The sheriff that lets a mob take a prisoner away from him is the lowest- down coward there is. By the statistics there was a hundred and eighty- two of them drawing sneak pay in America last year. By the way it's going, pretty soon there 'll be a new disease in the doctor-books-- sheriff complaint." That idea pleased him--any one could see it. "People will say, 'Sheriff sick again?' 'Yes; got the same old thing.' And next there 'll be a new title. People won't say, 'He's running for sheriff of Rapaho County,' for instance; they'll say, 'He's running for Coward of Rapaho.' Lord, the idea of a grown-up person being afraid of a lynch mob!" THE STOLEN WHITE ELEPHANT, by Mark Twain [MT#42][mtswe10.txt]3181 Left out of A Tramp Abroad, because it was feared that some of the particulars had been exaggerated, and that others were not true. Before these suspicions had been proven groundless, the book had gone to press. --M. T.] "Well, as to what he eats--he will eat anything. He will eat a man, he will eat a Bible--he will eat anything between a man and a Bible."--"Good very good, indeed, but too general. Details are necessary--details are the only valuable things in our trade. Very well--as to men. At one meal--or, if you prefer, during one day--how man men will he eat, if fresh?"--"He would not care whether they were fresh or not; at a single meal he would eat five ordinary men. Elephant arrived here from the south and passed through toward the forest at 11.50, dispersing a funeral on the way, and diminishing the mourners by two. RAMBLING IDLE EXCURSION, by Mark Twain [MT#43][mtrid10.txt]3182 Straight roads reveal everything at a glance and kill interest. All the journeyings I had ever done had been purely in the way of business. The pleasant May weather suggested a novelty namely, a trip for pure recreation, the bread-and-butter element left out. The Reverend said he would go, too; a good man, one of the best of men, although a clergyman. We went ashore and found a novelty of a pleasant nature: there were no hackmen, hacks, or omnibuses on the pier or about it anywhere, and nobody offered his services to us, or molested us in any way. I said it was like being in heaven. The Reverend rebukingly and rather pointedly advised me to make the most of it, then. There's cats around here with names that would surprise you. "Maria" (to his wife), "what was that cat's name that eat a keg of ratsbane by mistake over at Hooper's, and started home and got struck by lightning and took the blind staggers and fell in the well and was 'most drowned before they could fish him out?"--"That was that colored Deacon Jackson's cat. I only remember the last end of its name, which was Hold-The-Fort- For-I-Am-Coming Jackson." CARNIVAL OF CRIME IN CT., by Mark Twain [MT#44][mtccc10.txt]3183