Mark Twain

Name: Life on the Mississippi — Chapter 54
Author: Mark Twain

Life on the Mississippi — Chapter 54 (1883)

Summary

“Life on the Mississippi — Chapter 54”, published in 1883, is a work by Mark Twain. It explores elements such as Lem Hackett, Sunday and Dutchy.

Quotes from Life on the Mississippi — Chapter 54 (Mark Twain)

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi — Chapter 54 (1883)

“ When I was a small boy, Lem Hackett was drowned--on a Sunday. He fell out of an empty flat-boat, where he was playing. Being loaded with sin, he went to the bottom like an anvil. He was the only boy in the village who slept that night. We others all lay awake, repenting. We had not needed the information, delivered from the pulpit that evening, that Lem's was a case of special judgment--we knew that, already. There was a ferocious thunder-storm, that night, and it raged continuously until near dawn. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi — Chapter 54 (1883)

“ The elements were turned loose, and they rattled and banged and blazed away in the most blind and frantic manner. All heart and hope went out of me, and the dismal thought kept floating through my brain, 'If a boy who knows three thousand verses by heart is not satisfactory, what chance is there for anybody else?'
Of course I never questioned for a moment that the storm was on Dutchy's account, or that he or any other inconsequential animal was worthy of such a majestic demonstration from on high; the lesson of it was the only thing that troubled me ”

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Source: Wikisource

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi — Chapter 54 (1883)

“ Being left to myself, up there, I went on picking out old houses in the distant town, and calling back their former inmates out of the moldy past. Among them I presently recognized the house of the father of Lem Hackett (fictitious name) . It carried me back more than a generation in a moment, and landed me in the midst of a time when the happenings of life were not the natural and logical results of great general laws, but of special orders, and were freighted with very precise and distinct purposes--partly punitive in intent, partly admonitory; and usually local in application. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi — Chapter 54 (1883)

“ The pupils were better dressed and better looking than were those of my time; consequently they did not resemble their ancestors; and consequently there was nothing familiar to me in their faces. Still, I contemplated them with a deep interest and a yearning wistfulness, and if I had been a girl I would have cried; for they were the offspring, and represented, and occupied the places, of boys and girls some of whom I had loved to love, and some of whom I had loved to hate, but all of whom were dear to me for the one reason or the other, so many years gone by--and, Lord, where be they now! ”

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Source: Wikisource

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi — Chapter 54 (1883)

“ I resolved to cease from sin in all its forms, and to lead a high and blameless life for ever after. I would be punctual at church and Sunday-school; visit the sick; carry baskets of victuals to the poor (simply to fulfil the regulation conditions, although I knew we had none among us so poor but they would smash the basket over my head for my pains) ; I would instruct other boys in right ways, and take the resulting trouncings meekly ”

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Source: Wikisource

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi — Chapter 54 (1883)

“ The world looked so bright and safe that there did not seem to be any real occasion to turn over a new leaf. I was a little subdued, during that day, and perhaps the next; after that, my purpose of reforming slowly dropped out of my mind, and I had a peaceful, comfortable time again, until the next storm.
That storm came about three weeks later; and it was the most unaccountable one, to me, that I had ever experienced; for on the afternoon of that day, 'Dutchy' was drowned. Dutchy belonged to our Sunday-school. He was a German lad who did not know enough to come in out of the rain ”

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Source: Wikisource

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi — Chapter 54 (1883)

“ They are colored folk.
After breakfast, I went out alone again, intending to hunt up some of the Sunday-schools and see how this generation of pupils might compare with their progenitors who had sat with me in those places and had probably taken me as a model--though I do not remember as to that now. By the public square there had been in my day a shabby little brick church called the 'Old Ship of Zion,' which I had attended as a Sunday-school scholar ”

Mark Twain

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Quotes from Life on the Mississippi — Chapter 54 (Mark Twain)

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