The 30,000 Dollar Bequest and Other Stories eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 351 pages of information about The 30,000 Dollar Bequest and Other Stories.

The 30,000 Dollar Bequest and Other Stories eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 351 pages of information about The 30,000 Dollar Bequest and Other Stories.

Augustus Twain seems to have made something of a stir about the year 1160.  He was as full of fun as he could be, and used to take his old saber and sharpen it up, and get in a convenient place on a dark night, and stick it through people as they went by, to see them jump.  He was a born humorist.  But he got to going too far with it; and the first time he was found stripping one of these parties, the authorities removed one end of him, and put it up on a nice high place on Temple Bar, where it could contemplate the people and have a good time.  He never liked any situation so much or stuck to it so long.

Then for the next two hundred years the family tree shows a succession of soldiers—­noble, high-spirited fellows, who always went into battle singing, right behind the army, and always went out a-whooping, right ahead of it.

This is a scathing rebuke to old dead Froissart’s poor witticism that our family tree never had but one limb to it, and that that one stuck out at right angles, and bore fruit winter and summer.

Early in the fifteenth century we have Beau Twain, called “the Scholar.”  He wrote a beautiful, beautiful hand.  And he could imitate anybody’s hand so closely that it was enough to make a person laugh his head off to see it.  He had infinite sport with his talent.  But by and by he took a contract to break stone for a road, and the roughness of the work spoiled his hand.  Still, he enjoyed life all the time he was in the stone business, which, with inconsiderable intervals, was some forty-two years.  In fact, he died in harness.  During all those long years he gave such satisfaction that he never was through with one contract a week till the government gave him another.  He was a perfect pet.  And he was always a favorite with his fellow-artists, and was a conspicuous member of their benevolent secret society, called the Chain Gang.  He always wore his hair short, had a preference for striped clothes, and died lamented by the government.  He was a sore loss to his country.  For he was so regular.

Some years later we have the illustrious John Morgan Twain.  He came over to this country with Columbus in 1492 as a passenger.  He appears to have been of a crusty, uncomfortable disposition.  He complained of the food all the way over, and was always threatening to go ashore unless there was a change.  He wanted fresh shad.  Hardly a day passed over his head that he did not go idling about the ship with his nose in the air, sneering about the commander, and saying he did not believe Columbus knew where he was going to or had ever been there before.  The memorable cry of “Land ho!” thrilled every heart in the ship but his.  He gazed awhile through a piece of smoked glass at the penciled line lying on the distant water, and then said:  “Land be hanged—­it’s a raft!”

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The 30,000 Dollar Bequest and Other Stories from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.