246 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. 



" Jim, he b'iled his baby, and he took the old 'oman's skelp. Cuss'd if / want 

 any breakfast ! " 



And he laid his lingering potato reverently down, and he and his friend 

 departed from the restaurant empty but satisfied. 



He never got down to where the satire part of it began. Nobody ever did. 

 They found the thrilling particulars sufficient. To drop in with a poor little 

 moral at the fag-end of such a gorgeous massacre, was to follow the expiring 

 sun with a candle, and hope to attract the world's attention to it. 



The idea that anybody could ever take my massacre for a genuine occurrence 

 never once suggested itself to me, hedged about as it was by all those tell-tale 

 absurdities and impossibilities concerning the "great pine forest," the '' dressed- 

 stone mansion," etc. But I found out then, and never have forgotten since, that 

 we never read the dull explanatory surroundings of marvellously exciting things 

 when we have no occasion to suppose that some irresponsible scribbler is try- 

 ing to defraud us ; we skip all that, and hasten to revel in the bloo^-curdling 

 particulars and be happy. 



