as straight up out of the sea as the side of a house, the other end is irregular and the other side is a steep slant which an army would find very difficult to climb. At the foot of this slant is the walled town of Gibraltar—or rather the town occupies part of the slant. Everywhere—on hillside, in the precipice, by the sea, on the heights—everywhere you choose to look, Gibraltar is clad with masonry and bristling with guns.

It makes a striking and lively picture from whatsoever point you contemplate it. I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up. But behold how annoyances repeat themselves. We rode on asses and mules up the steep, narrow streets and entered the subterranean galleries the English have blasted out in the rock. These galleries are like spacious railway tunnels, and at short intervals in them great guns frown out upon sea and town through portholes five or six hundred feet above the ocean.

There is a mile or so of this subterranean work, and it must have cost a vast deal of money and labor. The gallery guns command the peninsula and the harbors of both oceans, but they might as well not be there, I should think, for an army could hardly climb the perpendicular wall of the rock anyhow.

Those lofty portholes afford superb views of the sea, though. At one place, where a jutting crag was hollowed out into a great chamber whose furniture was huge cannon and whose windows were portholes, a glimpse was caught of a hill not far away, and a soldier said:. On the topmost pinnacle of Gibraltar we halted a good while, and no doubt the mules were tired. They had a right to be. The military road was good, but rather steep, and there was a good deal of it.

The view from the narrow ledge was magnificent; from it vessels seeming like the tiniest little toy boats were turned into noble ships by the telescopes, and other vessels that were fifty miles away and even sixty, they said, and invisible to the naked eye, could be clearly distinguished through those same telescopes. Below, on one side, we looked down upon an endless mass of batteries and on the other straight down to the sea.

While I was resting ever so comfortably on a rampart, and cooling my baking head in the delicious breeze, an officious guide belonging to another party came up and said:. Have pity on me. There—I had used strong language after promising I would never do so again; but the provocation was more than human nature could bear. If you had been bored so, when you had the noble panorama of Spain and Africa and the blue Mediterranean spread abroad at your feet, and wanted to gaze and enjoy and surfeit yourself in its beauty in silence, you might have even burst into stronger language than I did.

The wonder is that anybody should ever dream of trying so impossible a project as the taking it by assault—and yet it has been tried more than once. The Moors held the place twelve hundred years ago, and a staunch old castle of theirs of that date still frowns from the middle of the town, with moss-grown battlements and sides well scarred by shots fired in battles and sieges that are forgotten now.

A secret chamber in the rock behind it was discovered some time ago, which contained a sword of exquisite workmanship, and some quaint old armor of a fashion that antiquaries are not acquainted with, though it is supposed to be Roman.

Roman armor and Roman relics of various kinds have been found in a cave in the sea extremity of Gibraltar; history says Rome held this part of the country about the Christian era, and these things seem to confirm the statement. In that cave also are found human bones, crusted with a very thick, stony coating, and wise men have ventured to say that those men not only lived before the flood, but as much as ten thousand years before it. In this cave likewise are found skeletons and fossils of animals that exist in every part of Africa, yet within memory and tradition have never existed in any portion of Spain save this lone peak of Gibraltar!

So the theory is that the channel between Gibraltar and Africa was once dry land, and that the low, neutral neck between Gibraltar and the Spanish hills behind it was once ocean, and of course that these African animals, being over at Gibraltar after rock, perhaps—there is plenty there , got closed out when the great change occurred.

The hills in Africa, across the channel, are full of apes, and there are now and always have been apes on the rock of Gibraltar—but not elsewhere in Spain!

The subject is an interesting one. There is an English garrison at Gibraltar of 6, or 7, men, and so uniforms of flaming red are plenty; and red and blue, and undress costumes of snowy white, and also the queer uniform of the bare-kneed Highlander; and one sees soft-eyed Spanish girls from San Roque, and veiled Moorish beauties I suppose they are beauties from Tarifa, and turbaned, sashed, and trousered Moorish merchants from Fez, and long-robed, bare-legged, ragged Muhammadan vagabonds from Tetuan and Tangier, some brown, some yellow and some as black as virgin ink—and Jews from all around, in gabardine, skullcap, and slippers, just as they are in pictures and theaters, and just as they were three thousand years ago, no doubt.

You can easily understand that a tribe somehow our pilgrims suggest that expression, because they march in a straggling procession through these foreign places with such an Indian-like air of complacency and independence about them like ours, made up from fifteen or sixteen states of the Union, found enough to stare at in this shifting panorama of fashion today.

Speaking of our pilgrims reminds me that we have one or two people among us who are sometimes an annoyance. However, I do not count the Oracle in that list. I will explain that the Oracle is an innocent old ass who eats for four and looks wiser than the whole Academy of France would have any right to look, and never uses a one-syllable word when he can think of a longer one, and never by any possible chance knows the meaning of any long word he uses or ever gets it in the right place; yet he will serenely venture an opinion on the most abstruse subject and back it up complacently with quotations from authors who never existed, and finally when cornered will slide to the other side of the question, say he has been there all the time, and come back at you with your own spoken arguments, only with the big words all tangled, and play them in your very teeth as original with himself.

He reads a chapter in the guidebooks, mixes the facts all up, with his bad memory, and then goes off to inflict the whole mess on somebody as wisdom which has been festering in his brain for years and which he gathered in college from erudite authors who are dead now and out of print.

This morning at breakfast he pointed out of the window and said:. Some authors states it that way, and some states it different. If you have got your hand in for inventing authors and testimony, I have nothing more to say—let them be on the same side. We rather like him. We can tolerate the Oracle very easily, but we have a poet and a good-natured enterprising idiot on board, and they do distress the company.

The one gives copies of his verses to consuls, commanders, hotel keepers, Arabs, Dutch—to anybody, in fact, who will submit to a grievous infliction most kindly meant. The other personage I have mentioned is young and green, and not bright, not learned, and not wise. He will be, though, someday if he recollects the answers to all his questions.

In Fayal they pointed out a hill and told him it was feet high and 1, feet long. And they told him there was a tunnel 2, feet long and 1, feet high running through the hill, from end to end. He believed it. He repeated it to everybody, discussed it, and read it from his notes. Finally, he took a useful hint from this remark, which a thoughtful old pilgrim made:.

Here in Gibraltar he corners these educated British officers and badgers them with braggadocio about America and the wonders she can perform! He told one of them a couple of our gunboats could come here and knock Gibraltar into the Mediterranean Sea! At this present moment half a dozen of us are taking a private pleasure excursion of our own devising.

We form rather more than half the list of white passengers on board a small steamer bound for the venerable Moorish town of Tangier, Africa. Nothing could be more absolutely certain than that we are enjoying ourselves.

One can not do otherwise who speeds over these sparkling waters and breathes the soft atmosphere of this sunny land. Care cannot assail us here. We are out of its jurisdiction.

We even steamed recklessly by the frowning fortress of Malabat a stronghold of the Emperor of Morocco without a twinge of fear. The whole garrison turned out under arms and assumed a threatening attitude—yet still we did not fear.

The entire garrison marched and counter-marched within the rampart, in full view—yet notwithstanding even this, we never flinched. I suppose we really do not know what fear is. I inquired the name of the garrison of the fortress of Malabat, and they said it was Mehemet Ali Ben Sancom. I said it would be a good idea to get some more garrisons to help him; but they said no, he had nothing to do but hold the place, and he was competent to do that, had done it two years already.

That was evidence which one could not well refute. There is nothing like reputation. Every now and then my glove purchase in Gibraltar last night intrudes itself upon me. They said they were elegant and very moderate in price.

It seemed a stylish thing to go to the theater in kid gloves, and we acted upon the hint. A very handsome young lady in the store offered me a pair of blue gloves. I did not want blue, but she said they would look very pretty on a hand like mine. The remark touched me tenderly. I glanced furtively at my hand, and somehow it did seem rather a comely member. I tried a glove on my left and blushed a little. Manifestly the size was too small for me. But I felt gratified when she said:.

I see you are accustomed to wearing kid gloves—but some gentlemen are so awkward about putting them on. It was the last compliment I had expected. I only understand putting on the buckskin article perfectly. I made another effort and tore the glove from the base of the thumb into the palm of the hand—and tried to hide the rent.

She kept up her compliments, and I kept up my determination to deserve them or die:. There is a grace about it that only comes with long practice. I was hot, vexed, confused, but still happy; but I hated the other boys for taking such an absorbing interest in the proceedings. I wished they were in Jericho. I felt exquisitely mean when I said cheerfully:. I like a glove that fits.

It is warm here. It was warm. It was the warmest place I ever was in. A self-complacent ass, ready to be flattered out of your senses by every petticoat that chooses to take the trouble to do it!

They let me alone then for the time being. We always let each other alone in time to prevent ill feeling from spoiling a joke. But they had bought gloves, too, as I did. Visiting the Prisoner. Tom Swears. The Court Room. The Detective.

Tom Dreams. The Treasure. The Private Conference. A King; Poor Fellow! Injun Joe. The Greatest and Best. Hidden Treasures Unearthed. Room No. Uncle Jake. Buck at Home. The Haunted Room. Inside the Cave. Huck on Duty. A Rousing Act. The Welchman. Result of a Sneeze. Alarming Discoveries. Tom and Becky stir up the Town. Huck Questions the Widow. Wonders of the Cave. Attacked by Natives. The Wedding Cake.

A New Terror. The Escape from the Cave. Fate of the Ragged Man. The Treasures Found. Caught at Last. Drop after Drop. Having a Good Time. A Business Trip. Widow Douglas. Tom Backs his Statement. Huck Transformed. Comfortable Once More.

High up in Society. Arrive at St. Mormon Contractors—How Mr. About Carson—General Buncombe—Hyde vs. What to do Next? Davidson—A Beautiful Incident. A Droll Character—Mrs. A BITE. The birth of the Prince and the Pauper. Tom as a patrician. Tom receives instructions.

The question of the Seal. The river pageant. The Prince in the toils. At Guildhall. The Prince and his deliverer. The disappearance of the Prince. Tom as King. The state dinner. Foo-foo the First. The Prince with the tramps. The Prince with the peasants. The Prince and the hermit. Hendon to the rescue. A victim of treachery. The Prince a prisoner. The escape. Hendon Hall. In prison. The sacrifice. To London. The Recognition procession. Coronation Day. Edward as King.

Justice and Retribution. La Salle again Appears, and so does a Cat-fish. A little History. The Boys' Ambition. A Traveller. Besieging the Pilot. River Inspectors. A Heavy-loaded Big Gun. Shake the Reef. Putting on Airs. In thg Tract Business. Low Water. A Pilot's Memory. Pilots and Captains. New Pilots undermining the Pilots' Association. All Aboard. Sharp Schooling. A Question of Veracity. Brown Retires. I become a Passenger. I get my License. I try the Alias Business.

Old French Settlements. I receive some Information. The Devil's Oven and Table. War Talk. Tourists and their Note-books. Trollope's Emotions. Charles Augustus Murray's Sentiment. Parkman Reports. Swinging down the River. Murel's Gang. A Melancholy Picture. Mutinous Language. Ritter's Narrative. A Question of Division. An Austere Man. Signs and Scars. In it Tom Sawyer tries to solve a mysterious murder being -of course- accompanied by his faithful friend Huckleberry Finn, who helps him acting as a Dr.

In Tom Sawyer, Detective , Tom and Huck will travel down the Mississippi on a steamboat where they will find themselves in the middle of a plot that includes the theft of diamonds and even a murder. The story — like many others by the author — is narrated in the first person by Huck Finn.

The story unfolds around the exalted, illustrious and brave figure of Joan of Arc, and a vigorous and splendid picture of the century, full of majesty and harmony. Throughout these exciting pages occur one after another, scenes full of heroism linked to the loyal figure of Louis de Conte, squire and companion of Joan in her conquests on the battlefield, whom the narrative genius of Mark Twain makes the supposed author of this great story, which could be part of the most incredible legends of chivalry.

This work is a parody of the book of Genesis, which is the first book of the Christian Old Testament, does not consider the role of God at all but focuses on Adam and Eve. It begins with Adam describing how Eve is introduced into the Garden of Eden, and how he has to deal with her, whom he also describes as an annoying creature although he eventually ends up falling in love with her.

In addition, it also details the encounter with Cain, who at first strikes Adam as a perplexing creature without being able to identify the species to which he belongs, thinking he is a fish, then a kangaroo, then a bear. Finally, he discovers that it is a human, like himself. I have examined them once or twice per year since, and found them satisfactory. I have just examined them again, and am still satisfied that they speak the truth.

Every thought in them has been thought and accepted as unassailable truth by millions upon millions of men-and concealed, kept private. Why did they not speak out? Because they dreaded and could not bear the disapproval of the people around them.

Why have not I published? The same reason has restrained me, I think. I can find no other». Mark Twain. What is Man? Although Mark had ample time to modify and refine these works between the date of their original publication and this collection, indications suggest that he took little interest in doing so, as they contain only minor technical revisions that differentiate them from their earlier version.

This is a collection of essays that Mark Twain wrote about Christian Science, which is a set of beliefs and practices belonging to the metaphysical family of new religious movements. In he published Christian Science , where he compiled that and other articles he had written on the subject. Due to a certain ambivalence of Twain some think that this work is a criticism with an ironic tone and not an essay where the author shows his support and interest towards this science.

As was characteristic of Twain, it is marked by sharp humor and satire. It is a book that addresses the perspectives of life and our reasons for existing. Further success from book sales and lectures restored his financial health and in the end all his creditors were paid. Mark Twain is also well remembered for his witty quotations, a small sampling follows:.

Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising. Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example. Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person. All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure. It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you: the one to slander you, and the other to get the news to you.

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not. Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare. It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

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. I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said I don't know.