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The Curious Republic of Gondour, and Other Whimsical Sketches As soon as I had learned to speak the language a little, I became greatly interested in the people and the system of government. I found that the nation had at first tried universal suffrage...

Goldsmith's Friend Abroad Again DEAR CHING-FOO: It is all settled, and I am to leave my oppressed and overburdened native land and cross the sea to that noble realm where all are free and all equal, and none reviled or abusedAmerica! America, whose precious...

1601: Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors Born irreverent, scrawled Mark Twain on a scratch pad, like all other people I have ever known or heard ofI am hoping to remain so while there are any...

Sketches New and Old MY WATCH POLITICAL ECONOMY THE JUMPING FROG JOURNALISM IN TENNESSEE THE STORY OF THE BAD LITTLE BOY THE STORY OF THE GOOD LITTLE BOY A COUPLE OF POEMS BY TWAIN AND MOORE NIAGARA ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS TO RAISE POULTRY EXPERIENCE...

Mark Twain's Speeches If I were to sell the reader a barrel of molasses, and he, instead of sweetening his substantial dinner with the same at judicious intervals, should eat the entire barrel at one sitting, and then abuse me for making him sick,...

Christian Science Book I of this volume occupies a quarter or a third of the volume, and consists of matter written about four years ago, but not hitherto published in book form. It contained errors of judgment and of fact. I have now corrected...

The Mysterious Stranger, and Other Stories Note: The Mysterious Stranger was written in 1898 and never finished. The editors of Twain's Collected Works completed the story prior to publication. At what point in this work Twain left off and where the editor's began is...

Those Extraordinary Twins A man who is not born with the novel-writing gift has a troublesome time of it when he tries to build a novel. I know this from experience. He has no clear idea of his story; in fact he has no...

Alonzo Fitz, and Other Stories It was well along in the forenoon of a bitter winter's day. The town of Eastport, in the state of Maine, lay buried under a deep snow that was newly fallen. The customary bustle in the streets was wanting....

The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut I was feeling blithe, almost jocund. I put a match to my cigar, and just then the morning's mail was handed in. The first superscription I glanced at was in a handwriting that sent...

Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion All the journeyings I had ever done had been purely in the way of business. The pleasant May weather suggested a novelty namely, a trip for pure recreation, the bread-and-butter element left out. The Reverend said he...

The Stolen White Elephant The following curious history was related to me by a chance railway acquaintance. He was a gentleman more than seventy years of age, and his thoroughly good and gentle face and earnest and sincere manner imprinted the unmistakable stamp of...

A Double Barrelled Detective Story The first scene is in the country, in Virginia; the time, 1880. There has been a wedding, between a handsome young man of slender means and a rich young girla case of love at first sight and a precipitate...

The American Claimant CHAPTER III. Mrs. Sellers pronounces the colonel the same old scheming, generous, good-hearted, moonshiny, hopeful, no-account failure he always wasHe takes in Danl and JinnyThe colonel originates Pigs in the CloverHe offers one of his art treasures to propitiate SuggsOne-armed Pete;...

The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today CHAPTER I. Squire Hawkins and His Tennessee LandHe Decides to Remove to Missouri CHAPTER II. He Meets With and Adopts the Boy Clay CHAPTER III Uncle Daniels Apparition and PrayeR CHAPTER IV The Steamboat Explosion CHAPTER V...

Roughing It This book is merely a personal narrative, and not a pretentious history or a philosophical dissertation. It is a record of several years of variegated vagabondizing, and its object is rather to help the resting reader while away an idle hour than...

The Innocents Abroad This book is a record of a pleasure trip. If it were a record of a solemn scientific expedition, it would have about it that gravity, that profundity, and that impressive incomprehensibility which are so proper to works of that kind,...

Mark Twain's Burlesque Autobiography Two or three persons having at different times intimated that if I would write an autobiography they would read it, when they got leisure, I yield at last to this frenzied public demand, and herewith tender my history: Ours is...

A Dog's Tale My father was a St. Bernard, my mother was a collie, but I am a Presbyterian. This is what my mother told me, I do not know these nice distinctions myself. To me they are only fine large words meaning nothing....

Essays on Paul Bourget He reports the American joke correctly. In Boston they ask, How much does he know? in New York, How much is he worth? in Philadelphia, Who were his parents? And when an alien observer turns his telescope upon usadvertisedly in...