Mark Twain - The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain (Illustrated)

You don't appear to make any particular mention of taking risks on blighted affections. But if you should conclude to do a little business in that line, you might put me down for six or seven chances. I wouldn't mind expense—you might enter it on the extra hazardous. I suppose I would get ahead of you in the long run anyhow, likely. I have been blighted a good deal in my time.

But now as to those "Effects of Lightning." Suppose the lightning were to strike out at one of your men and miss him, and fetch another party—could that other party come on you for damages? Or could the relatives of the party thus suddenly snaked out of the bright world in the bloom of his youth come on you in case he was crowded for time? as of course he would be, you know, under such circumstances.

You say you have "issued over sixty thousand policies, forty-five of which have proved fatal and been paid for." Now, do you know, Smith, that that looks just a little shaky to me, in a measure? You appear to have it pretty much all your own way, you see. It is all very well for, the lucky forty-five that have died " and been paid for," but how about the other fifty-nine thousand nine hundred and fifty-five? You have got their money, haven't you? but somehow the lightning don't seem to strike them and they don't get any chance at you. Wont their families get fatigued waiting for their dividends? Don't your customers drop off rather slow, so to speak?

You will ruin yourself publishing such damaging statements as that, Smith. I tell you as ll friend. If you had said that the fifty-nine thousand nine hundred and fifty-five died, and that forty-five lived, you would have issued about four tons of policies the next week. But people are not going to get insured, when you take so much pains to prove that there is such precious little use in it. Good-by, Smith!

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Although a resident of San Francisco, I never heard much about the "Art Union Association" of that city until I got hold of some old newspapers during my three months' stay in the Big Tree region of Calaveras county,. Up there, you know, they read everything, because in most of those little camps they have no libraries, and no books to speak of, except now and then a patent office report or a prayer-book, or literature of that kind, in a general way, that will hang on and last a good while when people are careful with it, like miners; but as for novels, they pass them around and wear them out in a week or two. Now there was Coon, a nice, bald-headed man at the hotel in Angel's Camp, I asked him to lend me a book, one rainy day; he was silent a moment, and a shade of melancholy flitted across his fine face, and then he said: "Well, I've got a mighty responsible old Webster Unabridged, what there is left of it, but they started her sloshing around and sloshing around and sloshing around the camp before ever I got a chance to read her myself; and next she went to Murphy's, and from there she went to Jackass Gulch, and now she's gone to San Andreas, and I don't expect I'll ever see that book again. But what makes me mad is, that for all they're so handy about keeping her sashshaying around from shanty to shanty and from camp to camp, none of 'em's ever got a good word for her. Now Coddington had her a week, and she was too many for him—he couldn't spell the words; he tackled some of them regular busters, tow'rd the middle, you know, and they throwed him; next, Dyer, he tried her a jolt, but he couldn't pronounce 'em—Dyer can hunt quail or play seven-up as well as any man, understand, but he can't pronounce worth a cuss; he used to worry along well enough, though, till he'd flush one of them rattlers with a clatter of syllables as long as a string of sluice-boxes, and then he'd lose his grip and throw up his hand; and so, finally, Dick Stoker harnessed her, up there at his cabin, and sweated over her and cussed over her and rastled with her for as much as three weeks, night and day, till he got as far as R, and then passed her over to 'Lige Pickerell, and said she was the all-firedest dryest reading that ever he struck. Well, well, if she's come back from San Andreas, you can get her, and prospect her, but I don't reckon there's a good deal left of her by this time, though time was when she was as likely a book as any in the State, and as hefty, and had an amount of general information in her that was astonishing, if any of these cattle had known enough to get it out of her." And ex-corporal Coon proceeded cheerlessly to scout with his brush after the straggling hairs on the rear of his head and drum them to the front for inspection and roll-call, as was his usual custom before turning in for his regular afternoon nap.

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A grand affair of a ball—the Pioneers'—came off at the Occidental some time ago. The following notes of the costumes worn by the belles of the occasion may not be uninteresting to the general reader, and Jenkins may get an idea therefrom:

Mrs. W. M. was attired in an elegant pâté de foie gras, made expressly for her, and was greatly admired.

Miss S. had her hair done up. She was the centre of attraction for the gentlemen and the envy of all the ladies.

Miss G. W. was tastefully dressed in a tout ensemble, and was greeted with deafening applause wherever she went.

Mrs. C. N. was superbly arrayed in white kid gloves. Her modest and engaging manner accorded well with the unpretending simplicity of her costume, and caused her to be regarded with absorbing interest by every one.

The charming Miss M. M. B. appeared in a thrilling waterfall, whose exceeding grace and volume compelled the homage of pioneers and emigrants alike. How beautiful she was!

The queenly Mrs. L. R. was attractively attired in her new and beautiful false teeth, and the bon jour effect they naturally produced was heightened by her enchanting and well-sustained smile. The manner of the lady is charmingly pensive and melancholy, and her troops of admirers desired no greater happiness than to get on the scent of her sozodont-sweetened sighs, and track her through her sinuous course among the gay and restless multitude.

Miss R. P., with that repugnance to ostentation in dress, which is so peculiar to her, was attired in a simple white lace collar, fastened with a neat pearl-button solitaire. The fine contrast between the sparkling vivacity of her natural optic and the steadfast attentiveness of her placid glass eye, was the subject of general and enthusiastic remark.

The radiant and sylph-like Mrs. T. wore hoops. She showed to great advantage, and created a sensation wherever she appeared. She was the gayest of the gay.

Miss C. L. B. had her fine nose elegantly enamelled, and the easy grace with which she blew it from time to time, marked her as a cultivated and accomplished woman of the world; its exquisitely modulated tone excited the admiration of all who had the happiness to hear it.

Being offended with Miss X., and our acquaintance having ceased permanently, I will take this opportunity of observing to her that it is of no use for her to be slopping off to every ball that takes place, and flourishing around with a brass oyster-knife skewered through her waterfall, and smiling her sickly smile through her decayed teeth, with her dismal pug nose in the air. There is no use in it—she don't fool anybody. Everybody knows she is old; everybody knows she is repaired (you might almost say built) with artificial bones and hair and muscles and things, from the ground up—put together scrap by scrap; and everybody knows, also, that all one would have to do would be to pull out her key-pin, and she would go to pieces like a Chinese puzzle. There, now, my faded flower, take that paragraph home with you and amuse yourself with it; and if ever you turn your wart of a nose up at me again, I will sit down and write something that will just make you rise up and howl.