We saw a tree that bears grapes, and just as calmly and unostentatiously as a vine would do it. We saw an india-rubber-tree, but out of season, possibly, so there were no shoes on it, nor suspenders, nor anything that a person would properly expect to find there. This gave it an impressively fraudulent look. There was exactly one mahogany tree on the island. I know this to be reliable, because I saw a man who said he had counted it many a time and could not be mistaken. He was a man with a harelip and a pure heart, and everybody said he was as true as steel. Such men are all too few. _FROM_ “PUDD’NHEAD WILSON’S CALENDAR” (1892–3) Tell the truth or trump—but get the trick. Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple’s sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent. Then he would have eaten the serpent. Whosoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world. Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one was, that they escaped teething. There is this trouble about special providences—namely, there is so often a doubt as to which party was intended to be the beneficiary. In the case of the children, the bears, and the prophet, the bears got more real satisfaction out of the episode than the prophet did, because they got the children. Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education. Remarks of Dr. Baldwin’s, concerning upstarts: We don’t care to eat toadstools that think they are truffles. Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry. Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed down-stairs a step at a time. One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives. The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money. Consider well the proportions of things. It is better to be a young junebug than an old bird of paradise. Why is it that we rejoice at birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved. It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition. There was once a man who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained that there were too many prehistoric toads in it. All say, “How hard it is that we have to die”—a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live. When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.