Authors, American -- 19th century -- Biography; Humorists, American -- 19th century -- Biography; Twain, Mark, 1835-1910
Papa's appearance has been described many times, but very
incorrectly. He has beautiful gray hair, not any too thick or any
too long, but just right; a Roman nose, which greatly improves the
beauty of his features; kind blue eyes and a small mustache. He has
a wonderfully shaped head and profile. He has a very good
figure--in short, he is an extrodinarily fine looking man. All his
features are perfect, except that he hasn't extrodinary teeth. His
complexion is very fair, and he doesn't ware a beard. He is a very
good man and a very funny one. He _has_ got a temper, but we all of
us have in this family. He is the loveliest man I ever saw or ever
hope to see--and oh, so absent-minded. He does tell perfectly
delightful stories. Clara and I used to sit on each arm of his
chair and listen while he told us stories about the pictures on the
wall.
I remember the story-telling days vividly. They were a difficult and
exacting audience--those little creatures.
Along one side of the library, in the Hartford home, the bookshelves
joined the mantelpiece--in fact there were shelves on both sides of the
mantelpiece. On these shelves, and on the mantelpiece, stood various
ornaments. At one end of the procession was a framed oil-painting of a
cat's head, at the other end was a head of a beautiful young girl,
life-size--called Emmeline, because she looked just about like that--an
impressionist water-color. Between the one picture and the other there
were twelve or fifteen of the bric-a-brac things already mentioned; also
an oil-painting by Elihu Vedder, "The Young Medusa." Every now and then
the children required me to construct a romance--always impromptu--not a
moment's preparation permitted--and into that romance I had to get all
that bric-a-brac and the three pictures. I had to start always with the
cat and finish with Emmeline. I was never allowed the refreshment of a
change, end-for-end. It was not permissible to introduce a bric-a-brac
ornament into the story out of its place in the procession.
These bric-a-bracs were never allowed a peaceful day, a reposeful day, a
restful Sabbath. In their lives there was no Sabbath, in their lives
there was no peace; they knew no existence but a monotonous career of
violence and bloodshed. In the course of time, the bric-a-brac and the
pictures showed wear. It was because they had had so many and such
tumultuous adventures in their romantic careers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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