MARA' TWAIN'S SKETCHES. 



I renewed the fire, and exposed the flat, honey-combed bottoms of his prodigious 

 feet to the grateful warmth. 



" What is the matter with the bottom of your feet and the back of your legs, that 

 they are gouged up so ? " 



" Infernal chilblains — I caught them clear up to the back of my head, roosting 

 out there under Newell's farm. But I love the place ; I love it as one loves his 

 old home. There is no peace for me like the peace I feel when I am there." 



We talked along for half an hour, and then I noticed that he looked tired, and 

 spoke of it. 



" Tired ?" he said. " Well I should think so. And now I will tell you all about 

 it, since you have treated me so well. I am the spirit of the Petrified Man that 

 lies across the street there in the Museum. I am the ghost of the Cardiff Giant. 

 I can have no rest, no peace, till they have given that poor body burial again. 

 Now what was the most natural thing for me to do, to make men satisfy this wish .' 

 Terrify them into it ! — haunt the place where the body lay ! So I haunted the 

 museum night after night. I even got other spirits to help me. But it did no 

 good, for nobody ever came to the museum at midnight. Then it occurred to me 

 to come over the way and haunt this place a little. I felt that if I ever got a hear- 

 ing I must succeed, for I had the most efficient company that perdition could 

 furnish. Night after night we have shivered around through these mildewed halls, 

 dragging chains, groaning, whispering, tramping up and down stairs, till to tell you 

 the truth I am almost worn out. But when I saw a light in your room to-night I 

 roused my energies again and went at it with a deal of the old freshness. But I am 

 tired out — entirely fagged out. Give me, I beseech you, give me some hope!" 



I lit off my perch in a burst of excitement, and exclaimed : 



" This transcends everything ! everything that ever did occur ! Why you poor 

 blundering old fossil, you have had all your trouble for nothing — you have been 

 haunting a plaster cast of yourself — the real Cardiff Giant is in Albany ! * Con- 

 found it, don't )-0u know your own remains .'" 



•A fact. The original fraud was ingeniously and fraudfully duplicated, and exhibited in New 

 York as the " only genuine " Cardiff Giant, (to the unspeakable disgust of the owners of the real 

 colossus,) at the very same time that the latter was drawing crowds at a museum in Albany. 



