J6 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. 



she whom I love has turned coldly from me and- shed her affections upon another. What would 

 you advise me to do ?" 



You should set your affections on another, also — or on several, if there are 

 enough to go round. Also, do everything you can to make your former flame 

 unhappy. There is an absurd idea disseminated in novels, that the happier a girl 

 is with another man, the happier it makes the old lover she has blighted. .Don't 

 allow yourself to believe any such nonsense as that. The more cause that girl 

 finds to regret that she did not marry you, the more comfortable you will feel over 

 it. It isn't poetical, but it is mighty sound doctrine. 



" Arithmeticus." Virginia, Nevada. — " If it would take a cannon ball 3 1-3 seconds to travel 

 four miles, and 3 3-8 seconds to travel the next four, and 3 5-8 to travel the next four, and if its 

 rate of progress continued to diminish in the same ratio, how long would it take it to go fifteen 

 huitdred millions of miles ? 



I don't know. 



" Ambitious Learner," Oakland. — Yes ; you are right — America was not discov- 

 ered by Alexander Selkirk. 



" Discarded Lover." — I loved, and still love, the beautiful Edwitha Howard, and intended to 

 marry her. Yet, during my temporary absence at Benicia, last week, alas ! she married Jones. Is 

 my happiness to be thus blasted for life ? Have I no redress ? " 



Of course you have. All the law, written and unwritten, is on you side. The 

 intention and not the act constitutes crime — in other words, constitutes the deed. 

 If you call your bosom friend a fool, and intend it for an insult, it is an insult ; but 

 if you do it playfully, and meaning no insult, it is not an insult. If you discharge 

 a pistol accidentally, and kill a man, you can go free, for you have done no murder ; 

 but if you try to kill a man, and manifestly intend to kill him, but fail utterly to do 

 it, the law still holds that the intention constituted the crime, and you are guilty of 

 murder. Ergo, if you had married Edwitha accidentally, and without really intend- 

 ing to do it, you would not actually be married to her at all, because the act of 

 marriage could not be complete without the intention. And ergo, in the strict spirit 

 of the law, since you deliberately intended to marry Edwitha, and didn't do it, you 



