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

>This way to the Whirlpool

 

This way to Goat Island

 

Cave of the Winds this way

 

She says this park would make a tidy summer resort if there was

any custom for it. Summer resort—another invention of hers—

just words, without any meaning. What is a summer resort?

But it is best not to ask her, she has such a rage for explaining.

 

FRIDAY.—She has taken to beseeching me to stop going over the Falls.

What harm does it do? Says it makes her shudder. I wonder why;

I have always done it—always liked the plunge, and coolness.

I supposed it was what the Falls were for. They have no other

use that I can see, and they must have been made for something.

She says they were only made for scenery—like the rhinoceros and

the mastodon.

 

I went over the Falls in a barrel—not satisfactory to her.

Went over in a tub—still not satisfactory. Swam the Whirlpool and

the Rapids in a fig-leaf suit. It got much damaged. Hence, tedious

complaints about my extravagance. I am too much hampered here.

What I need is a change of scene.

 

SATURDAY.—I escaped last Tuesday night, and traveled two days,

and built me another shelter in a secluded place, and obliterated my

tracks as well as I could, but she hunted me out by means of a beast

which she has tamed and calls a wolf, and came making that pitiful

noise again, and shedding that water out of the places she looks with.

I was obliged to return with her, but will presently emigrate again

when occasion offers. She engages herself in many foolish things;

among others; to study out why the animals called lions and tigers

live on grass and flowers, when, as she says, the sort of teeth they

wear would indicate that they were intended to eat each other.

This is foolish, because to do that would be to kill each other,

and that would introduce what, as I understand, is called “death”;

and death, as I have been told, has not yet entered the Park.

Which is a pity, on some accounts.

 

SUNDAY.—Pulled through.

 

MONDAY.—I believe I see what the week is for: it is to give time

to rest up from the weariness of Sunday. It seems a good idea.

… She has been climbing that tree again. Clodded her out of it.

She said nobody was looking. Seems to consider that a sufficient

justification for chancing any dangerous thing. Told her that.

The word justification moved her admiration—and envy, too, I thought.

It is a good word.

 

TUESDAY.—She told me she was made out of a rib taken from my body.

This is at least doubtful, if not more than that. I have not

missed any rib… . She is in much trouble about the buzzard;

says grass does not agree with it; is afraid she can’t raise it;

thinks it was intended to live on decayed flesh. The buzzard must

get along the best it can with what is provided. We cannot overturn

the whole scheme to accommodate the buzzard.

 

SATURDAY.—She fell in the pond yesterday when she was looking at

herself in it, which she is always doing. She nearly strangled,

and said it was most uncomfortable. This made her sorry for the

creatures which live in there, which she calls fish, for she continues

to fasten names on to things that don’t need them and don’t come

when they are called by them, which is a matter of no consequence

to her, she is such a numbskull, anyway; so she got a lot of them out

and brought them in last night and put them in my bed to keep warm,

but I have noticed them now and then all day and I don’t see that

they are any happier there then they were before, only quieter.

When night comes I shall throw them outdoors. I will not sleep

with them again, for I find them clammy and unpleasant to lie among

when a person hasn’t anything on.

 

SUNDAY.—Pulled through.

 

TUESDAY.—She has taken up with a snake now. The other animals are glad,

for she was always experimenting with them and bothering them;

and I am glad because the snake talks, and this enables me to get

a rest.

 

FRIDAY.—She says the snake advises her to try the fruit of the tree,

and says the result will be a great and fine and noble education.

I told her there would be another result, too—it would introduce

death into the world. That was a mistake—it had been better

to keep the remark to myself; it only gave her an idea—she could

save the sick buzzard, and furnish fresh meat to the despondent

lions and tigers. I advised her to keep away from the tree.

She said she wouldn’t. I foresee trouble. Will emigrate.

 

WEDNESDAY.—I have had a variegated time. I escaped last night,

and rode a horse all night as fast as he could go, hoping to get

clear of the Park and hide in some other country before the

trouble should begin; but it was not to be. About an hour after

sun-up, as I was riding through a flowery plain where thousands

of animals were grazing, slumbering, or playing with each other,

according to their wont, all of a sudden they broke into a tempest

of frightful noises, and in one moment the plain was a frantic commotion

and every beast was destroying its neighbor. I knew what it meant—

Eve had eaten that fruit, and death was come into the world.

… The tigers ate my house, paying no attention when I ordered

them to desist, and they would have eaten me if I had stayed—

which I didn’t, but went away in much haste… . I found this place,

outside the Park, and was fairly comfortable for a few days, but she

has found me out. Found me out, and has named the place Tonawanda—

says it LOOKS like that. In fact I was not sorry she came,

for there are but meager pickings here, and she brought some

of those apples. I was obliged to eat them, I was so hungry.

It was against my principles, but I find that principles have no

real force except when one is well fed… . She came curtained

in boughs and bunches of leaves, and when I asked her what she

meant by such nonsense, and snatched them away and threw them down,

she tittered and blushed. I had never seen a person titter

and blush before, and to me it seemed unbecoming and idiotic.

She said I would soon know how it was myself. This was correct.

Hungry as I was, I laid down the apple half-eaten—certainly the

best one I ever saw, considering the lateness of the season—

and arrayed myself in the discarded boughs and branches, and then

spoke to her with some severity and ordered her to go and get some

more and not make a spectacle or herself. She did it, and after this

we crept down to where the wild-beast battle had been, and collected

some skins, and I made her patch together a couple of suits proper

for public occasions. They are uncomfortable, it is true, but stylish,

and that is the main point about clothes… . I find she is a

good deal of a companion. I see I should be lonesome and depressed

without her, now that I have lost my property. Another thing,

she says it is ordered that we work for our living hereafter.

She will be useful. I will superintend.

 

TEN DAYS LATER.—She accuses ME of being the cause of our disaster!

She says, with apparent sincerity and truth, that the Serpent assured

her that the forbidden fruit was not apples, it was chestnuts.

I said I was innocent, then, for I had not eaten any chestnuts.

She said the Serpent informed her that “chestnut” was a figurative

term meaning an aged and moldy joke. I turned pale at that,

for I have made many jokes to pass the weary time, and some of them

could have been of that sort, though I had honestly supposed

that they were new when I made them. She asked me if I had made

one just at the time of the catastrophe. I was obliged to admit

that I had made one to myself, though not aloud. It was this.

I was thinking about the Falls, and I said to myself, “How wonderful

it is to see that vast body of water tumble down there!”

Then in an instant a bright thought flashed into my head, and I let

it fly, saying, “It would be a deal more wonderful to see it tumble

UP there!”—and I was just about to kill myself with laughing at

it when all nature broke loose in war and death and I had to flee

for my life. “There,” she said, with triumph, “that is just it;

the Serpent mentioned that very jest, and called it the First Chestnut,

and said it was coeval with the creation.” Alas, I am indeed

to blame. Would that I were not witty; oh, that I had never had

that radiant thought!

 

NEXT YEAR.—We have named it Cain. She caught it while I was up country

trapping on the North Shore of the Erie; caught it in the timber a

couple of miles from our dug-out—or it might have been four, she isn’t

certain which. It resembles us in some ways, and may be a relation.

That is what she thinks, but this is an error, in my judgment.

The difference in size warrants the conclusion that it is a different

and new kind of animal—a fish, perhaps, though when I put it in the

water to see, it sank, and she plunged in and snatched it out before

there was opportunity for the experiment to determine the matter.

I still think it is a fish, but she is indifferent about what it is,

and will not let me have it to try. I do not understand this.

The coming of the creature seems to have changed her whole nature

and made her unreasonable about experiments. She thinks more

of it than she does of any of the other animals, but is not able

to explain why. Her mind is disordered—everything shows it.

Sometimes she carries the fish in her arms half the night when it

complains and wants to get to the water. At such times the water

comes out of the places in her face that she looks out of, and she

pats the fish on the back and makes soft sounds with her mouth

to soothe it, and betrays sorrow and solicitude in a hundred ways.

I have never seen her do like this with any other fish, and it

troubles me greatly. She used to carry the young tigers around so,

and play with them, before we lost our property, but it was only play;

she never took on about them like this when their dinner disagreed

with them.

 

SUNDAY.—She doesn’t work, Sundays, but lies around all tired out,

and likes to have the fish wallow over her; and she makes fool

noises to amuse it, and pretends to chew its paws, and that makes

it laugh. I have not seen a fish before that could laugh.

This makes me doubt… . I have come to like Sunday myself.

Superintending all the week tires a body so. There ought to be

more Sundays. In the old days they were tough, but now they

come handy.

 

WEDNESDAY.—It isn’t a fish. I cannot quite make out what it is.

It makes curious devilish noises when not satisfied, and says “goo-goo”

when it is. It is not one of us, for it doesn’t walk; it is not

a bird, for it doesn’t