SKETCHES NEW AND OLD
by Mark Twain
Part 4.
CONTENTS:
| THE LATE BENJAMIN FRANKLIN MR. BLOKE'S ITEM A MEDIEVAL ROMANCE PETITION CONCERNING COPYRIGHT AFTER-DINNER SPEECH LIONIZING MURDERERS A NEW CRIME A CURIOUS DREAM A TRUE STORY |
[written about 1870]
["Never put off till to-morrow what you can do day after to-morrow justas well."—B. F.]
This party was one of those persons whom they call Philosophers. He wastwins, being born simultaneously in two different houses in the city ofBoston. These houses remain unto this day, and have signs upon themworded in accordance with the facts. The signs are considered wellenough to have, though not necessary, because the inhabitants point outthe two birthplaces to the stranger anyhow, and sometimes as often asseveral times in the same day. The subject of this memoir was of avicious disposition, and early prostituted his talents to the inventionof maxims and aphorisms calculated to inflict suffering upon the risinggeneration of all subsequent ages. His simplest acts, also, werecontrived with a view to their being held up for the emulation of boysforever—boys who might otherwise have been happy. It was in this spiritthat he became the son of a soap-boiler, and probably for no other reasonthan that the efforts of all future boys who tried to be anything mightbe looked upon with suspicion unless they were the sons of soap-boilers.With a malevolence which is without parallel in history, he would workall day, and then sit up nights, and let on to be studying algebra by thelight of a smoldering fire, so that all other boys might have to do thatalso, or else have Benjamin Franklin thrown up to them.