The Mysterious Stranger, and Other Stories — John Shaqi
The Mysterious Stranger, and Other StoriesTwain, Mark
General
The Mysterious Stranger, and Other Stories
Twain, Mark
Humorous stories, American; Short stories; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
When it was dark Marget took food and wine and fruit, in a basket, and
hurried away to the jail, and Satan and I walked toward my home. I was
thinking to myself that I should like to see what the inside of the jail
was like; Satan overheard the thought, and the next moment we were
in the jail. We were in the torture-chamber, Satan said. The rack was
there, and the other instruments, and there was a smoky lantern or
two hanging on the walls and helping to make the place look dim and
dreadful. There were people there--and executioners--but as they took
no notice of us, it meant that we were invisible. A young man lay bound,
and Satan said he was suspected of being a heretic, and the executioners
were about to inquire into it. They asked the man to confess to the
charge, and he said he could not, for it was not true. Then they drove
splinter after splinter under his nails, and he shrieked with the
pain. Satan was not disturbed, but I could not endure it, and had to be
whisked out of there. I was faint and sick, but the fresh air revived
me, and we walked toward my home. I said it was a brutal thing.
“No, it was a human thing. You should not insult the brutes by such a
misuse of that word; they have not deserved it,” and he went on talking
like that. “It is like your paltry race--always lying, always claiming
virtues which it hasn't got, always denying them to the higher animals,
which alone possess them. No brute ever does a cruel thing--that is the
monopoly of those with the Moral Sense. When a brute inflicts pain he
does it innocently; it is not wrong; for him there is no such thing
as wrong. And he does not inflict pain for the pleasure of inflicting
it--only man does that. Inspired by that mongrel Moral Sense of his!
A sense whose function is to distinguish between right and wrong, with
liberty to choose which of them he will do. Now what advantage can he
get out of that? He is always choosing, and in nine cases out of ten he
prefers the wrong. There shouldn't be any wrong; and without the Moral
Sense there couldn't be any. And yet he is such an unreasoning creature
that he is not able to perceive that the Moral Sense degrades him to the
bottom layer of animated beings and is a shameful possession. Are you
feeling better? Let me show you something.”
Chapter 6
In a moment we were in a French village. We walked through a great
factory of some sort, where men and women and little children were
toiling in heat and dirt and a fog of dust; and they were clothed in
rags, and drooped at their work, for they were worn and half starved,
and weak and drowsy. Satan said:
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