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

tragedy. That is the charm

of the thing, that is the delight of it. This is where you begin,

this is where you revel. You can guess and guess, and have all

the fun you like; you need not be afraid there will be an end to it;

none is possible, for no amount of guessing will ever furnish you

a meaning for that word that you can be sure is the right one.

All the other words give you hints, by their form, their sound,

or their spelling—this one doesn’t, this one throws out no hints,

this one keeps its secret. If there is even the slightest slight

shadow of a hint anywhere, it lies in the very meagerly suggestive

fact that “spalleggiato” carries our word “egg” in its stomach.

Well, make the most out of it, and then where are you at?

You conjecture that the spectator which was smoking in spite

of the prohibition and become reprohibited by the guardians,

was “egged on” by his friends, and that was owing to that evil

influence that he initiated the revolveration in theater that has

galloped under the sea and come crashing through the European

press without exciting anybody but me. But are you sure,

are you dead sure, that that was the way of it? No. Then the

uncertainty remains, the mystery abides, and with it the charm.

Guess again.

 

If I had a phrase-book of a really satisfactory sort I would

study it, and not give all my free time to undictionarial readings,

but there is no such work on the market. The existing phrase-books

are inadequate. They are well enough as far as they go, but when

you fall down and skin your leg they don’t tell you what to say.

***

ITALIAN WITH GRAMMAR

 

I found that a person of large intelligence could read this beautiful

language with considerable facility without a dictionary, but I presently

found that to such a parson a grammar could be of use at times.

It is because, if he does not know the WERE’S and the WAS’S and the

MAYBE’S and the HAS-BEENS’S apart, confusions and uncertainties

can arise. He can get the idea that a thing is going to happen next

week when the truth is that it has already happened week before last.

Even more previously, sometimes. Examination and inquiry showed

me that the adjectives and such things were frank and fair-minded

and straightforward, and did not shuffle; it was the Verb that mixed

the hands, it was the Verb that lacked stability, it was the Verb that

had no permanent opinion about anything, it was the Verb that was always

dodging the issue and putting out the light and making all the trouble.

 

Further examination, further inquiry, further reflection,

confirmed this judgment, and established beyond peradventure the

fact that the Verb was the storm-center. This discovery made plain

the right and wise course to pursue in order to acquire certainty

and exactness in understanding the statements which the newspaper

was daily endeavoring to convey to me: I must catch a Verb and

tame it. I must find out its ways, I must spot its eccentricities,

I must penetrate its disguises, I must intelligently foresee and

forecast at least the commoner of the dodges it was likely to try

upon a stranger in given circumstances, I must get in on its main

shifts and head them off, I must learn its game and play the limit.

 

I had noticed, in other foreign languages, that verbs are bred

in families, and that the members of each family have certain features

or resemblances that are common to that family and distinguish it

from the other families—the other kin, the cousins and what not.

I had noticed that this family-mark is not usually the nose or the hair,

so to speak, but the tail—the Termination—and that these tails

are quite definitely differentiated; insomuch that an expert can

tell a Pluperfect from a Subjunctive by its tail as easily and as

certainly as a cowboy can tell a cow from a horse by the like process,

the result of observation and culture. I should explain that I

am speaking of legitimate verbs, those verbs which in the slang

of the grammar are called Regular. There are other—I am not meaning

to conceal this; others called Irregulars, born out of wedlock,

of unknown and uninteresting parentage, and naturally destitute

of family resemblances, as regards to all features, tails included.

But of these pathetic outcasts I have nothing to say. I do not

approve of them, I do not encourage them; I am prudishly delicate

and sensitive, and I do not allow them to be used in my presence.

 

But, as I have said, I decided to catch one of the others and break

it into harness. One is enough. Once familiar with its assortment

of tails, you are immune; after that, no regular verb can conceal

its specialty from you and make you think it is working the past

or the future or the conditional or the unconditional when it is

engaged in some other line of business—its tail will give it away.

I found out all these things by myself, without a teacher.

 

I selected the verb AMARE, TO LOVE. Not for any personal reason,

for I am indifferent about verbs; I care no more for one verb than

for another, and have little or no respect for any of them; but in

foreign languages you always begin with that one. Why, I don’t know.

It is merely habit, I suppose; the first teacher chose it,

Adam was satisfied, and there hasn’t been a successor since with

originality enough to start a fresh one. For they ARE a pretty

limited lot, you will admit that? Originality is not in their line;

they can’t think up anything new, anything to freshen up the old

moss-grown dullness of the language lesson and put life and “go”

into it, and charm and grace and picturesqueness.

 

I knew I must look after those details myself; therefore I thought

them out and wrote them down, and set for the FACCHINO and explained

them to him, and said he must arrange a proper plant, and get together

a good stock company among the CONTADINI, and design the costumes,

and distribute the parts; and drill the troupe, and be ready in three

days to begin on this Verb in a shipshape and workman-like manner.

I told him to put each grand division of it under a foreman,

and each subdivision under a subordinate of the rank of sergeant

or corporal or something like that, and to have a different uniform

for each squad, so that I could tell a Pluperfect from a Compound

Future without looking at the book; the whole battery to be under

his own special and particular command, with the rank of Brigadier,

and I to pay the freight.

 

I then inquired into the character and possibilities of the selected verb,

and was much disturbed to find that it was over my size, it being

chambered for fifty-seven rounds—fifty-seven ways of saying I LOVE

without reloading; and yet none of them likely to convince a girl

that was laying for a title, or a title that was laying for rocks.

 

It seemed to me that with my inexperience it would be foolish to go

into action with this mitrailleuse, so I ordered it to the rear

and told the facchino to provide something a little more primitive

to start with, something less elaborate, some gentle old-fashioned

flint-lock, smooth-bore, double-barreled thing, calculated to cripple

at two hundred yards and kill at forty—an arrangement suitable for a

beginner who could be satisfied with moderate results on the offstart

and did not wish to take the whole territory in the first campaign.

 

But in vain. He was not able to mend the matter, all the verbs being

of the same build, all Gatlings, all of the same caliber and delivery,

fifty-seven to the volley, and fatal at a mile and a half.

But he said the auxiliary verb AVERE, TO HAVE, was a tidy thing,

and easy to handle in a seaway, and less likely to miss stays in

going about than some of the others; so, upon his recommendation I

chose that one, and told him to take it along and scrape its bottom

and break out its spinnaker and get it ready for business.

 

I will explain that a facchino is a general-utility domestic.

Mine was a horse-doctor in his better days, and a very good one.

 

At the end of three days the facchino-doctor-brigadier was ready.

I was also ready, with a stenographer. We were in a room called

the Rope-Walk. This is a formidably long room, as is indicated

by its facetious name, and is a good place for reviews. At 9:30

the F.-D.-B. took his place near me and gave the word of command;

the drums began to rumble and thunder, the head of the forces appeared

at an upper door, and the “march-past” was on. Down they filed,

a blaze of variegated color, each squad gaudy in a uniform of its own

and bearing a banner inscribed with its verbal rank and quality:

first the Present Tense in Mediterranean blue and old gold, then the

Past Definite in scarlet and black, then the Imperfect in green

and yellow, then the Indicative Future in the stars and stripes,

then the Old Red Sandstone Subjunctive in purple and silver—

and so on and so on, fifty-seven privates and twenty commissioned

and non-commissioned officers; certainly one of the most fiery and

dazzling and eloquent sights I have ever beheld. I could not keep back

the tears. Presently:

 

“Halt!” commanded the Brigadier.

 

“Front—face!”

 

“Right dress!”

 

“Stand at ease!”

 

“One—two—three. In unison—RECITE!”

 

It was fine. In one noble volume of sound of all the fifty-seven

Haves in the Italian language burst forth in an exalting

and splendid confusion. Then came commands:

 

“About—face! Eyes—front! Helm alee—hard aport! Forward—march!”

and the drums let go again.

 

When the last Termination had disappeared, the commander said

the instruction drill would now begin, and asked for suggestions.

I said:

 

“They say I HAVE, THOU HAST, HE HAS, and so on, but they don’t say WHAT.

It will be better, and more definite, if they have something

to have; just an object, you know, a something—anything will do;

anything that will give the listener a sort of personal as well

as grammatical interest in their joys and complaints, you see.”

 

He said:

 

“It is a good point. Would a dog do?”

 

I said I did not know, but we could try a dog and see. So he sent

out an aide-de-camp to give the order to add the dog.

 

The six privates of the Present Tense now filed in, in charge

of Sergeant AVERE (TO HAVE), and displaying their banner.

They formed in line of battle, and recited, one at a time, thus:

 

“IO HO UN CANE, I have a dog.”

 

“TU HAI UN CANE, thou hast a dog.”

 

“EGLI HA UN CANE, he has a dog.”

 

“NOI ABBIAMO UN CANE, we have a dog.”

 

“VOI AVETE UN CANE, you have a dog.”

 

“EGLINO HANNO UN CANE, they have a dog.”

 

No comment followed. They returned to camp, and I reflected a while.

The commander said:

 

“I fear you are disappointed.”

 

“Yes,” I said; “they are too monotonous, too singsong, to dead-and-alive;

they have no expression, no elocution. It isn’t natural; it could

never happen in real life. A person who had just acquired a dog

is either blame’ glad or blame’ sorry. He is not on the fence.

I never saw a case. What the nation do you suppose is the matter

with these people?”

 

He thought