343 



MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. 



Petrified Man copied and guilelessly glorified, I began to feel a soothing secret satis- 

 faction ; and as my gentleman's field of travels broadened, and by the exchanges I 

 sa./ that he steadily and implacably penetrated territory after territory, State after 

 State, and land after land, till he swept the great globe and culminated in sublime 

 and unimpeached legitimacy in the august London Lancet, my cup was full, and I 

 said I was glad I had done it. I think that for about eleven months, as nearly as 



I can remember, Mr. 's daily mail-bag continued to be swollen by the addition 



of half a bushel of newspapers hailing from many climes with the Petrified Man in 

 them, marked around with a prominent belt of ink. I sent them to him. I did it 

 for spite, not for fun. He used to shovel them into his back yard and curse. And 

 every day during all those months the miners, his constituents (for miners never 

 quit joking a person when they get started), would call on him and ask if he could 

 tell them where they could get hold of a paper with the Petrified Man in it. He 



could have accommodated a continent with them. I hated in those days, 



and these things pacified me and pleased me. I could not have gotten more real 

 comforf out of him without killing him. 



