Merry Tales

BY MARK TWAIN Dork CHARLES L. WEBSTER CG, 1892 Copyright, 1892, CHARLES JU WEBSTER CO. All rights reserved. Ws it MttMWVV, MV, vrwiv EDITORS NOTE. THE projector of this Series has had in mind the evident desire of our people, largely occupied with mate rial affairs, for reading in a shape adapted to the amount of time at their disposal. Until recently this desire has been satisfied chiefly from foreign sources. Many re prints and translations of the little classics of other literatures than our own have been made, and much good has been done in this way. On the other hand, a great deal of rubbish has been distributed in the same fashion, to the undoubted injury of our popular taste. Now that a reasonable copyright law allows the pub lication of the better class of native literature at mod erate prices, it has seemed fitting that these volumes should consist mainly of works by American writers. As its title indicates, the Fiction, Fact, and Fancy Series will include not only fiction and poetry, but such essays, monographs, and biographical sketches as may appear, from time to time, to be called for. To no writer can the term American more justly be applied than to the humorist whose Merry Tales are here presented. It was in an effort to devise some novel method of bringing these stories, new and vi EDITORS NOTE. old, before the public, that this Series had its origin. But, aside from this, those among us who can gather figs of thistles are so few in number as to make their presence eminently desirable. NEW YORK, March, 1892. Acknffivkdgment should be made to the Century Com pany, and to Messrs. Harper L Brothers, for kind per mission to reprint several of these stories from the c v turyand Harpers Magazine CONTENTS. PAGE THE PRIVATE HISTORY OF A CAMPAIGN THAT FAILED, 9 THE INVALIDS STORY, 51 LUCK 66 THE CAPTAINS STORY, 76 A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE, 85 MRS. Me WILLIAMS AND THE LIGHTNING, . . 144 MEISTERSCHAFT, 161 MERRY TALES. THE PRIVATE HISTORY OF A CAM PAIGN THAT FAILED. YOU have heard from a great many people who did something-in the war is it not fair and right that you listen a little moment to one who started out to do something in it, but didnt Thousands entered the war, got just a taste of it, and then stepped out again, permanently. These, by their very numbers, are respectable, and are therefore entitled to a sort of voice, not a loud one, but a modest one not a boastful one, but an apologetic one. They ought not to be allowed much space among better people people who did some thing I grant that but they ought at least to be allowed to state why they didnt do any thing, and also to explain the process by which they didnt do anything. Surely this kind of light must have a sort of value. 10 THE PRIVATE HISTORY OF Out West there was a good deal of confusion in mens minds during the first months of the great trouble --a good deal of unsettledness, of leaning first this way, then that, then the other way. It was hard for us to get our bearings. I call to mind an instance of this. I was piloting on the Mississippi when the news came that South Carolina had gone out of the Union on the 2Oth of December, 1860. My pilot-mate was a New Yorker. He was strong for the Union so was I. But he would not listen to me with any patience my loyalty was smirched, to his eye, because my father had owned slaves. I said, in palliation of this dark fact, that I had heard my father say, some years before he died, that slavery was a great wrong, and that he would free the solitary ne gro he then owned if he could think it ri ht to give away the property of the family when he was so straitened in moans. My mate retorted that a mere impulse was nothing anybody could pretend to a good impulse and ent on decrying my Unionism and libeling my ances try. A month later the secession atmosphere A CAMPAIGN THAT FAILED. II had considerably thickened on the Lower Mis sissippi, and I became a rebel so did he...