Mark Twain stories: humorous. Mark Twain stories: humorous The shortest work of Mark Twain

Mark Twain

The Story of a Bad Boy

Once upon a time there lived a bad boy whose name was Jim. Notice that in Sunday school books the bad boys are almost always named James. But, oddly enough, the boy I want to talk about was named Jim.

He did not have a sick mother, dying of consumption, a pious mother who would be glad to calm down in the grave, if not for her ardent love for her son and the fear that when she died and left him alone on earth, people would be cold towards him and cruel. Most of the bad boys in Sunday school books are called James, and they have sick mothers who teach them to pray before going to sleep, lull them to sleep with a tender and sad song, then kiss them and cry, kneeling at their head. But with this guy everything was different. And his name was Jim, and his mother didn't have any illness, no consumption or anything like that. On the contrary, she was a strong, portly woman; Moreover, she was not distinguished by piety and was not at all worried about Jim. She said that if he had broken his neck, the loss would have been small. At bedtime Jim always received spankings from her. Before leaving his bed, his mother rewarded him not with a kiss, but with a good blow.

Once this nasty boy stole the key to the pantry and, climbing in there, ate a lot of jam, and so that his mother would not notice the shortage, he filled the jar with tar. And after that he was not overcome by horror and no inner voice whispered to him: “Is it possible to disobey your parents? After all, this is a sin! Where will the bad boy end up who ate his good mother’s jam?” And Jim did not fall to his knees, and did not vow to reform, and then did not go to his mother, full of joy, with a light heart, to repent of everything to her and ask for forgiveness, after which she would bless him with tears of gratitude and pride. No! This happens in books with all bad boys, but for some reason everything was different with Jim. He ate the jam and in his profane, rough language declared that it was “first-class grub.” Then he added tar to the jar and, laughing, said that it was “very cool” and that “the old woman would go crazy and howl” when she discovered it. When everything was revealed and Jim stubbornly and completely denied his guilt, his mother gave him a painful whipping - and it was he who had to cry, not her.

Yes. This Jim was an amazingly strange boy: everything happened to him differently from the bad James boys in the books.

One day he climbed Farmer Ekorn's apple tree to steal apples. And the branch did not break, Jim did not fall, did not break his arm, he was not bitten by the farmer’s big dog, and then he did not lie sick for many days, did not repent and did not improve. Nothing like this! He picked as many apples as he wanted and safely climbed down from the tree. And for the dog, he had prepared a stone in advance and hit her on the head with this stone when she rushed at him. An extraordinary story! This never happens in moralizing books with beautiful spines and pictures that depict men in tailcoats, bowler hats and short trousers, women in dresses with the waist under the arms and without crinolines. No, you won’t find such stories in any Sunday school book.

Once Jim stole a penknife from a teacher at school, and then, fearing that it would be discovered and he would be whipped, he put the knife in the hat of George Wilson, the son of a poor widow, a good boy, the most exemplary boy in the whole village, who always obeyed his mother, never lied, studied willingly, and passionately loved going to Sunday school. When the knife fell out of his hat and poor George lowered his head and blushed as if guilty, and the deeply distressed teacher accused him of stealing his and was already waving the rod, about to lower it on his trembling shoulders, - a gray-haired, completely improbable judge did not suddenly appear among them and say, taking a pose:

– Don’t touch this noble boy! Here stands a criminal trembling with fear! I walked past your school during recess and, unnoticed by anyone, saw how the theft was committed!

No, none of this happened, and Jim was not flogged, and the venerable judge did not read instructions to the tearful schoolchildren, did not take George by the hand and say that such a boy deserves a reward and therefore he invites him to live with him, sweep the office, stoke the stoves , run errands, chop wood, study law and help his wife with housework, and the rest of the time he can play and will receive forty cents a month and prosper. No, this happens in books, but with Jim it was completely different. No old brat of a judge intervened and ruined the whole thing, and good boy George got a spanking, and Jim was happy, because, let me tell you, he hated good boys. He always insisted that he “hates wimps.” This nasty, dissolute boy expressed himself so rudely!

But the most extraordinary thing in Jim's story is that he went boating on Sunday - and did not drown! And another time he was fishing on Sunday, but although he was caught in a thunderstorm, lightning did not strike him! Just look through all the books for Sunday schools from the first to the last page, rummage through them even until next Christmas - you will not find a single such case! Never! You will learn from them that all the bad boys who go boating on Sunday are sure to drown, and all those who fish on Sunday are inevitably caught in a thunderstorm and killed by lightning. Boats with bad children always capsize on Sundays, and... If bad children go fishing on Sunday, a thunderstorm is sure to come. How Jim survived remains a mystery to me.

This Jim seemed to be under a spell - this is the only way to explain the fact that he got away with everything. He even gave an elephant in the zoo a piece of pressed chewing tobacco - and the elephant did not tear off his head with its trunk! He went to the cupboard for mint tincture - and drank nitric acid by mistake! Having stolen his father's gun, he went hunting on a holiday - and did not shoot off three or four of his fingers! One day, angry, he hit his little sister in the temple with his fist, and - can you imagine! - the girl did not waste away after that, did not die in great suffering, with meek words of forgiveness on her lips, thereby doubling the torment of his broken heart. No, she bravely endured the blow and remained unharmed.

In the end, Jim ran away from home and became a sailor on a ship. If you believe the books, he would have to return sad, lonely and find out that his loved ones were sleeping in a quiet churchyard, that the house covered with vines, where he spent his childhood, had long since collapsed and rotted. And Jim returned drunk as a fool and immediately ended up in the police station.

So he grew up, this Jim, got married, had a bunch of children, and one night he smashed their heads with an axe. By all sorts of tricks and frauds he made a fortune, and now he - the most vile and notorious scoundrel in his village - enjoys universal respect and has become one of the state legislators.

The great writer was born on November 30, 1835 in the small town of Florida in the southern United States, on the banks of the Mississippi River. Real name: Samuel Lenhorne Clemens.

Samuel was the sixth child in the family. When he was four years old, his family moved to the small town of Hannibal. When Samuel was 12 years old, his father died of pneumonia and in order to somehow survive, the boy had to leave school and earn money. He got a job in a publishing house. He really liked this work and he and his brother began publishing newspapers, first in their hometown, then moved to Iowa. There was not enough money, and in 1857 the future writer returned home and became a pilot's apprentice - this was his childhood dream. In 1859, Samuel Lanhorn received his pilot's license, had a high salary and enjoyed his work. Sam served on ships for many years and it was here that he found his literary pseudonym.

At the age of 18 he already knew C. Dickens, W.M. Thackeray, W Scott, Disraeli, E. Poe. But most of all he valued W. Shakespeare and M. de Cervantes.

In 1861, he was forced to become a Confederate soldier because the war between the North and South began at that time. But after two weeks, Samuel deserts and heads west, to his brother in Nevada. Here he works in a silver mine and writes humorous stories for the Territorial Enterprise newspaper in Virginia City. In 1862, he received an invitation to work at the same publishing house and looked for a pseudonym for himself. Thus, a writer was born who managed to gain worldwide significance with his work.

The writer learned the skills of a humorist; he loved to tease the audience, told things that were not in the title, and made illogical, absurd conclusions. But, despite this, he was a realist in his stories, and also the first and worthwhile realist in American literature.

One of the young writer's most famous stories was "A Journalist in Tennessee," which made people laugh until they cried.

Mark Twain's early works were cheerful, mischievous and mocking, which amazed their readers. Twain lived by the ideas of his country and his time. He was convinced that America had a great future.

Mark Twain came to literature late. He became a professional journalist at the age of 27. The writer published his first book at the age of 34. His early publications were published from the age of 17 and were characterized by the rough humor of the American outback. Samuel tried to write with humor, otherwise he would get tired quickly. In 1866, after a trip to Hawaii, there was a transformation from an amateur to a real professional. In Hawaii, his job was to write letters to the editor about his trip while traveling. Mark Twain's recordings, published after his return, were a stunning success.

For several years, he has been traveling to newspapers, earning money by publicly reading humorous stories. During a Mediterranean cruise on the Quaker City, he collected material for his first book, Innocents Abroad. In 1870, he married Olivia Langdon, the sister of his friend Charles Langdon, whom he met while on a cruise.

In 1871, Twain and his family settled in Hartford, Connecticut.

Samuel Clemens's next successful book was The Gilded Age, which he wrote with Charles Warner.

And in 1876, the world saw Mark Twain’s new book “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” which made the author not only a famous American writer, but also forever brought his name into the history of world literature. After completing Tom Sawyer, Sam began work on a historical book about the English Middle Ages, The Prince and the Pauper (1882).

Needing money, the writer accepted the offer and went with his family to Germany. For almost two years he has been traveling through Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France and England. He will tell about his journey in the book “Walking in Europe.”

In 1883, Mark Twain published the book Life on the Mississippi, the leading role of which is played by the central image of a free, powerful river, which becomes a powerful artistic symbol of unlimited freedom. Many sections of this book are devoted to the secrets of this profession, its romance.

Until 1884, the writer was already a famous writer and successful businessman. He created a publishing company, nominally headed by C.L. Webster, the husband of his niece. One of the first books published by this publishing house was his “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” The book with which “all American literature came out,” which, according to critics, became the best in the writer’s work, since it was conceived as a continuation of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.” Mark Twain created this work for almost 10 years. In this book, for the first time in American literature, he used the colloquial speech of the American outback. "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" became a turning point in Twain's creative evolution. It was this book that turned the cheerful humorist into a bitter satirist.

In 1889, the satirical masterpiece A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court was published. The writer called this work “a parable about progress,” which reflects the painful process of his spiritual search, contradictions and bitterness of insight. It seemed to contemporaries that they were facing a new social utopia. But, for Twain, this was the way for a new genre - dystopia, in which literary parody was combined with philosophical grotesquery, and in form it resembled an adventure novel.

In 1893–1894, during the economic crisis, the writer’s business could not withstand a severe blow and went bankrupt. In 1898, he managed to negotiate with creditors to defer payment of debts. During this time, Mark Twain wrote several works, including historical prose - “Personal Memoirs of Joan of Arc” (1896), as well as “Razziava Wilson” (1894), “Tom Sawyer Abroad” (1894) and “Tom Sawyer -detective" (1896). But none of these works were able to achieve greater success than the other books that were written before.

In 1896, while he and his wife were traveling around the world to write another book, Along the Equator (1897), his beloved daughter Susie died. Soon, the youngest daughter became seriously ill, and a year later her older brother died.

Towards the end of the 19th century, a collection of Mark Twain's works began to be published in the United States, thereby reducing him to the category of writers of days gone by. But, no longer a young writer, he was not going to give up. At the beginning of the 20th century, Samuel published works in which he revealed untruth and injustice: “The Man Walking in Darkness,” “Monologue of the King,” “Monologue of King Leopold, in Defense of His Dominion in the Congo.”

In 1901, he received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Yale University. He was very proud of this title.

In 1904, Samuel lost his wife.

The writer accepted the blow of fate, responding to it with an avalanche of essays, political and critical articles, numerous speeches and sharp pamphlets.

Among the publications of the last period, the story “The Man Who Corrupted Hedleyburg” (1899), which was filled with evil humor, was an impeccable success, in which the fundamental principles of existence are violated.

Mark Twain had long wanted to write his autobiography, but in 1906 he got a personal secretary, A.B. Payne, who really wants to write a book about the writer. As a result, the great writer begins to dictate the story of his life. A year later, Samuel again received an honorary doctorate in writing from Oxford University.

By this time he was seriously ill, most of his family members were dying one after another. The writer suffers from angina pectoris. On April 24, 1910, at the age of 74, the writer’s heart gave out and he died.

The shades of Twain's laughter are rich and changeable. Mark Twain proved the ability of comic literature to become the epic of people's life. He fully deserved the reputation of the “American Voltaire”.

His last work, “The Mysterious Stranger,” was published posthumously in 1916.

Mark Twain: books for lovers of humor and satire

Mark Twain, whose biography is filled with the most exciting events, is not only one of the most popular American authors, but also a prominent public figure. In addition to his writing, he was actively involved in journalism and generated new socio-political ideas. Also, Mark Twain, whose best books you can find on our website, became famous for his outstanding wit and apt statements on any topic. If you like to read works that not only expose the social structure of the author's contemporary world, but also make you laugh, then this writer is perfect for you.

Mark Twain: biography of the writer

Mark Twain, whose books were published under a pseudonym, was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens. He was born on November 30, 1835 in Missouri. This state would later become the main setting in many of his works.

Due to the poor situation in the family and a large number of debts, the future writer had to begin his working career at the age of 12. It is worth noting that from early childhood Mark Twain was surrounded by books, and his reading list quickly grew. He also plunged into journalism quite early. Helping his brother publish his own newspaper, he gained irreplaceable experience, and it was in this publication that his first publications appeared. However, initially the young man wanted to devote his life to the shipping business. For some time he even works as a pilot. However, the Civil War makes significant adjustments to Mark Twain's plans, since private shipping ceases to exist. A young man gets a job in the mines where silver is mined, but after failure in this enterprise, he gets a job as a journalist. Later he moved to San Francisco, where he became a professional journalist, collaborating with a large number of publications.

His first humorous story was called “The Famous Jumping Frog of Calaveras,” which brought him fame throughout the country. His subsequent book, “Simps Abroad,” only confirmed the writer’s talent. For a long time, Mark Twain was perceived by readers and critics exclusively as a humorous writer, but “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” made him a reputation as a thoughtful and deep author who is able to show a different America. Descriptions of cruelty, injustice, conservatism, and racism began to appear more and more often in his works. His novels were always sharp and social, filled with discussions about democracy, progress, and religion.

If you are interested in Mark Twain, the books, a list of which you can find on the KnigoPoisk website, will help you discover his work and get acquainted with the era of the mid-nineteenth century.

(estimates: 9 , average: 4,33 out of 5)

Mark Twain, whose real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was born on November 30, 1835 in Florida. In fact, he was ill throughout his childhood, although this is not strange: as newspapers reported, only half of Americans lived to adulthood. Unknown diseases that raged in Florida at that time claimed the lives of countless people...

One of the entertainments in the childhood of the future writer was watching the arrival of the ship. Having matured, he no longer just watched the ships, but also controlled them. However, young Samuel was still that tomboy: he stole sweet apples and watermelons, hunted possums at night, and once even rolled a large boulder down the hill into the city (fortunately, only the coppersmith’s workshop was damaged). Clemens, like Tom Sawyer, wandered through a terrible cave - and, like his hero, one day he got lost there and almost died.

Samuel's father, John Clemens, left the family debts and an inheritance in the form of a plot of land. He died without knowing that the land, which he considered a priceless gift and source of wealth for his children, had become a heavy burden that all the Clemens had to bear.

Young Sam got a job at a newspaper, first at the Missouri Courier and later at the publishing house owned by his brother. In 1953, he realized that the job of a journalist-compositor did not bring joy, and he went on a journey. Without staying in one place for more than a week, he visited many American cities. Sam writes short essays about his travels and sends them to his brother: thus, the family newspaper is constantly updated with new materials.

His travels lead him aboard the old ship Paul Jones. Here Clemens becomes an apprentice to pilot Horace Bixby. After some time, Sam received a place on the large steamship Pennsylvania. He did not forget about the journalistic craft, but regularly sent his texts to New Orleans periodicals.

The gold rush also struck Clemens: he, like almost everyone else at that time, went in search of his tidbit. Trying in vain to make a fortune, Sam returned to writing - and a little later, on the same site, another man finally found the treasured gold. At the age of 27, Clemens finally decided to devote his life to creativity.

The pseudonym “Mark Twain” is associated with his past as a pilot: Mark twain literally translates as “mark two” (fathoms). This is about 4 meters deep, that is, the minimum depth for the free passage of ships. Working in the editorial office of the Enterprise, Samuel Clemens turns into the famous Mark Twain.

After the unexpected success of one of his stories, Mark decides to take a short break from journalism and go on a trip. In New York, he finds his love - Olivia Langdon, who will later become his editor-in-chief (despite the fact that she herself had a bourgeois worldview). As Twain said, she edited not only his works, but also himself.

For 10 years, Mark Twain and his family lived in many European countries - Italy, France, Germany and Switzerland. The beginning of the twentieth century brought heavy losses to the writer: three of his daughters and his wife passed away. He himself died on April 21, 1910, after witnessing Halley’s comet for the second time (it first flew over the Earth, oddly enough, in the year of his birth).

Mark Twain, bibliography

All books by Mark Twain:

• 1867 - “The Famous Jumping Frog of Calaveras,” collection of short stories
• 1868 - “The Story of Mamie Grant, Missionary Girl”
• 1869 — “Simps Abroad”
• 1871 — “The Tempered”
• 1873 - "The Gilded Age"
• 1875 — “Old and New Sketches”
• 1875 - "Old Times on the Mississippi"
• 1876 ​​- ""
• 1881 — " "
• 1883 - "Life on the Mississippi"
• 1884 — "

TWAIN: Read humorous stories: How to treat a cold, How to get rid of speeches: Mark Twain. A collection of interesting short stories and short works by the writer M. Twain

Mark Twain wrote a large number of short stories and works. Among them there are genuine masterpieces that will forever be included in the treasury of Twain’s humor. Most of Twain's early short stories express a bright worldview. Twain's humorous stories captivate the reader with a funny joke, an unexpected comic turn, a funny invention, and a funny pun. Twain parodies newspapers, sentimental novels and stories, scientific treatises, moralizing books for Sunday schools, speeches of politicians, and bureaucratic language. Some of Twain's stories are detailed anecdotes, based on a play on words, a funny accident, etc.
Even when in his short stories the writer touches on some of the negative phenomena of life, he often maintains a good-natured smile...
This is what he writes himself Mark Twain on humorous stories:
"There are different kinds of stories, but only one of them is truly difficult - the humorous story. The effect of a humorous story depends on how it is told, while the effect of a comic story and anecdote depends on what is told in it. Humorous a story can drag on for a very long time and wander around and around until it gets boring, and, in the end, never come to anything definite; a comic story and anecdote should be short and end with a “salt”, a “twist”. the story softly gurgles and gurgles to itself, while the other two should be like an explosion. A humorous story is, in the full sense of the word, a work of art, high and subtle art...
A humorous story requires complete seriousness; the narrator tries not to show that he has even the slightest suspicion that the story is funny..." (Mark Twain)

Mark Twain read
How to treat a cold

Writing for the entertainment of the public may be commendable, but there is something incomparably more worthy and noble: writing for instruction and edification, for the genuine and truly tangible benefit of a person. It is for this reason that I took up the pen. If this article helps restore the health of at least one of my suffering brothers, if it rekindles the fire of joy and hope in his extinguished gaze, if it revives his frozen heart and it beats with the same strength and vigor - I will be generously rewarded for my efforts, my soul will be filled with sacred delight, which every Christian experiences who has committed a good, selfless act.

Leading a pure and blameless life, I have reason to believe that not a single person who knows me will neglect my advice, fearing that I intend to mislead him. So, let the reader take the trouble to familiarize himself with the experience of treating colds outlined in this article and then follow my example.

When the White House Hotel burned in Virginia City, I lost my home, my joy, my health, and my suitcase. The loss of the first two benefits mentioned was not so terrible. It is not so difficult to find a home where there is no mother, or sister, or young distant relative who cleans up your dirty laundry and takes your boots off the mantelpiece, thereby reminding you that there are people in the world who love you and about you are baking. And I reacted quite calmly to the loss of joy, because I am not a poet and I firmly know that sadness will not stay with me for long. But losing excellent health and a magnificent suitcase turned out to be a truly great misfortune. On the day of the fire, I caught a severe cold, the reason for which was excessive exertion when I was about to take fire-fighting measures. I suffered in vain, since my plan for extinguishing the fire was so complex that I was able to complete it only by the middle of the next week.

As soon as I started sneezing, one of my friends told me to give myself a hot foot bath and go to bed. That's what I did. Soon after, my second friend advised me to get out of bed and take a cold shower. I heeded this advice too. Less than an hour later, another friend of mine assured me that the best treatment was to “nourish the cold and kill the fever.” I suffered from both. I decided, therefore, to first eat well, and then starve out the fever.

In matters of this kind I rarely limit myself to half measures, and therefore I ate quite heavily. I deigned to visit a restaurant that opened for the first time that morning, the owner of which had recently arrived in our city. While I was nursing my cold, he stood beside me in respectful silence, and then inquired whether the people of Virginia City were very susceptible to colds. I replied that, perhaps, yes. Then he went outside and took down the sign.

I headed to the editorial office, but on the way I met another bosom friend who said that if anything could cure a cold, it would be a quart of water with salt, taken warm. I doubted whether there would still be room for it, but decided to give it a try anyway. The result was stunning. It seemed to me that I had cast out even my immortal soul.

Now, since I am sharing my experience solely for the sake of those who suffer from the type of health disorder described here, they, I am confident, will understand the propriety of my desire to warn them against a remedy that has proven ineffective for me. Acting on this belief, I say: do not take warm water with salt. Perhaps this measure is not bad, but, in my opinion, it is too steep. If I ever happen to catch a cold again and have only two medicines at my disposal - earthquake and warm water with salt - I will probably take a chance and choose earthquake.

When the storm in my stomach subsided and there was not a single Good Samaritan nearby, I began to do what I had already done in the early stages of a cold: I began to occupy handkerchiefs again, blowing into them with my nose so that they flew into shreds. But then I accidentally met a lady who had just returned from a mountainous area, and this lady said that in the area where she lived there were few doctors, and out of necessity she had to learn to heal the simplest “household ailments” herself. She, in fact, probably had considerable experience, because she looked about one and a half hundred years old.

She prepared a decoction of black molasses, strong vodka, turpentine and many other drugs and ordered me to take a full glass of it every quarter of an hour. I only took the first dose, but it was enough. This one glass tore from me, like a husk, all my high moral qualities and awakened the lowest instincts of my nature. Under the harmful effects of the potion, unimaginably vile plans arose in my brain, but I was unable to carry them out: my hands did not obey me well. The successive attacks of all the reliable remedies taken for colds undermined my strength, otherwise I would certainly have started robbing the graves in the neighboring cemetery. Like most people, I often experience base impulses and act accordingly. But before I took this last medicine, I had never discovered such monstrous depravity in myself, and I was proud of it. By the end of the second day I was ready to take up treatment again. I took a few more trusty cold remedies and eventually drove it from my nasopharynx to my lungs.

I developed a continuous cough and my voice dropped below zero. I spoke in a thunderous bass voice, two octaves below my normal pitch. I fell asleep at night only after I had worked myself into complete exhaustion by coughing, but as soon as I began to talk in my sleep, my hoarse bass voice woke me up again.

My affairs were getting worse and worse every day. They advised me to drink ordinary gin - I drank it. Someone said gin and treacle is better. I drank that too. Someone else recommended gin and onions. I added onions to the gin and took it all at once - gin, molasses and onions. I didn’t notice much improvement, except that my breathing became like that of a vulture.

I decided that to improve my health I needed a resort. Together with my colleague, reporter Wilson, I went to Bigler Lake. I remember with satisfaction that our journey was arranged with sufficient splendor. We set out on horseback, and my friend had with him all his luggage, which consisted of two excellent silk handkerchiefs and a daguerreotype of my grandmother. We boated, hunted, fished and danced all day long, and at night I nursed a cough. By acting in this way, I expected that I would get better every hour. But my illness kept getting worse.

I was recommended to wrap myself in a wet sheet. Until now, I have not refused a single remedy, and it seemed unreasonable to me to become stubborn for no reason at all. So I agreed to take the wet sheet treatment, although I must admit I had no idea what it was. At midnight, the appropriate manipulations were performed on me, and the weather was frosty. They exposed my chest and back, took a sheet (I think there was at least a thousand yards of it), soaked it in ice water and then began to wrap it around me until I looked like a bath cloth used to clean the barrels of antediluvian cannons.

This is a harsh measure. When the wet, ice-cold fabric touches the warm skin, desperate convulsions take over your whole body - and you gasp for air, as happens to a person in his death throes. The burning cold penetrated me to the marrow of my bones, my heartbeat stopped.

I had already decided that my end had come.

Young Wilson recalled an anecdote about a black man who, during a baptismal ceremony, somehow slipped out of the hands of the pastor and nearly drowned. However, after floundering, he eventually emerged, barely breathing and beside himself with rage, and immediately moved towards the shore, throwing water out of himself like a fountain, like a whale and cursing at the top of his lungs that it was because of such nonsense some colored gentleman, lo and behold, is really going to drown!

Never treat yourself with a wet sheet, ever! The only thing worse than this is when you meet a lady you know and, for reasons known only to her, she looks at you but doesn’t notice, and when she notices, she doesn’t recognize you.

But, as I have already begun to tell you, treatment with a wet sheet did not get rid of my cough, and then one of my friends advised me to put mustard plaster on my chest. I think it would have really cured me if it hadn't been for young Wilson. When I went to bed, I took the mustard plaster - a magnificent mustard plaster, eighteen inches wide and eighteen inches long - and placed it so that it would be at hand when needed. Young Wilson got hungry at night and...: here's food for your imagination.

After a week's stay at Bigler Lake, I went to the Steamboat hot springs and there, in addition to steam baths, took a bunch of the most vile medicines ever concocted by man. They would have cured me, but I needed to return to Virginia City, where, despite the rich assortment of new drugs I absorbed daily, I managed, through carelessness and imprudence, to further aggravate my illness.

Finally I decided to go to San Francisco, and the first day after my arrival some lady at the hotel said that I should drink a quart of whiskey once a day. A friend of mine who lived in San Francisco advised exactly the same thing. They each recommended one quart - together it was half a gallon. I drank half a gallon a day, and so far, as you can see, I’m alive.

So, motivated solely by a feeling of goodwill, I offer to the attention of the sufferer, exhausted by the disease, the entire motley selection of remedies that I have just tried myself. Let him test them for himself. If these remedies do not cure him, well, in the worst case, they will only send him to the next world.

How to get rid of speeches
(Afternoon speech)

Like many respectable people, I have made many speeches in my time. And like other sinners, every now and then he promised himself to reform, vowing - usually on New Year's Eve - not to make a single speech again. I am convinced that such an oath serves quite well while it is new; Once it becomes worn out and dilapidated from constant use, it is already bursting at all the seams; the slightest effort and it bursts.

And so, last New Year’s Eve, I reinforced my word by promising myself that if I broke my vow, I would impose a fine on myself, and such a large one that it allowed me to hold out until today. Although now I am falling into sin again, I hope this will not happen again, since in ten days the amount will double. I see around me the familiar mournful faces of poor sufferers who have fallen victim to the destructive passion of making speeches - poor fellow sufferers who, being in the cruel grip of this base, all-destroying vice, have weakened over the years in the unequal struggle with it and no longer hope for victory. I address them in this last speech. Don't give up under any circumstances, all is not lost! I beg you, swear again and do not spare money. Of course, this does not apply to everyone: there are also incorrigibles among you - those who have already become accustomed to success, to the delightful intoxication caused by applause, and can no longer, now or in the future, abandon their reprehensible way of life. They have mastered the subtle art of speaking and no longer experience the painful shyness, uncertainty and fear of failure - feelings that alone can awaken a speaker's desire to improve. These people became masters of their craft after much observation and many failures; now they know that a genuine impromptu is always worse and paler than something previously invented; They know that the greatest success awaits the speech that is carefully prepared in the silence of the office and polished in front of a plaster bust, an empty chair or any other connoisseur who is ready to remain calm until the speaker achieves his goal and gives the future impromptu the due credibility. Specialists know how to do this. Grammar errors interspersed here and there, seemingly randomly, work well - they often dispel the suspicions of skeptical listeners. Such errors are put in place in advance; After all, truly random errors will not help; they will certainly end up where they shouldn’t. In addition, an experienced speaker leaves gaps here and there - leaves them in order to fill them with genuine impromptu things that will add naturalness to his speech without disturbing its general direction. At a banquet, while listening to other speakers, he comes up with witticisms in response to their remarks and methodically inserts these witticisms into the gaps for impromptu remarks. When such a specialist is given the floor, he stands up and looks around with an air of extreme amazement. The uninitiated do not understand what is going on here, but everything is clear to the initiated.

The initiates know what will happen. When the applause and stomping subsides, this veteran will say: “Mr. Chairman, since the hour is late, I did not want to change my decision made at the beginning of the evening: if I was suddenly given the floor, just rise, thank you for the honor and give way to those more worthy - those who has something to say. But, sir, I was so shocked by General Smith’s remark about the decline of morality that ...” etc., etc. And before you know it, he quietly moves on from compliments to the general to his pre-composed speech, and you, For the life of me, I can’t remember where and when he managed to tie them together. And now he is already soaring on the wings of a superbly trained memory, slightly sinning against the rules of grammar here, supposedly repeating himself unintentionally there, no, no, cleverly feigning slight confusion, stuttering here and there in search of the right word, rejecting one thing after another, finally finding the right one , one of a kind, and pronounces it with the contented air of a man who got out of a difficult situation only by a happy accident - and would not exchange this accident even for a hundred dollars; and he sprinkles his entire speech with witticisms relating to previous speeches. Finally, already lowered to his seat, he suddenly comes to his senses with the greatest skill, as if it had dawned on him, leans over the table and sets off the last fireworks, which eclipses the stars in the sky with its brilliance and makes everyone’s mouths open in admiration. Meanwhile, both the fireworks and the pause are the result of about a week's training.

Unfortunately, such people cannot be corrected. These are heretics, selflessly devoted to their heresy. Leave them alone. But there are speakers who can still be corrected. Speakers who speak truly impromptu. I mean a person who “did not expect to be given the floor and was not prepared” - and yet hobbles and squeaks, believing that he will not be charged with an unintentional crime. Every now and then he declares: “I don’t dare detain you any longer,” repeats every minute: “one more word and I’ll finish,” but then he remembers something unimportant and continues talking. This man has no idea how long his mill has been grinding. He likes its creaking, so he creaks, and listens to himself, and enjoys, not noticing how time flies; when he finally sits down and looks into the bins, he discovers with the greatest surprise how little flour he has ground and how shamelessly he has been grinding it for a long time. It usually turns out that he said nothing - a discovery inevitable for an unprepared speaker, which, unfortunately, he is the last one present to make.

This person can still be fixed. Just like his closest relative, whom I remember meeting, the speaker who reserves two or three opening phrases, hoping that the rest will fall on him like manna from heaven, and he will pick them up on the fly. As a rule, he will be disappointed. It is not difficult to guess where the introduction he prepared ends and the impromptu begins. Sometimes such an introduction is constructed at the banquet itself; it can consist of a dozen phrases, but most often there are two, and even more often it is a single saying; but it immediately seemed so successful, bright, to the point and witty that its creator, the lucky man who laid this golden egg, cackles with satisfaction over it, and cherishes it, and polishes it, and mentally rubs his hands, imagining how beautiful everything is it will work out, although, of course, it would be better for him to lay not one egg, but several, even a full basket, if he were lucky; after all, he imagines that as soon as he speaks out loud his masterpiece, there will be such a deafening burst of applause that it will inspire him to new ideas, clothed in a brilliant form, and, consequently, the speech spoken impromptu will turn out to be immeasurably more beautiful than any other , drawn up in advance.

But there are two dangers that he overlooks: first, the historical fact that a person will never be given the floor when he expects it, and that each new speech by other speakers cools his ardor more and more; secondly, he forgets that it is unthinkable to sit for an hour and repeat a successful expression to himself without it becoming boring and gradually losing its charm.

When his turn finally comes and he blurts out a long-cherished phrase, it sounds so helpless and pitiful that everyone becomes embarrassed, and they applaud him only out of compassion; he himself thinks with pain and bitterness how unfair it is to call a country free, where a decent person is not even allowed to swear. And here, confused, discouraged and devastated, he stutters into the actual impromptu, squeezes out two or three incredibly flat witticisms and plops down in his seat, muttering under his breath: “I wish I could fall into...” He doesn’t specify, where exactly. The neighbor on the left remarks: "You're off to a very good start"; the neighbor on the right says: “I liked your beginning”; the person sitting opposite agrees: “The beginning is really good, even very good”; two or three others also mutter something like that. People consider it their duty to alleviate the suffering of the patient in this way. At the same time, they believe, they do not even doubt, that they are pouring balm, although in fact they are only pouring salt on his wounds.
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