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
Along in the afternoon I began to feel fatigued myself. Neither of us
had had any rest since we first started on the excursion, which was
upwards of ten hours before, though latterly we had paused awhile after
rushes, I letting on to be thinking about something else; but neither of
us sincere, and both of us waiting for the other to call game but in no
real hurry about it, for indeed those little evanescent snatches of rest
were very grateful to the feelings of us both; it would naturally be
so, skirmishing along like that ever since dawn and not a bite in the
meantime; at least for me, though sometimes as she lay on her side
fanning herself with a wing and praying for strength to get out of this
difficulty a grasshopper happened along whose time had come, and that
was well for her, and fortunate, but I had nothing--nothing the whole
day.
More than once, after I was very tired, I gave up taking her alive, and
was going to shoot her, but I never did it, although it was my right,
for I did not believe I could hit her; and besides, she always stopped
and posed, when I raised the gun, and this made me suspicious that
she knew about me and my marksmanship, and so I did not care to expose
myself to remarks.
I did not get her, at all. When she got tired of the game at last, she
rose from almost under my hand and flew aloft with the rush and whir
of a shell and lit on the highest limb of a great tree and sat down and
crossed her legs and smiled down at me, and seemed gratified to see me
so astonished.
I was ashamed, and also lost; and it was while wandering the woods
hunting for myself that I found a deserted log cabin and had one of
the best meals there that in my life-days I have eaten. The weed-grown
garden was full of ripe tomatoes, and I ate them ravenously, though I
had never liked them before. Not more than two or three times since have
I tasted anything that was so delicious as those tomatoes. I surfeited
myself with them, and did not taste another one until I was in middle
life. I can eat them now, but I do not like the look of them. I suppose
we have all experienced a surfeit at one time or another. Once, in
stress of circumstances, I ate part of a barrel of sardines, there being
nothing else at hand, but since then I have always been able to get
along without sardines.
THE McWILLIAMSES AND THE BURGLAR ALARM
The conversation drifted smoothly and pleasantly along from weather
to crops, from crops to literature, from literature to scandal, from
scandal to religion; then took a random jump, and landed on the subject
of burglar alarms. And now for the first time Mr. McWilliams showed
feeling. Whenever I perceive this sign on this man's dial, I comprehend
it, and lapse into silence, and give him opportunity to unload his
heart. Said he, with but ill-controlled emotion:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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