7,68 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: Daunt Books
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In these extraordinary stories Mark Twain takes us from the sleepy banks of the Mississippi, through frontier towns, and across the deserted gold plains of California. We encounter his countryfolk in all their bizarre variety: a cannibalistic ex-senator, a compulsive gambler, phoney travelling salesmen, and a team of bumbling detectives. The breadth, skill, and comic ingenuity of these tales remind us why Mark Twain is truly the 'father of American literature'. 'Twain is still the liveliest, sharpest, most humane observational satirist and wit.' - A A Gill 'Beguiling, brusquely fantastic yarns. . .' - John Updike 'The greatest humorist of his age.' - New York Times
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014
Ähnliche
‘The father of American literature.’ William Faulkner
‘Twain is still the liveliest, sharpest most humane observational satirist and wit.’ A. A. Gill
‘Beguiling, brusquely fantastic yarns.’ John Updike
‘The greatest humorist of his age.’ New York Times
Contents
Cannibalism in the Cars
I visited St Louis lately, and on my way west, after changing cars at Terre Haute, Indiana, a mild, benevolent-looking gentleman of about forty-five, or maybe fifty, came in at one of the way-stations and sat down beside me. We talked together pleasantly on various subjects for an hour, perhaps, and I found him exceedingly intelligent and entertaining. When he learned that I was from Washington, he immediately began to ask questions about various public men, and about Congressional affairs; and I saw very shortly that I was conversing with a man who was perfectly familiar with the ins and outs of political life at the Capital, even to the ways and manners, and customs of procedure of Senators and Representatives in the Chambers of the National Legislature.
Presently two men halted near us for a single moment, and one said to the other: ‘Harris, if you’ll do that for me, I’ll never forget you, my boy.’
My new comrade’s eyes lighted pleasantly. The words had touched upon a happy memory, I thought. Then his face settled into thoughtfulness – almost into gloom. He turned to me and said, ‘Let me tell you a story; let me give you a secret chapter of my life – a chapter that has never been referred to by me since its events transpired. Listen patiently, and promise that you will not interrupt me.’
I said I would not, and he related the following strange adventure, speaking sometimes with animation, sometimes with melancholy, but always with feeling and earnestness.
THE STRANGER’S NARRATIVE
On the 19th December, 1853, I started from St Louis in the evening train, bound for Chicago. There were only twenty-four passengers, all told. There were no ladies and no children. We were in excellent spirits, and pleasant acquaintanceships were soon formed. The journey bade fair to be a happy one, and no individual in the party, I think, had even the vaguest presentiment of the horrors we were soon to undergo. At 11 p.m. it began to snow hard. Shortly after leaving the small village of Weldon, we entered upon that tremendous prairie solitude that stretches its leagues on leagues of houseless dreariness far away towards the Jubilee Settlements. The winds unobstructed by trees or hills, or even vagrant rocks, whistled fiercely across the level desert, driving the falling snow before it like spray from the crested waves of a stormy sea. The snow was deepening fast, and we knew, by the diminished speed of the train, that the engine was ploughing through it with steadily increasing difficulty. Indeed it almost came to a dead halt sometimes, in the midst of great drifts that piled themselves like colossal graves across the track. Conversation began to flag. Cheerfulness gave place to grave concern. The possibility of being imprisoned in the snow, on the bleak prairie, fifty miles from any house, presented itself to every mind, and extended its depressing influence over every spirit.
At two o’clock in the morning I was aroused out of an uneasy slumber by the ceasing of all motion about me. The appalling truth flashed upon me instantly – we were captives in a snow-drift! ‘All hands to the rescue!’ Every man sprang to obey. Out into the wild night, the pitchy darkness, the billowing snow, the driving storm, every soul leaped, with the consciousness that a moment lost now might bring destruction to us all. Shovels, hands, boards – anything, everything that could displace snow, was brought into instant requisition. It was a weird picture, that small company of frantic men fighting the banking snows, half in the blackest shadow and half in the angry light of the locomotive’s reflector.
One short hour sufficed to prove the utter uselessness of our efforts. The storm barricaded the track with a dozen drifts while we dug one away. And worse than this, it was discovered that the last grand charge the engine had made upon the enemy had broken the fore-and-aft shaft of the driving-wheel! With a free track before us we should still have been helpless. We entered the car wearied with labour, and very sorrowful. We gathered about the stoves, and gravely canvassed our situation. We had no provisions whatever – in this lay our chief distress. We could not freeze, for there was a good supply of wood in the tender. This was our only comfort. The discussion ended at last in accepting the disheartening decision of the conductor – viz.: That it would be death for any man to attempt to travel fifty miles on foot through snow like that. We could not send for help, and even if we could, it could not come. We must submit and await, as patiently as we might, succour or starvation! I think the stoutest heart there felt a momentary chill when those words were uttered.
Within the hour conversation subsided to a low murmur here and there about the car, caught fitfully between the rising and falling of the blast; the lamps grew dim; and the majority of the castaways settled themselves among the flickering shadows to think – to forget the present if they could – to sleep, if they might.
The eternal night – it surely seemed eternal to us – wore its lagging hours away at last, and the cold grey dawn broke in the east. As the light grew stronger the passengers began to stir and give signs of life, one after another, and each in turn pushed his slouched hat up from his forehead, stretched his stiffened limbs, and glanced out at the windows upon the cheerless prospect. It was cheerless indeed! – not a living thing visible anywhere, not a human habitation; nothing but a vast white desert; uplifted sheets of snow drifting hither and thither before the wind – a world of eddying flakes shutting out the firmament above.
All day we moped about the cars, saying little, thinking much. Another lingering, dreary night – and hunger.
Another dawning – another day of silence, sadness, wasting hunger, hopeless watching for succour that could not come. A night of restless slumber, filled with dreams of feasting – wakings distressed with the gnawings of hunger.
The fourth day came and went – and the fifth! Five days of dreadful imprisonment! A savage hunger looked out at every eye. There was in it a sign of awful import – the foreshadowing of a something that was vaguely shaping itself in every head – a something which no tongue dared yet to frame into words.
The sixth day passed – the seventh dawned upon as gaunt and haggard and hopeless a company of men as ever stood in the shadow of death. It must out now! That thing which had been growing up in every heart was ready to leap from every lip at last! Nature had been taxed to the utmost – she must yield. RICHARD H. GASTON, of Minnesota, tall, cadaverous, and pale, rose up. All knew what was coming. All prepared – every emotion, every semblance of excitement was smothered – only a calm, thoughtful seriousness appeared in the eyes that were lately so wild.
‘Gentlemen – It cannot be delayed longer! The time is at hand! We must determine which of us shall die to furnish food for the rest!’
MR JOHN J. WILLIAMS, of Illinois, rose and said: ‘Gentlemen – I nominate the Rev James Sawyer, of Tennessee.’
MR WM. R. ADAMS, of Indiana, said: ‘I nominate Mr Daniel Slate, of New York.’
MR CHARLES J. LANGDON: ‘I nominate Mr Samuel A. Bowen, of St. Louis.’
MR SLOTE: ‘Gentlemen – I desire to decline in favour of Mr John A. Van Nostrand, Jr., of New Jersey.’
MR GASTON: ‘If there be no objection, the gentleman’s desire will be acceded to.’
MR VAN NOSTRAND objecting, the resignation of Mr Slote was rejected. The resignations of Messrs Sawyer and Bowen were also offered, and refused upon the same grounds.
MR A. L. BASCOM, of Ohio: ‘I move that the nominations now close, and that the House proceed to an election by ballot.’
MR SAWYER: ‘Gentlemen – I protest earnestly against these proceedings. They are, in every way, irregular and unbecoming. I must beg to move that they be dropped at once, and that we elect a chairman of the meeting and proper officers to assist him, and then we can go on with the business before us understandingly.’
MR BELKNAP, of Iowa: ‘Gentlemen – I object. This is no time to stand upon forms and ceremonious observances. For more than seven days we have been without food. Every moment we lose in idle discussion increases our distress. I am satisfied with the nominations that have been made – every gentleman present is, I believe – and I, for one, do not see why we should not proceed at once to elect one or more of them. I wish to offer a resolution—’
MR GASTON: ‘It would be objected to, and have to lie over one day under the rules, thus bringing about the very delay you wish to avoid. The gentleman from New Jersey—’
MR VAN NOSTRAND: ‘Gentlemen, I am a stranger among you; I have not sought the distinction that has been conferred upon me, and I feel a delicacy.’
MR MORGAN, of Alabama: ‘I move the previous question.’
The motion was carried, and further debate shut off, of course. The motion to elect officers was passed, and under it Mr Gaston was chosen Chairman, Mr Blake, Secretary, Messrs Holcomb, Dyer, and Baldwin, a Committee on nominations, and Mr R. M. Howland, Purveyor, to assist the committee in making selections.
A recess of half an hour was then taken, and some little caucusing followed. At the sound of the gavel the meeting reassembled, and the committee reported in favour of Messrs George Ferguson, of Kentucky, Lucien Hermann, of Louisiana, and W. Messick, of Colorado, as candidates. The report was accepted.
MR ROGERS, of Missouri: ‘Mr President – The report being properly before the House now, I move to amend it by substituting for the name of Mr Hermann that of Mr Lucius Harris, of St Louis, who is well and honourably known to us all. I do not wish to be understood as casting the least reflection upon the high character and standing of the gentleman from Louisiana – far from it. I respect and esteem him as much as any gentleman here present possibly can; but none of us can be blind to the fact that he has lost more flesh during the week that we have lain here than any among you – none of us can be blind to the fact that the committee has been derelict in its duty, either through negligence or a graver fault, in thus offering for our suffrages a gentleman who, however pure his own motives may be, has really less nutriment in him—’
THE CHAIR: ‘The gentleman from Missouri will take his seat. The Chair cannot allow the integrity of the Committee to be questioned save by the regular course, under the rules. What action will the House take upon the gentleman’s motion?’
MR HALLIDAY, of Virginia: ‘I move to further amend the report by substituting Mr Harvey Davis, of Oregon, for Mr Messick. It may be urged by gentlemen that the hardships and privations of a frontier life have rendered Mr Davis tough; but, gentlemen, is this a time to cavil at toughness? is this a time to be fastidious concerning trifles? is this a time to dispute about matters of paltry significance? No, gentlemen, bulk is what we desire – substance, weight, bulk – these are the supreme requisites now – not talent, not genius, not education. I insist upon my motion.’
MR MORGAN (excitedly): ‘Mr Chairman – I do most strenuously object to this amendment. The gentleman from Oregon is old, and furthermore, is bulky only in bone – not in flesh. I ask the gentleman from Virginia if it is soup we want instead of solid sustenance? if he would delude us with shadows? if he would mock our suffering with an Oregonian spectre? I ask him if he can look upon the anxious faces around him, if he can gaze into our sad eyes, if he can listen to the beating of our expectant hearts, and still thrust this famine-stricken fraud upon us? I ask him if he can think of our desolate state, of our past sorrows, of our dark furore, and still unpityingly foist upon us this wreck, this ruin, this tottering swindle, this gnarled and blighted and sapless vagabond from Oregon’s inhospitable shores? Never!’ (Applause.)
The amendment was put to vote, after a fiery debate, and lost. Mr Harris was substituted on the first amendment. The balloting then began. Five ballots were held without a choice. On the sixth, Mr Harris was elected, all voting for him but himself. It was then moved that his election should be ratified by acclamation, which was lost, in consequence of his again voting against himself.
MR RADWAY moved that the House now take up the remaining candidates, and go into an election for breakfast. This was carried.
On the first ballot there was a tie, half the members favouring one candidate on account of his youth, and half favouring the other on account of his superior size. The President gave the casting vote for the latter, Mr Messick. This decision created considerable dissatisfaction among the friends of Mr Ferguson, the defeated candidate, and there was some talk of demanding a new ballot; but in the midst of it, a motion to adjourn was carried, and the meeting broke up at once.
The preparations for supper diverted the attention of the Ferguson faction from the discussion of their grievance for a long time, and then, when they would have taken it up again, the happy announcement that Mr Harris was ready, drove all thought of it to the winds.
We improvised tables by propping up the backs of car-seats, and sat down with hearts full of gratitude to the finest supper that had blessed our vision for seven torturing days. How changed we were from what we had been a few short hours before! Hopeless, sad-eyed misery, hunger, feverish anxiety, desperation, then – thankfulness, serenity, joy too deep for utterance now. That I know was the cheeriest hour of my eventful life. The wind howled, and blew the snow wildly about our prison-house, but they were powerless to distress us anymore. I liked Harris. He might have been better done, perhaps, but I am free to say that no man ever agreed with me better than Harris, or afforded me so large a degree of satisfaction. Messick was very well, though rather high-flavoured, but for genuine nutritiousness and delicacy of fibre, give me Harris. Messick had his good points – I will not attempt to deny it, nor do I wish to do it – but he was no more fitted for breakfast than a mummy would be, sir – not a bit. Lean? – why, bless me! – and tough? Ah, he was very tough! You could not imagine it – you could never imagine anything like it.
‘Do you mean to tell me that—’
Do not interrupt me, please. After breakfast we elected a man by the name of Walker, from Detroit, for supper. He was very good. I wrote his wife so afterwards. He was worthy of all praise. I shall always remember Walker. He was a little rare, but very good. And then the next morning we had Morgan, of Alabama, for breakfast. He was one of the finest men I ever sat down to – handsome, educated, refined, spoke several languages fluently – a perfect gentleman – he was a perfect gentleman, and singularly juicy. For supper we had that Oregon patriarch, and he was a fraud, there is no question about it – old, scraggy, tough – nobody can picture the reality. I finally said, gentlemen, you can do as you like, but I will wait for another election. And Grimes, of Illinois, said, ‘Gentlemen, I will wait also. When you elect a man that has something to recommend him, I shall be glad to join you again.’ It soon became evident that there was general dissatisfaction with Davis, of Oregon, and so, to preserve the goodwill that had prevailed so pleasantly since we had had Harris, an election was called, and the result of it was that Baker, of Georgia, was chosen. He was splendid! Well, well – after that we had Doolittle, and Hawkins, and McElroy (there was some complaint about McElroy, because he was uncommonly short and thin), and Penrod, and two Smiths, and Bailey (Bailey had a wooden leg, which was clear loss, but he was otherwise good), and an Indian boy, and an organ-grinder, and a gentleman by the name of Buckminster – a poor stick of a vagabond that wasn’t any good for company and no account for breakfast. We were glad we got him elected before relief came.
‘And so the blessed relief did come at last?’
Yes, it came one bright sunny morning, just after election. John Murphy was the choice, and there never was a better, I am willing to testify; but John Murphy came home with us, in the train that came to succour us, and lived to marry the widow Harris—
‘Relict of—’
Relict of our first choice. He married her, and is happy and respected and prosperous yet. Ah, it was like a novel, sir – it was like a romance. This is my stopping-place, sir; I must bid you goodbye. Anytime that you can make it convenient to tarry a day or two with me, I shall be glad to have you. I like you, sir; I have conceived an affection for you. I could like you as well as I liked Harris himself, sir. Good day, sir, and a pleasant journey.
He was gone. I never felt so stunned, so distressed, so bewildered in my life. But in my soul I was glad he was gone. With all his gentleness of manner and his soft voice, I shuddered whenever he turned his hungry eye upon me, and when I heard that I had achieved his perilous affection, and that I stood almost with the late Harris in his esteem, my heart fairly stood still!
I was bewildered beyond description. I did not doubt his word; I could not question a single item in a statement so stamped with the earnestness of truth as his; but its dreadful details overpowered me, and threw my thoughts into hopeless confusion.
I saw the conductor looking at me. I said, ‘Who is that man?’
‘He was a member of Congress once, and a good one. But he got caught in a snowdrift in the cars, and like to been starved to death. He got so frostbitten and frozen up generally, and used up for want of something to eat, that he was sick and out of his head two or three months afterwards. He is all right now, only he is a monomaniac, and when he gets on that old subject he never stops till he has eat up that whole carload of people he talks about. He would have finished the crowd by this time, only he had to get out here. He has got their names as pat as ABC. When he gets them all eat up but himself, he always says: “Then the hour for the usual election for breakfast having arrived, and there being no opposition, I was duly elected, after which, there being no objections offered, I resigned. Thus I am here.”’
I felt inexpressibly relieved to know that I had only been listening to the harmless vagaries of a madman, instead of the genuine experiences of a bloodthirsty cannibal.
Jim Smiley and his Jumping Frog
Mr A. Ward,
DEAR SIR: – Well, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and I inquired after your friend Leonidas W. Smiley, as you requested me to do, and I hereunto append the result. If you can get any information out of it you are cordially welcome to it. I have a lurking suspicion that your Leonidas W. Smiley is a myth – that you never knew such a personage, and that you only conjectured that if I asked old Wheeler about him it would remind him of his infamous Jim Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me nearly to death with some infernal reminiscence of him as long and tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was your design, Mr Ward, it will gratify you to know that it succeeded.
I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the bar-room stove of the little old dilapidated tavern in the ancient mining camp of Boomerang, and I noticed that he was fat and bald-headed, and had an expression of winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance. He roused up and gave me good-day. I told him a friend of mine had commissioned me to make some inquiries about a cherished companion of his boyhood named Leonidas W. Smiley – Rev Leonidas W. Smiley – a young minister of the gospel, who he had heard was at one time a resident of this village of Boomerang. I added that if Mr Wheeler could tell me anything about this Rev Leonidas W. Smiley, I would feel under many obligations to him.
Simon Wheeler backed me into a corner and blockaded me there with his chair – and then sat down and reeled off the monotonous narrative which follows this paragraph. He never smiled, he never frowned, he never changed his voice from the quiet, gently-flowing key to which he tuned the initial sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of enthusiasm – but all through the interminable narrative there ran a vein of impressive earnestness and sincerity, which showed me plainly that so far from his imagining that there was anything ridiculous or funny about his story, he regarded it as a really important matter, and admired its two heroes as men of transcendent genius in finesse. To me, the spectacle of a man drifting serenely along through such a queer yarn without ever smiling was exquisitely absurd. As I said before, I asked him to tell me what he knew of Rev Leonidas W. Smiley, and he replied as follows. I let him go on in his own way, and never interrupted him once.
* * *
There was a feller here once by the name of Jim Smiley, in the winter of ’49 – or maybe it was the spring of ’50 – I don’t recollect exactly, somehow, though what makes me think it was one or the other is because I remember the big flume wasn’t finished when he first come to the camp; but anyway, he was the curiousest man about always betting on anything that turned up you ever see, if he could get anybody to bet on the other side, and if he couldn’t he’d change sides – any way that suited the other man would suit him – any way just so’s he got a bet, he was satisfied. But still, he was lucky – uncommon lucky; he most always come out winner. He was always ready and laying for a chance; there couldn’t be no solitary thing mentioned but what that feller’d offer to bet on it – and take any side you please, as I was just telling you: if there was a horse race, you’d find him flush or you find him busted at the end of it; if there was a dogfight, he’d bet on it; if there was a catfight, he’d bet on it; if there was a chickenfight, he’d bet on it; why if there was two birds setting on a fence, he would bet you which one would fly first – or if there was a camp meeting he would be there reglar to bet on parson Walker, which he judged to be the best exhorter about here, and so he was, too, and a good man; if he even see a straddle-bug start to go anywheres, he would bet you how long it would take him to get wherever he was going to, and if you took him up he would foller that straddle-bug to Mexico but what he would find out where he was bound for and how long he was on the road. Lots of the boys here has seen that Smiley and can tell you about him. Why, it never made no difference to him – he would bet on anything – the dangdest feller. Parson Walker’s wife laid very sick, once, for a good while, and it seemed as if they warn’t going to save her; but one morning he come in and Smiley asked him how she was, and he said she was considerable better – thank the Lord for his inf’nit mercy – and coming on so smart that with the blessing of Providence she’d get well yet – and Smiley, before he thought, says, ‘Well, I’ll resk two and a half that she don’t anyway.’
