My beautiful new watch had run eighteen months without losing or gaining, and without breaking any part of its machinery or stopping. I had come to believe it infallible in its judgment...

—[Being part of a chapter which was crowded out of “A Tramp Abroad.”—M.T.] There was as Englishman in our compartment, and he complimented me on—on what? But you would never guess. He c...

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...

Being the only true and reliable account ever published; taken from the Roman “Daily Evening Fasces,” of the date of that tremendous occurrence. Nothing in the world affords a newspaper...

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 h...

“The church was densely crowded that lovely summer Sabbath,” said the Sunday-school superintendent, “and all, as their eyes rested upon the small coffin, seemed impressed by the poor bl...

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 ...

I did not take temporary editorship of an agricultural paper without misgivings. Neither would a landsman take command of a ship without misgivings. But I was in circumstances that made...

I thought the matter over, and concluded I could do it. So I went down and bought a barrel of Pond’s Extract and a bicycle. The Expert came home with me to instruct me. We chose the bac...

FROM COMIC AND WITTY STORIES. I do not claim that I can tell a story as it ought to be told. I only claim to know how a story ought to be told, for I have been almo...

I had never seen him before. He brought letters of introduction from mutual friends in San Francisco, and by invitation I breakfasted with him. It was almost religion, there in the silv...

Genius, like gold and precious sto… is chiefly prized because of its r… Geniuses are people who dash of we… incomprehensible poems with astoni… and get booming drunk and sleep in…

Political Economy is the basis of all good government. The wisest men of all ages have brought to bear upon this subject the— [Here I was interrupted and informed that a stranger wished...

The nervous, dapper, “peart” young man took the chair I offered him, and said he was connected with the Daily Thunderstorm, and added: “Hoping it’s no harm, I’ve come to interview you.”...

There was a fellow traveling around in that country," said Mr. Nickerson, “with a moral-religious show—a sort of scriptural panorama—and he hired a wooden-headed old slab to play the pi...