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AT a banquet in New York, writer Mark Twain was seated next to the guest of honour, who decided to test on him some of the stories he intended to use in his speech. "I hope you haven’t heard this one," he would begin and then rashly barge on without waiting for Twain’s courteous but increasingly faint, "No, I don’t think I have." As the 14th story began, Twain lost his celebrated temper. "Sir," he declared angrily, "your previous 13 stories were old and very badly told, but at this one I positively draw the line. Not only have I heard it 13 times earlier, but I invented it."
The guest of honour, crushed, declared wanely: "I was afraid of addressing this hypocritical audience before I came here, but you’ve now destroyed the last vestiges of my self-esteem!" "Don’t lose heart," counselled Twain, "and remember, they expect very little of you." A businessman once boasted to Twain, " Before I die, I plan to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I shall climb Mount Sinai and read the Ten Commandments aloud." "I’ve a better idea," said Twain, "why don’t you stay right here in Boston and keep them?" In Richmond, Virginia, one day, Twain complained of a severe pain in the head. "It can’t be the food you ate or the air you breathe in Richmond," said a native son boastfully, "Why, we’re the healthiest town this side of the Atlantic and our death rate is already down to one person a day." "Run down to the newspaper office," begged Twain, "and see if today’s victim has died yet.". Twain wrote his Adventures of Tom Sawyer in the comfort and sexlusion of his Hartfords, Connecticut home in the summer of 1885. One great crisis occurred when a neighbour decided to teach his young nephew how to use an air gun outside Twain’s study window. "Tarnation," cried Twain leaning out of the window," take that boy elsewhere and teach him, to shoot ducks." The neighbour took him literally at his word, of course, but unfortunately, the duck he shot turned out to be a prize possession of Twain. Another neighbour of Twain in Hartford was Harriet Beexhed Stowe. Frail and failing
mentally, she used to wander into the Twain’s greenhouse and pluck
his favourite flowers. Twain fretted and fumed and wrote to Charles
Webster, his publisher and business partner: "She seems to think
that my place is Uncle Tom’s Cabin," but he did nothing
to Twain’s method of
disposing of indigent supplicants was to refer them to Charles
Webster. One such man appeared before Webster with a note that
read," Dear Charly, give this man what he wants or shoot him, I
don’t care which." Yours truly, S. L. Clemens, Webster’s
laconic footnote is "I shot him."
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