MARK TWAIN AND THE KEY
“Once when I was going out to visit some friends,” Mark Twain is alleged to have said, in relating this one of the innumerable “yarns” fathered on him, “I told George, my negro servant, to lock the house and put the key under a certain stone near the steps. He agreed to do so.
“It was late at night when I returned. I went to the stone under which the key was supposed to have been hidden. It was gone. I hunted around the premises for about fifteen minutes, but still no key.
“Finally I went to George’s house—he lived outside—and rapped, vigorously upon the door. A black head, which I had no difficulty in recognizing as George’s, popped out of an upstairs window.
“‘Where did you put that key, you black rascal?’ I roared.
“‘Oh, massa,’ answered George, ‘I found a better place for it.’”
DESCEND, YE NINE.
PERFECT SINCERITY, OR, THINKINGS ALOUD.
Genius. By the way, did you glance over that article of mine on “The Intellect of Woman, and her Social Position?” I don’t care twopence about your opinion; only, if you can say something favourable, of course I shall be pleased.
Common Sense. Why, I tried to get through it, but upon my life, I found it such contemptible rubbish, that I couldn’t get on; and, to tell you the truth, I think that a snug little thing in the cheese-mongering line would be more in your way than literature.
Genius. Ah, you must be a fool!
HISTORY—THE ANCIENT BRITONS.
Emily (reads). In the summer they were naked, and instead of clothes they put paint upon their bodies. They were fond of a fine blue colour, which they made of a plant called woad, which they found in their woods. They squeezed out the juice of the woad, and then stained themselves all over with it, so that in summer they looked as if they were dressed in tight blue clothes.
Arthur. And did they walk in the park and go to church so?
A RURAL STUDY.
BURLESQUE-WRITER FORCING PUNS.
Genius. Ha! I may be unrecognized, my dear, but I’ll have my revenge on posterity. When the great cypher work is dug out of the Thames it will show that everything Meredith, Hardy, Kipling and Marie Corelli ever wrote was mine—mine!