7° MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. 



innocence, has damaged your reputation with the soulless usurper. Trading for 

 forty-rod whisky, 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. For shame ! Remember your ancestors ! 

 Recall their mighty deeds ! Remember Uncas ! — and Red Jacket ! — and Hole in 

 the Day ! — and Whoopdedoodledo ! Emulate their achievements ! Unfurl your- 

 selves under my banner, noble savages, illustrious guttersnipes " 



"Down wid him!" "Scoop the blaggard!" "Burn him!" "Hang him!" 

 "Dhroundhim!" 



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. 



About ninety or a hundred feet from the top, the remains of my vest caught on 

 a projecting rock, and I was almost drowned before I could get loose. I finally 

 fell, and brought up in a world of white foam at the foot of the Fall, whose celled 

 and bubbly masses towered up several inches above my head. Of course I got 

 into the eddy. I sailed round and round in it forty-four times — chasing a chip 

 and gaining on it — each round trip a half mile — reaching for the same bush on the 

 bank forty-four times, and just exactly missing it by a hair's-breadth every time. 



At last a man walked down and sat down close to that bush, and put a pipe in 

 his mouth, and lit a match, and followed me with one eye and kept the other on 

 the match, while he sheltered it in his hands from the wind. Presently a puiT of 

 wind blew it out. The next time I swept around he said — 



"Got a match.'" 



"Yes; in my other vest. Help me out, please." 



" Not for Joe." 



When I came round again, I said — 



