It did not affect her at all; it did not budge her the fraction of an inch from her position. If this was hard for me to endure, it did not begin with the blister she put upon the raw when she began to put my sworn oath out of court with _arguments_ to prove that I was under a delusion and did not know what I was talking about. Arguments! Arguments to show that a person on a man's outside can know better what is on his inside than he does himself! I had cherished some contempt for arguments before, I have not enlarged my respect for them since. She refused to believe that I had invented my visions myself; she said it was folly: that I was only a child at the time and could not have done it. She cited the Richmond fire and the colonial mansion and said they were quite beyond my capacities. Then I saw my chance! I said she was right--I didn't invent those, I got them from Dr. Peake. Even this great shot did no damage. She said Dr. Peake's evidence was better than mine, and he had said in plain words that it was impossible for me to have heard about those things. Dear, dear, what a grotesque and unthinkable situation: a confessed swindler convicted of honesty and condemned to acquittal by circumstantial evidence furnished by the swindled! I realised, with shame and with impotent vexation, that I was defeated all along the line. I had but one card left, but it was a formidable one. I played it--and stood from under. It seemed ignoble to demolish her fortress, after she had defended it so valiantly; but the defeated know not mercy. I played that matter card. It was the pin-sticking. I said, solemnly-- "I give you my honor, a pin was never stuck into me without causing me cruel pain." She only said-- "It is thirty-five years. I believe you do think that, _now_, but I was there, and I know better. You never winced." She was so calm! and I was so far from it, so nearly frantic. "Oh, my goodness!" I said, "let me _show_ you that I am speaking the truth. Here is my arm; drive a pin into it--drive it to the head--I shall not wince." She only shook her gray head and said, with simplicity and conviction-- "You are a man, now, and could dissemble the hurt; but you were only a child then, and could not have done it." And so the lie which I played upon her in my youth remained with her as an unchallengeable truth to the day of her death. Carlyle said "a lie cannot live." It shows that he did not know how to tell them. If I had taken out a life policy on this one the premiums would have bankrupted me ages ago. MARK TWAIN. (_To be Continued._) NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW No. DCVII. JANUARY 18, 1907. CHAPTERS FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY.--X. BY MARK TWAIN. [Sidenote: (1825.)] [Sidenote: (1837.)]