Curious Republic Of Gondour, And Other Curious Whimsical Sketches

by Mark Twain

  the effect that yesterday France and Prussia were simultaneously invaded

  by the two bodies of troops which lately assembled on the border. Both

  armies conducted their invasions secretly and are now hunting around for

  each other on opposite sides of the border.

  Russia espouses the cause of France. She will bring 200,000 men to the

  field.

  England continues to remain neutral.

  Firing was heard yesterday in the direction of Blucherberg, and for a

  while the excitement was intense. However the people reflected that the

  country in that direction is uninhabitable, and impassable by anything

  but birds, they became quiet again.

  The Emperor sends his troops to the field with immense enthusiasm. He

  will lead them in person, when they return.

  .....................

  Fourth Day

  THE EUROPEAN WAR!

  NO BATTLE YET!!

  THE TROOPS GROWING OLD!

  BUT BITTER STRIFE IMMINENT!

  PRODIGIOUS EXCITEMENT!

  THE INVASIONS SUCCESSFULLY ACCOMPLISHED

  AND THE INVADERS SAFE!

  RUSSIA SIDES WITH BOTH SIDES

  ENGLAND WILL FIGHT BOTH!

  LONDON, Friday.

  No battle has been fought thus far, but a million impetuous soldiers are

  gritting their teeth at each other across the border, and the most

  serious fears entertained that if they do not die of old age first, there

  will be bloodshed in this war yet.

  The prodigious patriotic excitement goes on. In Prussia, per Prussian

  telegrams, though contradicted from France. In France, per French

  telegrams, though contradicted from Prussia.

  The Prussian invasion of France was a magnificent success. The military

  failed to find the French, but made good their return to Prussia without

  the loss of a single man. The French invasion of Prussia is also

  demonstrated to have been a brilliant and successful achievement. The

  army failed to find the Prussians, but made good their return to the

  Vaterland without bloodshed, after having invaded as much as they wanted

  to.

  There is glorious news from Russia to the effect that she will side with

  both sides.

  Also from England--she will fight both sides.

  ....................

  LONDON, Thursday evening.

  I rushed over too soon. I shall return home on Tuesday's steamer and

  wait until the war begins. M. T.

  THE WILD MAN INTERVIEWED

  [From the Buffalo Express, September 18, 1869.]

  There has been so much talk about the mysterious "wild man" out there in

  the West for some time, that I finally felt it was my duty to go out and

  interview him. There was something peculiarly and touchingly romantic

  about the creature and his strange actions, according to the newspaper

  reports. He was represented as being hairy, long-armed, and of great

  strength and stature; ugly and cumbrous; avoiding men, but appearing

  suddenly and unexpectedly to women and children; going armed with a club,

  but never molesting any creature, except sheep, or other prey; fond of

  eating and drinking, and not particular about the quality, quantity, or

  character of the beverages and edibles; living in the woods like a wild

  beast, but never angry; moaning, and sometimes howling, but never

  uttering articulate sounds.

  Such was "Old Shep" as the papers painted him. I felt that the story of

  his life must be a sad one--a story of suffering, disappointment, and

  exile--a story of man's inhumanity to man in some shape or other--and I

  longed to persuade the secret from him.

  .....................

  "Since you say you are a member of the press," said the wild man, "I am

  willing to tell you all you wish to know. Bye and bye you will

  comprehend why it is that I wish to unbosom myself to a newspaper man

  when I have so studiously avoided conversation with other people. I will

  now unfold my strange story. I was born with the world we live upon,

  almost. I am the son of Cain."

  "What?"

  "I was present when the flood was announced."

  "Which?"

  "I am the father of the Wandering Jew."

  "Sir?"

  I moved out of range of his club, and went on taking notes, but keeping a

  wary eye on him all the while. He smiled a melancholy smile and resumed:

  "When I glance back over the dreary waste of ages, I see many a

  glimmering and mark that is familiar to my memory. And oh, the leagues

  I have travelled! the things I have seen! the events I have helped to

  emphasise! I was at the assassination of Caesar. I marched upon Mecca

  with Mahomet. I was in the Crusades, and stood with Godfrey when he

  planted the banner of the cross on the battlements of Jerusalem. I--"

  "One moment, please. Have you given these items to any other journal?

  Can I--"

  "Silence. I was in the Pinta's shrouds with Columbus when America burst

  upon his vision. I saw Charles I beheaded. I was in London when the

  Gunpowder Plot was discovered. I was present at the trial of Warren

  Hastings. I was on American soil when the battle of Lexington was fought

  when the declaration was promulgated--when Cornwallis surrendered--

  When Washington died. I entered Paris with Napoleon after Elba. I was

  present when you mounted your guns and manned your fleets for the war of

  1812--when the South fired upon Sumter--when Richmond fell--when the

  President's life was taken. In all the ages I have helped to celebrate

  the triumphs of genius, the achievements of arms, the havoc of storm,

  fire, pestilence, famine."

  "Your career has been a stirring one. Might I ask how you came to locate

  in these dull Kansas woods, when you have been so accustomed to

  excitement during what I might term so protracted a period, not to put

  too fine a point on it?"

  "Listen. Once I was the honoured servitor of the noble and illustrious"

  (here he heaved a sigh, and passed his hairy hand across his eyes) "but

  in these degenerate days I am become the slave of quack doctors and

  newspapers. I am driven from pillar to post and hurried up and down,

  sometimes with stencil-plate and paste-brush to defile the fences with

  cabalistic legends, and sometimes in grotesque and extravagant character

  at the behest of some driving journal. I attended to that Ocean Bank

  robbery some weeks ago, when I was hardly rested from finishing up the

  pow-wow about the completion of the Pacific Railroad; immediately I was

  spirited off to do an atrocious, murder for the benefit of the New York

  papers; next to attend the wedding of a patriarchal millionaire; next to

  raise a hurrah about the great boat race; and then, just when I had begun

  to hope that my old bones would have a rest, I am bundled off to this

  howling wilderness to strip, and jibber, and be ugly and hairy, and pull

  down fences and waylay sheep, and waltz around with a club, and play

  'Wild Man' generally--and all to gratify the whim of a bedlam of crazy

  newspaper scribblers? From one end of the continent to the other, I am

  described as a gorilla, with a sort of human seeming about me--and all to

  gratify this quill-driving scum of the
earth!"

  "Poor old carpet bagger!"

  "I have been served infamously, often, in modern and semi-modern times.

  I have been compelled by base men to create fraudulent history, and to

  perpetrate all sorts of humbugs. I wrote those crazy Junius letters, I

  moped in a French dungeon for fifteen years, and wore a ridiculous Iron

  Mask; I poked around your Northern forests, among your vagabond Indians,

  a solemn French idiot, personating the ghost of a dead Dauphin, that the

  gaping world might wonder if we had 'a Bourbon among us'; I have played

  sea-serpent off Nahant, and Woolly-Horse and What-is-it for the museums;

  I have interviewed politicians for the Sun, worked up all manner of

  miracles for the Herald, ciphered up election returns for the World,

  and thundered Political Economy through the Tribune. I have done all the

  extravagant things that the wildest invention could contrive, and done

  them well, and this is my reward--playing Wild Man in Kansas without a

  shirt!"

  "Mysterious being, a light dawns vaguely upon me--it grows apace--what

  --what is your name."

  "SENSATION!"

  "Hence, horrible shape!"

  It spoke again:

  "Oh pitiless fate, my destiny hounds me once more. I am called. I go.

  Alas, is there no rest for me?"

  In a moment the Wild Man's features seemed to soften and refine, and his

  form to assume a more human grace and symmetry. His club changed to a

  spade, and he shouldered it and started away sighing profoundly and

  shedding tears.

  "Whither, poor shade?"

  "TO DIG UP THE BYRON FAMILY!"

  Such was the response that floated back upon the wind as the sad spirit

  shook its ringlets to the breeze, flourished its shovel aloft, and

  disappeared beyond the brow of the hill.

  All of which is in strict accordance with the facts.

  M. T.

  LAST WORDS OF GREAT MEN --[From the Buffalo Express, September 11, 1889.]

  Marshal Neil's last words were: "L'armee fran-caise!" (The French

  army.)--Exchange.

  What a sad thing it is to see a man close a grand career with a

  plagiarism in his mouth. Napoleon's last words were: "Tete d'armee."

  (Head of the army.) Neither of those remarks amounts to anything as

  "last words," and reflect little credit upon the utterers.

  A distinguished man should be as particular about his last words as he is

  about his last breath. He should write them out on a slip of paper and

  take the judgment of his friends on them. He should never leave such a

  thing to the last hour of his life, and trust to an intellectual spirit

  at the last moment to enable him to say something smart with his latest

  gasp and launch into eternity with grandeur. No--a man is apt to be too

  much fagged and exhausted, both in body and mind, at such a time, to be

  reliable; and maybe the very thing he wants to say, he cannot think of to

  save him; and besides there are his weeping friends bothering around;

  and worse than all as likely as not he may have to deliver his last gasp

  before he is expecting to. A man cannot always expect to think of a

  natty thing to say under such circumstances, and so it is pure egotistic

  ostentation to put it off. There is hardly a case on record where a man

  came to his last moment unprepared and said a good thing hardly a case

  where a man trusted to that last moment and did not make a solemn botch

  of it and go out of the world feeling absurd.

  Now there was Daniel Webster. Nobody could tell him anything. He was

  not afraid. He could do something neat when the time came. And how did

  it turn out? Why, his will had to be fixed over; and then all the

  relations came; and first one thing and then another interfered, till at

  last he only had a chance to say, "I still live," and up he went.

  Of course he didn't still live, because he died--and so he might as well

  have kept his last words to himself as to have gone and made such a

  failure of it as that. A week before that fifteen minutes of calm

  reflection would have enabled that man to contrive some last words that

  would have been a credit to himself and a comfort to his family for

  generations to come.

  And there was John Quincy Adams. Relying on his splendid abilities and

  his coolness in emergencies, he trusted to a happy hit at the last moment

  to carry him through, and what was the result? Death smote him in the

  House of Representatives, and he observed, casually, "This is the last of

  earth." The last of earth! Why "the last of earth" when there was so

  much more left? If he had said it was the last rose of summer or the

  last run of shad, it would have had as much point in it. What he meant

  to say was, "Adam was the first and Adams is the last of earth," but he

  put it off a trifle too long, and so he had to go with that unmeaning

  observation on his lips.

  And there we have Napoleon's "Tete d'armee." That don't mean anything.

  Taken by itself, "Head of the army," is no more important than "Head of

  the police." And yet that was a man who could have said a good thing if

  he had barred out the doctor and studied over it a while. Marshal Neil,

  with half a century at his disposal, could not dash off anything better

  in his last moments than a poor plagiarism of another man's words, which

  were not worth plagiarizing in the first place. "The French army."

  Perfectly irrelevant--perfectly flat utterly pointless. But if he had

  closed one eye significantly, and said, "The subscriber has made it

  lively for the French army," and then thrown a little of the comic into

  his last gasp, it would have been a thing to remember with satisfaction

  all the rest of his life. I do wish our great men would quit saying

  these flat things just at the moment they die. Let us have their next-

  to-the-last words for a while, and see if we cannot patch up from them

  something that will be more satisfactory.

  The public does not wish to be outraged in this way all the time.

  But when we come to call to mind the last words of parties who took the

  trouble to make the proper preparation for the occasion, we immediately

  notice a happy difference in the result.

  There was Chesterfield. Lord Chesterfield had laboured all his life to

  build up the most shining reputation for affability and elegance of

  speech and manners the world has ever seen. And could you suppose he

  failed to appreciate the efficiency of characteristic "last words," in

  the matter of seizing the successfully driven nail of such a reputation

  and clinching on the other side for ever? Not he. He prepared himself.

  He kept his eye on the clock and his finger on his pulse. He awaited his

  chance. And at last, when he knew his time was come, he pretended to

  think a new visitor had entered, and so, with the rattle in his throat

  emphasised for dramatic effect, he said to the servant, "Shin around,

  John, and get the gentleman a chair." And so he died, amid thunders of

  applause.

  Next we have Benjamin Franklin. Franklin, the author of Poor Richard's

  quaint sayings; Franklin the immortal axiom-builder, who used to sit up

  at nights reducing t
he rankest old threadbare platitudes to crisp and

  snappy maxims that had a nice, varnished, original look in their

  regimentals; who said, "Virtue is its own reward;" who said,

  "Procrastination is the thief of time;" who said, "Time and tide wait for

  no man" and "Necessity is the mother of invention;" good old Franklin,

  the Josh Billings of the eighteenth century--though, sooth to say, the

  latter transcends him in proverbial originality as much as he falls short

  of him in correctness of orthography. What sort of tactics did Franklin

  pursue? He pondered over his last words for as much as two weeks, and

  then when the time came, he said, "None but the brave deserve the fair,"

  and died happy. He could not have said a sweeter thing if he had lived

  till he was an idiot.

  Byron made a poor business of it, and could not think of anything to say,

  at the last moment but, "Augusta--sister--Lady Byron--tell Harriet

  Beecher Stowe"--etc., etc.,--but Shakespeare was ready and said, "England

  expects every man to do his duty!" and went off with splendid eclat.

  And there are other instances of sagacious preparation for a felicitous

  closing remark. For instance:

  Joan of Arc said, "Tramp, tramp, tramp the boys are marching."

  Alexander the Great said, "Another of those Santa Cruz punches, if you

  please."

  The Empress Josephine said, "Not for Jo-" and could get no further.

  Cleopatra said, "The Old Guard dies, but never surrenders."

  Sir Walter Raleigh said, "Executioner, can I take your whetstone a

  moment, please?" though what for is not clear.