Samuel Langhorne Clemens

“ The last named—a park of about twelve acres, handsomely adorned with flowers, shrubs, large shade trees and statuary—is the resort of the fashionable world of Mexico for morning drive and equestrian exercise, and here may be seen some of the famous Mexican riding in all its native grace ‘and love of dis- play; for nowhere does the Mexican gentleman feel so proud as on his horse, with his splendid silver-mounted saddle and gaily ornamented serape. ”

“ There is nothing more beneficent than accident insurance. I have seen an entire family lifted out of poverty and into affluence by the simple boon of a broken leg. I have had people come to me on crutches, with tears in their eyes, to bless this beneficent institution. In all my experience of life, I have seen nothing so seraphic as the look that comes into a freshly mutilated man's face when he feels in his vest pocket with his remaining hand and finds his accident ticket all right. ”

“ Mexico wore anything but the air of a city under military rule. It was a very Babel of tongues; a panorama of varied costume; an ever-moving throng, combining the military splendor and polished civilization of Europe, with the semibarbaric elements of a strange and decadent race, retaining even to this day many of the characteristics described by the old Spanish chroniclers as existing in the days of Hernando Cortes. Austrian, Polish, French, Belgian and Mexican uniforms mingled in the crowd ”

“ Our descendants have forgotten us. My grandson lives in a stately house built with money made by these old hands of mine, and I sleep in a neglected grave with invading vermin that gnaw my shroud to build them nests withal! I and friends that lie with me founded and secured the prosperity of this fine city, and the stately bantling of our loves leaves us to rot in a dilapidated cemetery which neighbours curse and strangers scoff at. ”

“ Appropriating, in your simplicity, the property of others, has gotten you into trouble. Misrepresenting facts, in your simple innocence, has damaged your reputation with the soulless usurper. Trading for forty-rod whiskey, to enable you to get drunk and happy and tomahawk your families, has played the everlasting mischief with the picturesque pomp of your dress, and here you are, in the broad light of the nineteenth century, gotten up like the ragtag and bobtail of the purlieus of New York. ”

“ In cool mornings, before the sun was fairly up, it was worth a lifetime of city toiling and moiling, to perch in the foretop with the driver, and see the six mustangs scamper under the sharp snapping of a whip that never touched them; to scan the blue distances of a world that knew no lords but us; to cleave the wind with uncovered head, and feel the sluggish pulses rousing to the spirit of a speed that pretended to the resistless rush of a typhoon! ”

“ The nation rose as one man — though forty-nine of the revolutionists were of the other sex. The infantry threw down their pitch forks; the artillery cast aside their cocoa-nuts; the navy revolted; the emperor was seized, and bound hand and foot in his palace. He was very much depressed. He said —
"I freed you from a grinding tyranny; I lifted you up out of your degradation, and made you a nation among nations; I gave you a strong, compact, centralized government; and, more than all, I gave you the blessing of blessings — unification. ”

“ Costly and elegant furniture, libraries, pianos, paintings, and statuary, and all that goes to complete the appointments of a sumptuous mansion, are displayed oftener with reckless profusion than in conformity with good taste. The private equipages in the streets are a special means of exhibiting wealth. Many are richly ornamented with silver; mules are in general demand for carriages, though a fine span of English or American horses now and then dash along, the reins held by liveried coachmen, while behind sits the footman in all the splendor of red, green and yellow. ”

“ There will not be a dry eye on the ground. You will be a hero! Not a rough there but will envy you. Not a rough there but will resolve to emulate you. And next, a great procession will follow you to the tomb—will weep over your remains—the young ladies will sing again the hymns made dear by sweet associations connected with the jail, and, as a last tribute of affection, respect, and appreciation of your many sterling qualities, they will walk two and two around your bier, and strew wreaths of flowers on it. ”

“ Put a couple on the cow!—Put one on the cook!—scatter them all over the persecuted place till it looks like a zinc-plated, spiral-twisted, silver-mounted cane-break! Move! Use up all the material you can get your hands on, and when you run out of lightning-rods put up ram-rods, cam-rods, stair-rods, piston-rods—anything that will pander to your dismal appetite for artificial scenery, and bring respite to my raging brain, and healing to my lacerated soul! ”

“ The Emperor moreover was a liberal patron of the opera, which he generously subsidized during its stay in Mexico.
On occasions honored by the presence of Maximilian and Carlotta, the elite and fashion and the heiresses to the great fortunes of Mexico shone out in all the splendor of magnificent silks and priceless diamonds. The building was packed with representatives of the wealth and elegance of Mexico's capital. The boxes at the Imperial were taken for the season; the most desirable and highest priced having been those nearest the Empress. ”

“ All the great lords and barons of Brandenburg were assembled in the Hall of Justice in the ducal palace. No space was left unoccupied where there was room for a spectator to stand or sit. Conrad, clad in purple and ermine, sat in the Premier's chair, and on either side sat the great judges of the realm. The old Duke had sternly commanded that the trial of his daughter should proceed without favour, and then had taken to his bed broken-hearted. ”

“ Like most large cities, Mexico presents the extremes of wealth and poverty. Beggary is reduced to a system. Incorrigible offenders are known to the police as having for years imposed upon the sympathies of strangers by drugging their own children (or those hired for the purpose) and passing them off for diseased or dying. Attempts were made under the Empire to stop this, but ineffectually. The lame, the blind, and the deformed are thrust in one's path, in every stage of disgusting loathsomeness, clamorous for charity. ”

“ I reside in that old graveyard, and have for these thirty years; and I tell you things are changed since I laid this old tired frame there, and turned over, and stretched out for a long sleep, with a delicious sense upon me of being done with bother, and grief, and anxiety, and doubt, and fear, for ever and ever, and listening with comfortable and increasing satisfaction to the sexton's work, from the startling clatter of his first spadeful on my coffin till it dulled away to the faint patting that shaped the roof of my new home—delicious! ”

“ Of late years it does not seem possible for a man to so conduct himself, before killing another man, as not to be manifestly insane. If he talks about the stars, he is insane. If he appears nervous and uneasy an hour before the killing, he is insane. If he weeps over a great grief, his friends shake their heads, and fear that he is "not right." If, an hour after the murder, he seems ill at ease, pre-occupied and excited, he is unquestionably insane.
Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against insanity. There is where the true evil lies. ”

“ You never see a frog so modest and straightfor'ard as he was, for all he was so gifted. And when it come to fair and square jumping on a dead level, he could get over more ground at one straddle than any animal of his breed you ever see. Jumping on a dead level was his strong suit, you understand; and when it come to that, Smiley would ante up money on him as long as he had a red. Smiley was monstrous proud of his frog, and well he might be, for fellers that had travelled and been everywhere, all said he laid over any frog that ever they see. ”

“ And now we cannot hide our poverty and tatters in the friendly woods, for the city has stretched its withering arms abroad and taken us in, and all that remains of the cheer of our old home is the cluster of lugubrious forest trees that stand, bored and weary of a city life, with their feet in our coffins, looking into the hazy distance and wishing they were there. ”

“ While our descendants are living sumptuously on our money, right around us in the city, we have to fight hard to keep skull and bones together. Bless you, there isn't a grave in our cemetery that doesn't leak—not one. Every time it rains in the night we have to climb out and roost in the trees—and sometimes we are wakened suddenly by the chilling water trickling down the back of our necks. ”

“ A sincere compliment is always grateful to a lady, so long as you don't try to knock her down with it.
"Young Mother."—And so you think a baby is a thing of beauty and a joy forever? Well, the idea is pleasing, but not original; every cow thinks the same of its own calf. Perhaps the cow may not think it so elegantly, but still she thinks it nevertheless. I honour the cow for it. We all honour this touching maternal instinct wherever we find it, be it in the home of luxury or in the humble cow-shed. ”

“ Stripped of its filmy housings, naked, muscular and comely, the majestic Cardiff Giant loomed above me!
All my misery vanished—for a child might know that no harm could come with that benignant countenance. My cheerful spirits returned at once, and in sympathy with them the gas flamed up brightly again. Never a lonely outcast was so glad to welcome company as I was to greet the friendly giant. ”

“ I tried to get him to put up his razor, dreading that he would make for the side of my chin, my pet tender spot, a place which a razor cannot touch twice without making trouble; but he said he only wanted to just smooth off one little roughness, and in the same moment he slipped his razor along the forbidden ground, and the dreaded pimple-signs of a close shave rose up smarting and answered to the call. Now he soaked his towel in bay rum, and slapped it all over my face nastily; slapped it over as if a human being ever yet washed his face in that way. ”

“ I will remark here, by way of advertisement, that the noble charity which we have named the Hartford Accident Insurance Company, [1] is an institution which is peculiarly to be depended upon. A man is bound to prosper who gives it his custom. No man can take out a policy in it and not get crippled before the year is out. Now there was one indigent man who had been disappointed so often with other companies that he had grown disheartened, his appetite left him, he ceased to smile—said life was but a weariness. ”

“ The two gladiators fell upon each other's necks, with floods of proud and happy tears; that other second embraced me; the surgeons, the orators, the undertakers, the police, everybody embraced, everybody congratulated, everybody cried, and the whole atmosphere was filled with praise and with joy unspeakable.
It seemed to me then that I would rather be the hero of a French duel than a crowned and sceptred monarch. ”

“ It was the quickest operation that ever was. I simply saw a sudden flash in the air of clubs, brickbats, fists, bead-baskets, and moccasins—a single flash, and they all appeared to hit me at once, and no two of them in the same place. In the next instant the entire tribe was upon me. They tore half the clothes off me; they broke my arms and legs; they gave me a thump that dented the top of my head till it would hold coffee like a saucer; and, to crown their disgraceful proceedings and add insult to injury, they threw me over the Niagara Falls, and I got wet. ”

“ In about half a column of imaginary human carnage I told how a citizen had murdered his wife and nine children, and then committed suicide. And I said slyly, at the bottom, that the sudden madness of which this melancholy massacre was the result, had been brought about by his having allowed himself to be persuaded by the California papers to sell his sound and lucrative Nevada silver stocks, and buy into Spring Valley just in time to get cooked along with that company's fancy dividend, and sink every cent he had in the world. ”