#Americans
I take the following paragraph from an article in the Boston ADVERTISER: Perhaps the most successful flights of humor of Mark Twain have been descriptions of the persons who did not app...
You have heard from a great many people who did something in the war, is it not fair and right that you listen a little moment to one who started out to do something in it but didn’t? T...
Being told I would be expected to talk here, I inquired what sort of talk I ought to make. They said it should be something suitable to youth-something didactic, instructive, or somethi...
Consider that a conversation by telephone—when you are simply sitting by and not taking any part in that conversation—is one of the solemnest curiosities of modern life. Yesterday I was...
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...
IN ENGLISH. THEN IN FRENCH. THEN CLAWED BACK INTO A CIVILIZED LANGUAGE ONCE MORE BY PATIENT, UNREMUNERATED TOIL. Even a criminal is entitled to fair play; and certainly when a man w...
[Note: This is not a fancy sketch. I got it from a clergyman who was an instructor at Woolwich forty years ago, and who vouched for its truth.—M.T.] It was at a banquet in London in hon...
In a fair valley—oh, how long ago,… Where all the broad expanse was cl… And fruitful fields and meadows st… And clear streams wandered at thei… And still lakes slept, their burni…
I have resigned. The government appears to go on much the same, but there is a spoke out of its wheel, nevertheless. I was clerk of the Senate Committee on Conchology, and I have thrown...
Will the reader please to cast his eye over the following lines, and see if he can discover anything harmful in them? I came across these jingling rhymes in a newspaper, a little while ...
[AT A FOURTH OF JULY GATHERING, IN LONDON, OF AMERICANS] MR. CHAIRMAN AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I thank you for the compliment which has just been tendered me, and to show my appreciati...
In the appendix to Croker’s Boswell’s Johnson one finds this anecdote: CATO’S SOLILOQUY.—One day Mrs. Gastrel set a little girl to repeat to him [Dr. Samuel Johnson] Cato’s Soliloquy, w...
All things change except barbers, the ways of barbers, and the surroundings of barbers. These never change. What one experiences in a barber’s shop the first time he enters one is what ...
Thirty-five years ago I was out prospecting on the Stanislaus, tramping all day long with pick and pan and horn, and washing a hatful of dirt here and there, always expecting to make a ...
“I was sitting here,” said the judge, “in this old pulpit, holding court, and we were trying a big, wicked-looking Spanish desperado for killing the husband of a bright, pretty Mexican ...
