17° MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. 



there, and if he did, did anything happen to him ? Is he the individual that met 

 with the " distressing accident ? " Considering the elaborate circumstantiality 

 of detail observable in the item, it seems to me that it ought to contain more 

 information than it does. On the contrary, it is obscure — and not only obscure, 

 but utterly incomprehensible. Was the breaking of Mr. Schuyler's leg, fifteen 

 years ago, the " distressing accident " that plunged Mr. Bloke into unspeakable 

 grief, and caused him to come up here at dead of night and stop our press to 

 acquaint the world with the circumstance.? Or did the " distressing accident" 

 consist in the destruction of Schuyler's mother-in-law's property in early times.' 

 Or did it consist in the death of that person herself three years ago.' (albeit it 

 does not appear that she died by accident.) In a word, what did that " distress- 

 ing accident" consist in.' What did that drivelling ass of a Schuyler stand in 

 the wake of a runaway horse for, with his shouting and gesticulating, if he 

 wanted to stop him.' And how the mischief could he get run over by a 

 horse that had already passed beyond him ? And what are we to take " warning" 

 by .' and how is this extraordinary chapter of incomprehensibilities going to be 

 a " lesson " to us .' And, above all, what has the intoxicating •' bowl " got to do 

 with it, anyhow .' It is not stated that Schuyler drank, or that his wife drank, 

 or that his mother-in-law drank, or that the horse drank — wherefore, then, the 

 reference to the intoxicating bowl.' It does seem to me that if Mr. Bloke had 

 let the intoxicating bowl alone himself, he never would have got into so much 

 trouble about this exasperating imaginary accident. I have read this absurd 

 item over and over again, with all its ipsinuating plausibility, until my head 

 swims ; but I can make neither head nor tail of it. There certainly seems to 

 have been an accident of some kind or other, but it is impossible to determine 

 what the nature of it was, or who was the sufferer by it. I do not like to do it, 

 but I feel compelled to request that the next time anything happens to one of 

 Mr. Bloke's friends, he will append such explanatory notes to his account of it 

 as will enable me to find out what sort of an accident it was and whom it hap- 

 pened to. I had rather all his friends should die than that I should be driven 

 to the verge of lunacy again in trying to cipher out the meaning of another 

 such production as the above. 



