The $30,000 Bequest, Mark Twain [best book club books for discussion TXT] 📗

a dull time of it. But it is not so.

The “help” are all natives; they talk Italian to me, I answer

in English; I do not understand them, they do not understand me,

consequently no harm is done, and everybody is satisfied. In order

to be just and fair, I throw in an Italian word when I have one,

and this has a good influence. I get the word out of the morning paper.

I have to use it while it is fresh, for I find that Italian words

do not keep in this climate. They fade toward night, and next

morning they are gone. But it is no matter; I get a new one out

of the paper before breakfast, and thrill the domestics with it

while it lasts. I have no dictionary, and I do not want one;

I can select words by the sound, or by orthographic aspect.

Many of them have French or German or English look, and these are

the ones I enslave for the day’s service. That is, as a rule.

Not always. If I find a learnable phrase that has an imposing look

and warbles musically along I do not care to know the meaning of it;

I pay it out to the first applicant, knowing that if I pronounce it

carefully HE will understand it, and that’s enough.

 

Yesterday’s word was AVANTI. It sounds Shakespearian, and probably

means Avaunt and quit my sight. Today I have a whole phrase:

SONO DISPIACENTISSIMO. I do not know what it means, but it seems

to fit in everywhere and give satisfaction. Although as a rule

my words and phrases are good for one day and train only, I have

several that stay by me all the time, for some unknown reason,

and these come very handy when I get into a long conversation and need

things to fire up with in monotonous stretches. One of the best ones

is DOV’ `E IL GATTO. It nearly always produces a pleasant surprise,

therefore I save it up for places where I want to express applause

or admiration. The fourth word has a French sound, and I think

the phrase means “that takes the cake.”

 

During my first week in the deep and dreamy stillness of this woodsy

and flowery place I was without news of the outside world, and was

well content without it. It has been four weeks since I had seen

a newspaper, and this lack seemed to give life a new charm and grace,

and to saturate it with a feeling verging upon actual delight.

Then came a change that was to be expected: the appetite for news

began to rise again, after this invigorating rest. I had to feed it,

but I was not willing to let it make me its helpless slave again;

I determined to put it on a diet, and a strict and limited one.

So I examined an Italian paper, with the idea of feeding it on that,

and on that exclusively. On that exclusively, and without help of

a dictionary. In this way I should surely be well protected against

overloading and indigestion.

 

A glance at the telegraphic page filled me with encouragement.

There were no scare-heads. That was good—supremely good. But there

were headings—one-liners and two-liners—and that was good too;

for without these, one must do as one does with a German paper—pay our

precious time in finding out what an article is about, only to discover,

in many cases, that there is nothing in it of interest to you.

The headline is a valuable thing.

 

Necessarily we are all fond of murders, scandals, swindles,

robberies, explosions, collisions, and all such things, when we

knew the people, and when they are neighbors and friends, but when

they are strangers we do not get any great pleasure out of them,

as a rule. Now the trouble with an American paper is that it has

no discrimination; it rakes the whole earth for blood and garbage,

and the result is that you are daily overfed and suffer a surfeit.

By habit you stow this muck every day, but you come by and by to

take no vital interest in it—indeed, you almost get tired of it.

As a rule, forty-nine-fiftieths of it concerns strangers only—

people away off yonder, a thousand miles, two thousand miles,

ten thousand miles from where you are. Why, when you come to think

of it, who cares what becomes of those people? I would not give

the assassination of one personal friend for a whole massacre

of those others. And, to my mind, one relative or neighbor mixed

up in a scandal is more interesting than a whole Sodom and Gomorrah

of outlanders gone rotten. Give me the home product every time.

 

Very well. I saw at a glance that the Florentine paper would

suit me: five out of six of its scandals and tragedies were local;

they were adventures of one’s very neighbors, one might almost say

one’s friends. In the matter of world news there was not too much,

but just about enough. I subscribed. I have had no occasion

to regret it. Every morning I get all the news I need for the day;

sometimes from the headlines, sometimes from the text. I have never

had to call for a dictionary yet. I read the paper with ease.

Often I do not quite understand, often some of the details escape me,

but no matter, I get the idea. I will cut out a passage or two,

then you see how limpid the language is:

 

Il ritorno dei Beati d’Italia

 

Elargizione del Re all’ Ospedale italiano

 

The first line means that the Italian sovereigns are coming back—

they have been to England. The second line seems to mean that they

enlarged the King at the Italian hospital. With a banquet, I suppose.

An English banquet has that effect. Further:

 

Il ritorno dei Sovrani

 

a Roma

 

ROMA, 24, ore 22,50.—I Sovrani e le Principessine Reali si attendono

a Roma domani alle ore 15,51.

 

Return of the sovereigns to Rome, you see. Date of the telegram,

Rome, November 24, ten minutes before twenty-three o’clock. The

telegram seems to say, “The Sovereigns and the Royal Children expect

themselves at Rome tomorrow at fifty-one minutes after fifteen o’clock.”

 

I do not know about Italian time, but I judge it begins at midnight

and runs through the twenty-four hours without breaking bulk.

In the following ad, the theaters open at half-past twenty.

If these are not matinees, 20.30 must mean 8.30 P.M., by my reckoning.

 

Spettacolli del di 25

 

TEATRO DELLA PERGOLA—(Ore 20,30)—Opera. BOH`EME. TEATRO

ALFIERI.—Compagnia drammatica Drago—(Ore 20,30)—LA LEGGE.

ALHAMBRA—(Ore 20,30)—Spettacolo variato. SALA EDISON—

Grandiosoo spettacolo Cinematografico: QUO VADIS?—Inaugurazione della

Chiesa Russa—In coda al Direttissimo—Vedute di Firenze con

gran movimeno—America: Transporto tronchi giganteschi—I ladri

in casa del Diavolo—Scene comiche. CINEMATOGRAFO—Via Brunelleschi

n. 4.—Programma straordinario, DON CHISCIOTTE—Prezzi populari.

 

The whole of that is intelligible to me—and sane and rational, too—

except the remark about the Inauguration of a Russian Chinese.

That one oversizes my hand. Give me five cards.

 

This is a four-page paper; and as it is set in long primer leaded

and has a page of advertisements, there is no room for the crimes,

disasters, and general sweepings of the outside world—thanks be!

Today I find only a single importation of the off-color sort:

 

Una Principessa

 

che fugge con un cocchiere

 

PARIGI, 24.—Il MATIN ha da Berlino che la principessa

Schovenbare-Waldenbure scomparve il 9 novembre. Sarebbe partita

col suo cocchiere.

 

La Principassa ha 27 anni.

 

Twenty-seven years old, and scomparve—scampered—on the 9th November.

You see by the added detail that she departed with her coachman.

I hope Sarebbe has not made a mistake, but I am afraid the chances

are that she has. SONO DISPIACENTISSIMO.

 

There are several fires: also a couple of accidents. This is

one of them:

 

Grave disgrazia sul Ponte Vecchio

 

Stammattina, circe le 7,30, mentre Giuseppe Sciatti, di anni 55,

di Casellina e Torri, passava dal Ponte Vecchio, stando seduto sopra

un barroccio carico di verdura, perse l’ equilibrio e cadde al suolo,

rimanendo con la gamba destra sotto una ruota del veicolo.

 

Lo Sciatti fu subito raccolto da alcuni cittadini, che, per mezzo

della pubblica vettura n. 365, lo transporto a San Giovanni di Dio.

 

Ivi il medico di guardia gli riscontro la frattura della gamba

destra e alcune lievi escoriazioni giudicandolo guaribile in 50

giorni salvo complicazioni.

 

What it seems to say is this: “Serious Disgrace on the Old

Old Bridge. This morning about 7.30, Mr. Joseph Sciatti, aged 55,

of Casellina and Torri, while standing up in a sitting posture

on top of a carico barrow of vedure (foliage? hay? vegetables?),

lost his equilibrium and fell on himself, arriving with his left

leg under one of the wheels of the vehicle.

 

“Said Sciatti was suddenly harvested (gathered in?) by several citizens,

who by means of public cab No. 365 transported to St. John of God.”

 

Paragraph No. 3 is a little obscure, but I think it says that

the medico set the broken left leg—right enough, since there

was nothing the matter with the other one—and that several

are encouraged to hope that fifty days well fetch him around

in quite giudicandolo-guaribile way, if no complications intervene.

 

I am sure I hope so myself.

 

There is a great and peculiar charm about reading news-scraps in a

language which you are not acquainted with—the charm that always goes

with the mysterious and the uncertain. You can never be absolutely

sure of the meaning of anything you read in such circumstances;

you are chasing an alert and gamy riddle all the time, and the

baffling turns and dodges of the prey make the life of the hunt.

A dictionary would spoil it. Sometimes a single word of doubtful

purport will cast a veil of dreamy and golden uncertainty over a

whole paragraph of cold and practical certainties, and leave steeped

in a haunting and adorable mystery an incident which had been vulgar

and commonplace but for that benefaction. Would you be wise to draw

a dictionary on that gracious word? would you be properly grateful?

 

After a couple of days’ rest I now come back to my subject and seek

a case in point. I find it without trouble, in the morning paper;

a cablegram from Chicago and Indiana by way of Paris. All the words

save one are guessable by a person ignorant of Italian:

 

Revolverate in teatro

 

PARIGI, 27.—La PATRIE ha da Chicago:

 

Il guardiano del teatro dell’opera di Walace (Indiana), avendo voluto

espellare uno spettatore che continuava a fumare malgrado il diviety,

questo spalleggiato dai suoi amici tir`o diversi colpi di rivoltella.

Il guardiano ripose. Nacque una scarica generale. Grande panico

tra gli spettatori. Nessun ferito.

 

TRANSLATION.—“Revolveration in Theater. PARIS, 27TH. LA PATRIE

has from Chicago: The cop of the theater of the opera of Wallace,

Indiana, had willed to expel a spectator which continued to smoke

in spite of the prohibition, who, spalleggiato by his friends,

tir’o (Fr. TIR’E, Anglice PULLED) manifold revolver-shots;

great panic among the spectators. Nobody hurt.”

 

It is bettable that that harmless cataclysm in the theater of the opera

of Wallace, Indiana, excited not a person in Europe but me, and so

came near to not being worth cabling to Florence by way of France.

But it does excite me. It excites me because I cannot make out,

for sure, what it was that moved the spectator to resist the officer.

I was gliding along smoothly and without obstruction or accident,

until I came to that word “spalleggiato,” then the bottom fell out.

You notice what a rich gloom, what a somber and pervading mystery,

that word sheds all over the whole Wallachian