I had heard so much about the celebrated fortune-teller Madame - - - - -, that I went to see her yesterday. She has a dark complexion naturally, and this effect is heightened by artific...

When I say that I never knew my austere father to be enamoured of but one poem in all the long half century that he lived, persons who knew him will easily believe me; when I say that I...

“MORAL STATISTICIAN.”—I don’t want any of your statistics; I took your whole batch and lit my pipe with it. I hate your kind of people. You are always ciphering out how much a man’s hea...

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...

It was night. Stillness reigned in the grand old feudal castle of Klugenstein. The year 1222 was drawing to a close. Far away up in the tallest of the castle’s towers a single light gli...

In the early eighties Mark Twain learned to ride one of the old high-wheel bicycles of that period. He wrote an account of his experience, but did not offer it for publication. The form...

As I understand it, what you desire is information about ‘my first lie, and how I got out of it.’ I was born in 1835; I am well along, and my memory is not as good as it was. If you had...

Once there was a good little boy by the name of Jacob Blivens. He always obeyed his parents, no matter how absurd and unreasonable their demands were; and he always learned his book, an...

TO THE HONORABLE THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES IN CONGRESS ASSEMBLED: Whereas, The Constitution guarantees equal rights to all, backed by the Declaration of Independence; and ...

These two were distantly related to each other—seventh cousins, or something of that sort. While still babies they became orphans, and were adopted by the Brants, a childless couple, wh...

He arrives just as regularly as the clock strikes nine in the morning. And so he even beats the editor sometimes, and the porter must leave his work and climb two or three pairs of stai...

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 ...

Once or twice a year I get a letter of a certain pattern, a pattern that never materially changes, in form and substance, yet I cannot get used to that letter—it always astonishes me. I...

'It is the first time since the dawn-days of Creation that a Voice has gone crashing through space with such placid and complacent confidence and command.' This last summer, when I was ...

Once upon a time an artist who had painted a small and very beautiful picture placed it so that he could see it in the mirror. He said, “This doubles the distance and softens it, and it...