It is almost a fortnight now that I am domiciled in a medieval villa in the country, a mile or two from Florence. I cannot speak the language; I am too old not to learn how, also too busy when I am busy, and too indolent when I am not; wherefore some will imagine that […]

I found that a person of large intelligence could read this beautiful language with considerable facility without a dictionary, but I presently found that to such a parson a grammar could be of use at times. It is because, if he does not know the WERE’S and the WAS’S and the MAYBE’S and the HAS-BEENS’S […]

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 noble house, and stretches a long way back into antiquity. The earliest ancestor the […]

All infants appear to have an impertinent and disagreeable fashion nowadays of saying “smart” things on most occasions that offer, and especially on occasions when they ought not to be saying anything at all. Judging by the average published specimens of smart sayings, the rising generation of children are little better than idiots. And the […]

A Biographical Sketch The stirring part of this celebrated colored man’s life properly began with his death–that is to say, the notable features of his biography began with the first time he died. He had been little heard of up to that time, but since then we have never ceased to hear of him; we […]

I take the following paragraph from an article in the Boston ADVERTISER: AN ENGLISH CRITIC ON MARK TWAIN Perhaps the most successful flights of humor of Mark Twain have been descriptions of the persons who did not appreciate his humor at all. We have become familiar with the Californians who were thrilled with terror by […]

AMENDED OBITUARIES TO THE EDITOR: Sir,–I am approaching seventy; it is in sight; it is only three years away. Necessarily, I must go soon. It is but matter-of-course wisdom, then, that I should begin to set my worldly house in order now, so that it may be done calmly and with thoroughness, in place of […]

Riverdale-on-the-Hudson, OCTOBER 15, 1902. THE HON. THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY, WASHINGTON, D. C.: Sir,–Prices for the customary kinds of winter fuel having reached an altitude which puts them out of the reach of literary persons in straitened circumstances, I desire to place with you the following order: Forty-five tons best old dry government bonds, […]

Some one has revealed to the TRIBUNE that I once suggested to Rev. Thomas K. Beecher, of Elmira, New York, that we get up a monument to Adam, and that Mr. Beecher favored the project. There is more to it than that. The matter started as a joke, but it came somewhat near to materializing. […]

In this world of uncertainties, there is, at any rate, one thing which may be pretty confidently set down as a certainty: and that is, that this celebrated little phrase-book will never die while the English language lasts. Its delicious unconscious ridiculousness, and its enchanting na:ivet’e, as are supreme and unapproachable, in their way, as […]

[The following letter, signed by Satan and purporting to come from him, we have reason to believe was not written by him, but by Mark Twain.–Editor.] TO THE EDITOR OF HARPER’S WEEKLY: Dear Sir and Kinsman,–Let us have done with this frivolous talk. The American Board accepts contributions from me every year: then why shouldn’t […]

In Philadelphia they have a custom which it would be pleasant to see adopted throughout the land. It is that of appending to published death-notices a little verse or two of comforting poetry. Any one who is in the habit of reading the daily Philadelphia LEDGER must frequently be touched by these plaintive tributes to […]

Good little girls ought not to make mouths at their teachers for every trifling offense. This retaliation should only be resorted to under peculiarly aggravated circumstances. If you have nothing but a rag-doll stuffed with sawdust, while one of your more fortunate little playmates has a costly China one, you should treat her with a […]

The man in the ticket-office said: “Have an accident insurance ticket, also?” “No,” I said, after studying the matter over a little. “No, I believe not; I am going to be traveling by rail all day today. However, tomorrow I don’t travel. Give me one for tomorrow.” The man looked puzzled. He said: “But it […]

I never can look at those periodical portraits in THE GALAXY magazine without feeling a wild, tempestuous ambition to be an artist. I have seen thousands and thousands of pictures in my time– acres of them here and leagues of them in the galleries of Europe– but never any that moved me as these portraits […]

Often a quite assified remark becomes sanctified by use and petrified by custom; it is then a permanency, its term of activity a geologic period. The day after the arrival of Prince Henry I met an English friend, and he rubbed his hands and broke out with a remark that was charged to the brim […]

MONDAY.–This new creature with the long hair is a good deal in the way. It is always hanging around and following me about. I don’t like this; I am not used to company. I wish it would stay with the other animals. . . . Cloudy today, wind in the east; think we shall have […]

Translated from the Original SATURDAY.–I am almost a whole day old, now. I arrived yesterday. That is as it seems to me. And it must be so, for if there was a day-before-yesterday I was not there when it happened, or I should remember it. It could be, of course, that it did happen, and […]

This establishment’s name is Hochberghaus. It is in Bohemia, a short day’s journey from Vienna, and being in the Austrian Empire is of course a health resort. The empire is made up of health resorts; it distributes health to the whole world. Its waters are all medicinal. They are bottled and sent throughout the earth; […]

In those early days I had already published one little thing (‘The Jumping Frog’) in an Eastern paper, but I did not consider that that counted. In my view, a person who published things in a mere newspaper could not properly claim recognition as a Literary Person: he must rise away above that; he must […]