Yes, but you did; you lied to him."--I felt a guilty pang--in truth, I had felt it forty times before that tramp had traveled a block from my door--but still I resolved to make a show of feeling slandered; so I said: "This is a baseless impertinence. I said to the tramp--"-- "There--wait. You were about to lie again. I know what you said to him. You said the cook was gone down-town and there was nothing left from breakfast. Two lies. You knew the cook was behind the door, and plenty of provisions behind her." I never did a thing in all my life, virtuous or otherwise, that I didn't repent of in twenty-four hours. In conclusion, I wish to state, by way of advertisement, that medical colleges desiring assorted tramps for scientific purposes, either by the gross, by cord measurement, or per ton, will do well to examine the lot in my cellar before purchasing elsewhere, as these were all selected and prepared by myself, and can be had at a low rate; because I wish to clear, out my stock and get ready for the spring trade. ALONZO FITZ AND OTHERS, by Mark Twain [MT#45][mtlaf10.txt]3184 It was well along in the forenoon of a bitter winter's day. The town of Eastport, in the state of Maine, lay buried under a deep snow that was newly fallen. The customary bustle in the streets was wanting. One could look long distances down them and see nothing but a dead-white emptiness, with silence to match. Of course I do not mean that you could see the silence--no, you could only hear it. "That clock's wrong again. That clock hardly ever knows what time it is; and when it does know, it lies about it--which amounts to the same thing. Alfred!" THOSE EXTRAORDINARY TWINS, by Mark Twain [MT#46][mtext10.txt]3185 A man who is born with the novel-writing gift has a troublesome time of it when he tries to build a novel. I know this from experience. He has no clear idea of his story; in fact he has no story. He merely has some people in his mind, and an incident or two, also a locality. He knows these people, he knows the selected locality, and he trusts that he can plunge those people into those incidents with interesting results. So he goes to work. To write a novel? No--that is a thought which comes later; in the beginning he is only proposing to tell a little tale; a very little tale; a six-page tale. But as it is a tale which he is not acquainted with, and can only find out what it is by listening as it goes along telling itself, it is more than apt to go on and on and on till it spreads itself into a book. I know about this, because it has happened to me so many times.